Y9 Transition Letter

Dear Parent/Carers,

We would like to update you about some of the changes that will occur for your child as they move from year 9 into year 10 and details of some support that we are giving them this term to help with this transition. Please note that if you have an additional child in another year group these class and tutor group changes do not take place.

Please see the short plan of the changes to take place in the table and further details about the reasoning behind these changes later in this letter. Do take time to talk these through with your child and contact us if you have any concerns. We will be communicating to all of year 9 in an assembly today about the changes.

Further details and reasons for these changes:

As every year at HWA as students move from years 9 to 10, there are class and sides of the year (x and y) changes that occur to support timetabling and curriculum delivery. Currently your year 9 child is either on the x or y side due to them either taking French or Spanish lessons. In year 10 and 11 French and Spanish are placed in option blocks which allows pupils to move from x and y side freely. The English, maths and science teams met last week to ensure that pupils are moved appropriately to allow the x side of the year group to be predominately students who will take higher maths and science papers and the y side to predominately be students who take foundation papers (there are no tiers of entry for English). This allows maths and science teachers to ensure that they teach the correct content to the right students as there are some differences between the courses. Please note that on the GCSE certificates whether your child has taken higher or foundation is not included; higher is from 9-4 (traditional A* to C grades), foundation from 5-1 (traditional C to G grades). In the past few years there have been a few students on the y side who do take higher papers, and they and their families receive additional support to allow this to occur. The GCSE options your child has chosen are separate to the x and y side and these option groups are not set by ability.

When these decisions have been made, Miss Marler and the SLT team will work carefully to form students into their new tutor groups for next year, for this year group there will be a mix of x and y in the different tutor groups to allow students to still have familiar faces in these groups. In tutor time in year 10 and 11 there are additional English and maths sessions led by Curriculum Leads and their departments. Therefore, tutors in KS4 are mostly the maths and English teams to support these sessions, your child will likely have an English teacher as their tutor in year 10 which they will continue to have into year 11 to support them through their GCSEs.

In week 5 we are planning several changes to occur for our pupils of different year groups to support them ahead of September when many changes occur (see changes in the table). We believe that this will support our year 9 students in particular as they transition into the GCSEs. We will send a further letter home confirming your child’s tutor group and tutor. The remainder of this term will have a focus on supporting and stepping your child/children up to the rigors of the GCSE and BTEC course with different tutor time activities and classwork also.

Yours Sincerely,

Rebecca Gardner

Assistant Principal and year 9 Academic Lead