Author: Natalie McGillivary

Virtual Live ‘Get into Medicine’ UCAS conferences

Natalie McGillivary

Saturday 25th and 26th November

All aspiring doctors in Years 10–12 are invited to register for these free virtual ‘Get into Medicine’ UCAS conferences. These conferences offer tailored advice for medicine, covering a range of  crucial topics, such as:

  • Tactically choosing universities
  • Personal statements
  • UCAT
  • Medical interview skills
  • Medical Leadership Programmes
  • Awards Programmes
  • Extracurricular activities
  • Work experience
  • Building a CV
  • Applying for scholarships

Both students and parents are invited to participate in these sessions.

You can register for free here. Space are limited, so students should register as soon as they can.

Class Charts – launching Monday 13th November

Natalie McGillivary

We are pleased to announce that we will shortly be replacing the Gateway app with a new system for communicating with parents. The new app is called Class Charts and we will be launching this to parents on Monday 13th November with an email containing further details as well as a unique log-in code for you. Please look out for this email from Monday afternoon and, as soon as you can, download the Class Charts app and log in. We will have a short time period (unlikely to be more than a week or two) where we run Class Charts alongside the Gateway app, but once this transition period is over, you will not receive any more messages from school if you haven’t downloaded and logged into the Class Charts app.

Students will also have access to the Class Charts app and we will be giving them the time and log-in details in school next week to get them all up and running.

We will be using Class Charts for:

  • All messages from school (i.e., those that currently come via the Gateway app or email)
  • The reporting of student absences
  • Setting and monitoring of homework (i.e., Class Charts will replace Satchel One)
  • Communicating and recording of achievement/Hall points and rewards
  • Communicating and recording behaviour points and details of any detentions

We have been trialling Class Charts in school this term and, along with a lot of work exploring how other schools have been using Class Charts, are confident the new app will provide a much better experience for families. In particular, it ought to be a much better system for issuing and recording Hall points (something that student and parent voice has indicated is something we need to improve). It will also reduce the number of different platforms needed for communication between school and home.

All the evidence we have so far is that parents and students find the Class Charts app very intuitive and easy to use, and so we anticipate a fairly smooth transition. However, there are bound to be a few teething problems here and there so we thank you in advance for your support and understanding.

Just to clarify, you will not be able to log in to the Class Charts app until you have your unique access code, which will be sent out by email from Monday afternoon. This email will also contain further information about how to use the app.