Sponsorship of Hillsview Academy by Outwood Grange Academies Trust - 1 May 2019

As you may be aware, Outwood Grange Academies Trust has been asked to sponsor Hillsview Academy to provide the support that the school deserves to rapidly become a good school for your children. We are delighted to say that this is the track record that we have across all of our academies, and that with our local network of schools in Tees Valley, we expect to rapidly transform your school for the better.

We know this will cause a period of uncertainty and we will be working closely with the Hillsview staff to put in place plans for you to meet us as soon as possible. Firstly though, please see below some answers to questions, which we know you will have:

Uniform – Every student will receive a free bundle of uniform ready for September. This includes year 6 students who will start in September. This includes a blazer, two shirts (long or short sleeved), a tie, a pair of trousers or a skirt, PE shorts, PE jersey, PE polo shirt and black PE socks. Please note that the shirts do not have a logo, so that you can easily purchase additional shirts at a store of your choice. We will be organising uniform sizing sessions for all year groups and incoming Year 7 students towards the end of the summer term. You do not need to buy anything at this stage and we are very aware of the need to support those who may struggle with purchasing any items for their education.

School Day – When we meet with you, we will go through these things in more detail, but the Outwood school day is very similar to your current school day and we hope that you will agree to the small changes we propose, to allow the school day to run smoothly.

Options Process – Students in older year groups and their families will be invited to bespoke information sessions in the coming weeks to go through the process of deciding on which subjects they will study from September.
We know that you will have more questions than this, but we wanted very quickly to assure you on these important points.

Next Steps – We will work with Hillsview staff to arrange a meeting with you and finalise our plans to ensure your children have a successful education. A letter with the detail of this meeting will be sent out as soon as we have confirmed the dates. We hope to work with the school before September to introduce some changes to ensure a good start to the new academic year but we will not do anything to disrupt the current Year 11 from their important terminal examinations. None of our changes will affect the current Year 11.

Once again, we are very pleased to be working with you and we will keep in touch as things progress.

Yours faithfully

Martyn Oliver, Chief Executive
Mark Hassack, Executive Principal (Northern Region)