Dear families,

I'm really looking forward to welcoming your children back to school next week.

The last couple of months have been challenging for the whole school community, but overall I believe together we have stood up to those challenges well. I pay tribute to the hard work of both our children and our teachers during the period of remote learning. I thank you for the support you have provided for your children while they have learned at home.

We are well prepared for our children returning to school and, as before Christmas, we are focused on making sure the school is both as safe and as normal as possible. Our children have demonstrated they are very flexible and resilient. Any talk of a 'lost generation' of children 'left behind by COVID' underestimates both what they and our teachers are capable of. We will be keeping our standards and expectations high, so families should expect the usual rules and routines to be in place. Anything else would be letting our children down.

Although there will naturally be some apprehension, we're aware that the vast majority of our pupils are excited to be back in school and we are certainly very pleased to be welcoming them back.

Mr Dan Carter

Principal

‘10000K in 10 Weeks - Charity Challenge’

Thetford Academy Sixth Form (TA6) and Staff are aiming to collectively, walk or run the distance of 10,000k in 10 weeks to raise money for their chosen charity, The Benjamin Foundation. All our activities will be recorded in our 'Strava TA6 Challenge - Walking and Running Club'. This challenge will start on 1st March 21 and end on 7th May 21.

For over 25 years’ children, young people and families across Norfolk and Suffolk have been supported by The Benjamin Foundation to overcome big challenges in their lives.

This includes:

• Accommodating vulnerable young people, working in partnership with the End Youth Homelessness Campaign

• Providing emotional wellbeing support

• Providing opportunities to develop life skills

• Creating possibilities and hope for a better future

The Benjamin Foundation are deeply connected to the local community, employing over 220 people in Norfolk and Suffolk

“We are thrilled to hear that your students would like to support us with their 10k challenge! Thank you again to you all – wishing everyone taking part the very best of luck in your ten week challenge!”

Rachel at The Benjamin Foundation

You can donate here: https://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TA6Challenge-ThetfordAcademySixthForm

National Careers Weeks, 1st-6th March 2021

As we were unable to celebrate Careers Week in the same way as usual, students have been receiving various information electronically daily. This includes lots of helpful links and the Compass survey mentioned in last week's piece, where we are hoping to create a record of students area of interest for future events. This has culminated with a fun quiz asking students to guess staff members previous job roles. This is to help demonstrate that people often have a non conventional route into their career and that you normally have to work your way up! It will hopefully also give the students an insight into their teachers careers, and they may even be able to ask for help in specific areas. For example, who would’ve guessed we had staff who had worked at Crufts Dog Show and even been a Children's Entertainer!

Although we were not available to do our traditional events, we still had an online WBD with students taking part in competitions and activities. It’s too soon to share with you our WBD photos but I will put these together for next week so that you can see how it was celebrated at TTA. In the meantime, I am sharing the official WBD song and a video from authors supporting WBD to advise why it is so important to celebrate WBD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpTkjssrL4k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgLAfk8Ck1M

We continue to be bowled over by the quality of the art work produced by pupils at Thetford Academy. The Art department have set up the following Virtual Exhibition to showcase the work of our students.

https://sites.google.com/inspirationtrust.org/ks3-art-virtual-exhibition-202