Dear Parent and Carers,

Welcome to our first newsletter of the year. We hope you enjoy reading about all the wonderful things LAB’s learning community has achieved over the last 4 months. The layout is a little different to previous newsletters, and we hope the changes we have made make navigating the publication easier.

We have been referring to this academic year as our year of maturity, and so far it has been an absolute joy to watch our wonderful community work so hard together, and with so much ambition. It is hard to believe that this is our 5th year, and that we now have 900 students on roll, alongside nearly 100 members of staff. The 2022-2023 academic year is an exciting but extremely important one for LAB for so many reasons. Our founding students prepare for our first set of public examinations in the summer; enrolment for LAB16 is in full swing, and of course we finally had our long awaited visit from Ofsted last week.

Alongside these milestone events the normal rhythm of LAB continues, and we look forward to our year 10 students sitting their first set of GCSE mocks after Christmas, before our year 9 students make their options choices in module 4.

Once again we have been thrilled with the high number of applications received for our 180 year 7 places next year. There were over 1100 in total and 336 first choice preferences. LAB16 applications are continuing to roll in ahead of the deadline on 31st January 2023. If you were unable to attend the LAB16 open event in November, we will be holding open mornings every Wednesday throughout January. Please see the website for more details.

We wish you all a peaceful and relaxing festive break, and look forward to welcoming students back at 8.00am on Thursday 5th January.

Best wishes,

E Smith