We hope that the following information will be helpful and ask that you bear with us on days when consideration may need to be given to the closure (partial or full) of the Academy. Decisions on closure are not taken lightly and have to balance the safety of staff and students in travelling to the Academy against the difficulties caused to working parents without emergency childcare, should their child suddenly be required to stay at home for the day. All decisions are made by the Principal and, please be assured, this is done as early as possible in order to provide as much notice as it is possible to give, HOWEVER it is often NOT possible to make this decision before 7.30/7.45am.
As a rule of thumb, parents and students should assume that the Academy is open as normal unless there are specific notices posted to advise otherwise; this is particularly the case during spells of bad weather, when it is almost always possible for the Academy to remain open for students, whatever the weather conditions.
Students will be able to login to their Microsoft 365 and TEAMS accounts, to allow them to access study tasks, work in progress and/or additional resources posted by their teachers, via the ‘Quick Links’ at the top of this page.
If the Academy is to remain closed for the day, a message will be sent out to the primary parent contact, via the EDUlinkONE app
If you do not receive a message but are still concerned about whether or not the Academy is open to receive your child, you can check for any ‘closure’ notice on the homepage of the website here; a notice will be placed here if the Principal deems it necessary to remain closed. If there is no notice to advise of a closure, then please assume we are open as normal.
If it is deemed necessary to remain closed, a message will also be posted on our social media pages/feeds. Please do not rely on messages posted on students’ personal accounts as these are more often than not, based on rumour and not fact!
Suffolk County Council also operates a system of notification to our local radio station, BBC Radio Suffolk on 95.5 FM, 95.9 FM, 103.9 FM, 104.6 FM, so this, too, may be a useful source of information. Please note that schools/academies are asked not to notify the radio station directly, so any delay in messages reaching BBC Radio Suffolk and/or its website is not the fault of the Academy – more the period of time it takes for Suffolk County Council to collate the information for all schools and forward it on on their behalf.
The Suffolk County Council website lists school/academy closures in the event of bad weather, although again, these can be somewhat delayed; our own website will be updated much sooner and with more regular update bulletins if and when required.
Ultimately, parents are responsible for deciding whether or not they feel it is safe to send their child to the Academy each day. We urge parents to consider keeping their child at home only when it is unsafe for them to travel or when they are seriously ill, and we ask that parents notify us daily when they have taken this decision, giving us the reason on each occasion. Email [email protected] or call 01787 375131 and select option 1.
Unless absolutely necessary for ‘other’ enquiries (or to ring through to our ‘Absence’ line) we would be really grateful if you could AVOID ringing our switchboard lines to “check whether we are open”; this, sadly, results in lots of ‘empty’ voicemail messages being generated (because colleagues were unable to answer your call due to already being on another line.) Then, whilst having to work through the processing of these (mainly ‘blank’) voicemails, colleagues are prevented from being able to take NEW calls, leading callers to believe that we are ‘not answering the ‘phone’ (when, in fact, the exact OPPOSITE is actually the case – we are DESPERATELY trying to clear voicemail messages to be able to take new calls!)