Welcome to the first Principal’s Blog

Welcome to the first Principal’s Blog. The purpose of these fortnightly blogs is to keep you informed about different aspects of College life, providing a window into some of the things that are happening at Impington Village College (IVC). There will also be the opportunity to ‘get to know’ different members of staff, so that as you visit there are more familiar faces around.

Welcome Back!

We are very excited to be welcoming all of our students back to College this week. You will already have received the risk assessment and detailed plans for reopening, but if you would like to revisit these, please access them here, on the COVID secure section of our website.

Site Renovations

For many of our students, it will be several months since they have been on site at IVC. I hope they will notice some significant improvements in the College environment, thanks to our site team who have been working tirelessly throughout the lockdown period. Large areas of the site have been renovated, including the Prom, George Edwards and Humanities toilet blocks, and the G Rooms. You can see a picture of the new toilets below!

Toilet renovation image

Summer Results

Despite the cancellation of exams this summer, we remain incredibly proud of the achievements of all of our Year 11 and Year 13 students, who collected their results in July and August. At IB, 100% of students passed both the Diploma (DP) and Career-related Programmes (CP), with 18% of our DP students achieving above 40 points. This is the equivalent to achieving 4A*s at A level, which is incredible, especially given that IIC is completely non-selective. Our students are going on to a huge range of destinations, including Oxbridge and a number of Russell Group universities. Our CP students enjoyed similar success and will be off to a range of universities and leading industry employers.

At GCSE it was once again fantastic to see the achievements of our students recognised. All students achieved at least one GCSE grade, including those who have been following entry level courses alongside their GCSE programme. Some other headlines include 21% of all grades at Grade 9, 55% of grades at 7+ and 80% of students achieving a 4+ in both English and Maths. We are delighted to be welcoming back a number of our Year 11s into Impington International College (IIC) where we are sure they will continue to thrive.

Welcome Events

We would usually be running a series of welcome evenings throughout September to give parents an opportunity to hear from the Senior Leadership Team about the year ahead. This year, we will be releasing a Microsoft Sway for each year group, and then following this up with an opportunity to attend a Q&A session to meet members of SLT in smaller groups. Moving forward we also plan to hold coffee mornings twice a half term for parents and carers to come in and chat informally to SLT; more details on this to follow.

This week in College

This week we welcome back our returning students and give a very warm welcome to our incoming Year 7 and 12 students. Our staff are doing everything they can to ensure that students have a smooth transition, especially those who are joining us from overseas and staying with host families. All of our new students will be participating in an induction programme over the first two days to ensure they are ready to begin the academic year. Returning students will also have an extended tutor time on the first morning to welcome them back to IVC.

Our staff CPD over the first two days of term has been focused on the new pastoral curriculum, which will change our approach to behaviour. More details will be shared in the Welcome Sway about how this will improve students’ experiences. The other key focus has been the launch of our journey towards implementing the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) in place of our KS3 curriculum from September 2021. This will see us as the only state school in the UK to offer the IB MYP, DP and CP and is very exciting indeed.

Meet the Staff Member

As noted above, each fortnight there will be a chance to hear more from different members of staff around the College, starting with our new Senior Leadership Team. This fortnight features Jo Sale, Vice Principal: Academic.

What is your role in College?

My role is Vice Principal, Academic. This means that I am responsible for whole College curriculum, homework, & options processes. I also lead Impington International College, and will lead on implementing the IB Middle Years programme into our College from September 2021.

How long have you been at IVC, and what did you do before you joined?

I think I am definitely one of (if not the) longest serving members of staff in the College! I joined 20 years ago – and was at university prior to that!