Colleges, Banding and Tutor Groups

Your child will join a college upon entering the Academy and will remain within that college throughout their Academy career. All aspects of support for academic progress and pastoral care will take place within the college.

The college your child is allocated will not imply that he/she has a particular aptitude or interest as all students have access to the same curriculum provision, choices and facilities irrespective of the college they join. For organisational purposes, students are also divided into two parallel (mixed prior attainment) bands named T and G. The band they are allocated correlates to their college. Hawking, Turing and Austen are in T band, and Duleep, Owens and Mirzakhani are in G band.

Tutor groups are of mixed ages, with 3-4 students from Years 7-11 allocated to each. This `family grouping‘ will provide your child with the opportunity to learn about leadership, responsibility and to take an active role in supporting and encouraging other students. It will also provide your child with a much broader knowledge and understanding of all aspects of Academy life. Time and consideration is placed into tutor group allocations to ensure an equitable experience for everybody. 

Tutor groups have approximately 20 students, allowing each tutor to really get to know their tutees. Students will see their tutor every morning for a 25 minute period. There are six colleges and each college is led by a College Leader. The colleges are:

Lunch Arrangements

Students can either purchase food from Willow restaurant, Terrace café, the Bonsai food bar or bring a packed lunch. We use a biometric finger scanning system on campus to allow students to purchase their lunch. Permission for this can be given when completing the online data collection that will be provided to you before September. No register of fingerprints is kept, nor is it possible to reconstitute a fingerprint from the data we hold. If you are unwilling to have your child’s biometric information used in this way, or would like to talk about this further, please contact Mr D Dovydaitis, Executive Finance Officer.

Students lunch accounts can be credited using a debit or credit card online via ParentPay and you will be provided with login and password details in advance of September. Parents are able to view their child’s lunch account balance and the details of what is being purchased online via the ParentPay system.

If student forgets their packed lunch or discovers that there are no funds in their account when they try to buy lunch they should go to Student Services, where they will be asked to phone home and either speak to a parent/guardian or leave a message to the effect that they need their lunch account topping up. They will be given a slip for a one-off loan to enable them to have lunch that day. This will be claimed as soon as funds are topped up.