At LCS we pride ourselves on our level of Pastoral Care and our positive relationships with our students.

Our methods are fairly traditional when it comes to the Academic and Pastoral organisation of the school. We believe our systems are clear and understood by students and parents alike.

• Classes in Year 7
• Bullying
• Your Commitment to School
• Uniform
• Attendance and Holidays
• Mobile Phones and Social Media
• SEND

Classes in Year 7

• Students in Year 7 will be taught in 10 different Tutor groups.
• They will have the majority of their lessons in these groups for their first year here, so their relationship with classmates will be vital.
• They will see their tutor each morning, who will be their first point of contact for help and support.
• A lot of time has been taken to organise students into balanced groups, bearing in mind information the Primary Schools have given us. Communication with Primary Schools has been ongoing during school closure.
• We don’t ask students to provide names of 2 or 3 friends they would like to be in a class with – we haven’t done this now for some time.
  
  The reasons for this are to help students widen their group of friends, also because of changing friendship groups and how often they find new friends, as well as old friends, and want to change classes as a result.

The teachers are really supportive and helpful and I always feel safe

Bullying

Parents and carers will have lots of questions ahead of the start of the new academic year in a new school.

One of the first questions parents always have is about Bullying.

Bullying is always an issue that parents and students are rightly concerned about.

We do not tolerate bullying at LCS

Those of you who have students already at the school, or who have been here in the past will know that we never say that there is no bullying at this school. No school in the world can make that statement.

What we can say is that Bullying is not a major problem at this school. Feedback from Parents and Students shows us consistently that the vast majority of students here enjoy school, feel safe here and feel supported to achieve their best.

Results from the most recent Parent Survey (available on website) and termly Student Surveys are consistently extremely positive.

• Most issues we deal with are relatively minor, as young people inevitably fall-out with each other now and again.
• When students report bullying to us it is always dealt with – it is never ignored.
• We will always work to find a solution to a problem, in order to stop the issue from happening again.

What we must all do is to encourage our young people to report any issues of bullying so that they can be dealt with.

We will need your help and support in doing this. We must make it clear to all of our young people that they should not have to tolerate bullying and that they must talk to us if they are unhappy about anything they have seen or heard.

Your commitment to school

As part of your commitment to us we ask you to maintain a positive interest in your child’s education to support and encourage them.

We ask you:

• To sign the Home School Agreement in the front of their planner, in first few days of new term in Sept.
• To check your child has the right equipment each day for school.
• To make sure they attend regularly and on time.
• To attend Parent’s evenings, the first of which will be the ‘Settling In’ Evening in November, details of which you will receive nearer the time.

Parents and carers can regularly check students’ progress through accessing Go4Schools; information about this is on the school website.

Uniform

We ask you to make sure that students are wearing the correct uniform, details of which can be found on school website. You should also find details of suppliers and their arrangements for on-line purchases; there is no facility to purchase uniform directly from school.

The main issues we have with uniform are always with trousers and shoes.

• We ask students to look smart for school, as they would for work.
• Skin-tight trousers and trainers are, therefore, not acceptable.
• We ask for trousers to be correctly fitted and for students to wear shoes.

Full details of the uniform/dress code can be found our Uniform Policy on the LCS website below:

• Uniform Policy

Attendance and Holidays

We ask you not to take holidays in school time. School policy is very clear on this and always has been.

• Holidays are to be taken outside of term time and we will not use discretion on this,  except in defined ‘exceptional circumstances’.
• Term dates are published on our website well in advance, to assist parents and carers in booking holidays.
• Our stance on holidays has always been the same and has not changed. It is one of reasons why this school has the best attendance record of any in the city.
• This is also because our students like being here and want to keep coming each day.
• In any school, there is a clear link between attendance and ultimate academic success.

If any of us took an exam and achieved a mark of 90% this would be an excellent result.  90% attendance level at school, however, means that the student is missing, on average, 1 day every 2 weeks.

This equates to 20 days a year – or 4 school weeks.

• We ask you to send your child to school every day and to contact us immediately on the first morning if your child is ill or unfit to attend.
• We operate a First Day calls system and all parents and carers will receive a phone call or text message on the first day of their child’s absence. It helps us greatly, therefore, if parents and carers can inform us immediately, if their child is not going to be in school.

Mobile phones and social media

This is a place of learning and consequently we ask students not to bring mobile phones or other electronic devices into school.

• Most bullying issues or arguments between students are caused by social network sites such as Instagram and Snapchat, accessed through a mobile phone.
• The vast majority of issues and problems we deal with in school are started on Snapchat, Instagram or Tik Tok by young people sending messages/images in the evenings and weekends. They then bring this into school the following day.
• As a school we would be grateful if all parents monitor their child’s use of the internet and Social Networking sites such as these, as social media use is one of the largest problems in schools in this country at present time.
• There is a lot of information on our school website regarding on-line safety and risks of social media, which can be found in the Safeguarding section

Growing numbers of young people are displaying signs of addiction to social media, which has become a significant factor in mental health issues in young people.

• We believe we are doing students a favour by not letting them have phones for 8 hours each day.
• A recently published study found that young people can spend up to 12 hours scrolling and messaging on mobile devices each day.
• We must not underestimate this issue and would ask parents and carers for their help in educating students about it.
• Please look for regular updates on our website and school Twitter and Facebook sites, which we do use as a positive form of social media interaction with students, parents and carers.