The Leigh Academy
Winter Newsletter 2023
Principal's Letter
Dear Parents and Carers
We have had a wonderful start to this academic year. We returned in September celebrating excellent results this summer at both GCSE and Post 16. Once again, congratulations to all of our students, our staff who supported and led them, as well as parents working in partnership with the academy to ensure success. We are also extremely proud to report that 70% of our Year 13 students started at university this September, many students accepting places at Russell Group universities and our first student heading to Cambridge University. The remaining Year 13 students have started apprenticeships, employment or a gap year. We have challenged our current Year 11 and Year 13 students to match these outcomes and know that with the excellent education we offer, as well as the support provided from College teams, our students are on track to be successful again this year.
We have had a fast paced term with a raft of events and visits, a personal highlight is our Remembrance Service, when all of our community, joined by pupils from Dartford Primary Academy, all of our Milestone @ Leigh satellite as well as guests from the Dartford Branch of the Royal British Legion, join together to commemorate all who have given service to us and our country to protect our lives and freedoms, past and present.
I am also delighted with the variety of sporting events and competitions that Leigh students have participated in this year, from girls and boys football competitions, District gymnastics, a swimming gala and cross-country races to name a few; further details are in the PE pages. We have also had a trip to the Christmas market in Lille and other exciting visits both at home and abroad planned for the year ahead.
I hope that you enjoy reading all about the adventures and experiences in this edition of our newsletter, that are just some of the opportunities that we offer to our Leigh community.
I wish you and your families a Merry Christmas and look forward to a prosperous 2024
Kind regards
Mrs Julia Collins
Principal
Deputy Principal's Letter
The start of the 2023-24 academic year has seen our academy continue to grow from strength to strength, with our students returning to us from their summer break rested and ready to embrace the challenges of a new year. Our staffing body has been fantastic in ensuring their new classes hit the ground running, with incredibly positive feedback from students and their families on the quality of learning that is taking place both in the academy and at home. Our students continue to be our proudest ambassadors, and champions of the academy’s mission and vision of ‘opening minds to success’. We constantly seek to provide opportunities for them to embrace this further, notably around key worldwide events and moments in history. This is something that shines through in our students' engagement with the wide range of curriculum based activities and extracurricular opportunities offered to them.
Our winter newsletter is a fantastic reflection of this, and demonstrates the academy’s commitment to delivering a truly world class, ambitious, global curriculum to all students in Years 7 - 13. It is an exciting time to be part of the The Leigh Academy Community, with our dedicated staff striving to provide our students with high quality opportunities to learn new concepts, knowledge and skills, whilst at the same time keeping them hooked and developing a love of learning. This is something that I am proud to see was recognised in our most recent Year 11 and 13 results, with students achieving a fantastic set of qualifications to support their future destinations.
The 2024-25 calendar year promises to take this a step further, with a range of exciting developments planned to further engage our academy’s community and their families. We will continue to provide a vast range of activities and events for family engagement, with many of these showcased within this newsletter. Thank you for your continued and varied support in your child’s education. I look forward to sharing their future successes with you as we continue throughout this year.
Mr Matt Stevens
Deputy Principal