Heathylea Federation

Dear Parents
As you are all aware, our school has been looking at working much closer with Flash school for our mutual benefit and we have been working towards a hard federation. This has now been approved and the federation will be known as the Heathylea Federation. This means that the two schools will be sharing a head teacher and a pool of teaching staff.

To maximise learning opportunities for both schools Flash and Longnor children will be taught together for 3 days of the week- making workable peer cohort groups for both schools. They will each remain in their own schools on Mondays and Tuesdays to complete personalised learning programmes in core tasks such as reading, spelling, grammar, numberwork etc. The following 2 days the Flash children will register in their own school and then travel to Longnor for the beginning of the school day where they will work in age groups and access specialist subjects such as science, Re, music, French, design and technology with Mrs Collins, Mrs Greener, Mrs Kenny, and Mrs Evans. Flash children will then return home at 2.20pm. On Fridays Longnor children will register as usual then travel to Flash to collect them for swimming at leek. They will then return to Flash school for the rest of the day to take advantage of their ICT equipment and to experience working in another environment.

As Mrs Griffiths will retire at the end of term, Mrs Collins will be based at Flash on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays and will accompany the children here on Wednesdays and Thursdays to deliver her specialist subjects and provide continuity. Mrs Cowles will hopefully be replacing Mrs Collins in the junior classes on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings.

It is envisaged that I will be moving between schools on Monday, Tuesdays and Fridays and be based in Longnor throughout Thursday and Friday.
The staff will be planning topics together so that children will be all working together for the joint days.
This is a brand new venture which we hope will increase opportunities for social and educational development, raise standards and ensure we are well placed in the uncertain times ahead.
There are bound to be issues which we haven’t thought about and we will be constantly monitoring developments.

I hope this will clarify the position in September. If you have any concerns at all, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards
Susan Evans