Matford Brook Academy, part of the Ted Wragg Trust, will provide students and the local community with state-of-the art facilities.

The brand new, all-through school being built on the edge of Exeter within the Haldon Reach development will be opening in September 2023.

Covering approximately 9196sqm, the state-of-the-art building will provide excellent facilities such as a fully equipped theatre with raked seating, activity studio, spacious learning and resources centre and two recreational halls in addition to a dedicated dining hall. 

The extensive sport facilities include a traditionally built four court sports hall, a large 3G artificial turf all-weather flood lit pitches, netball courts, a full sized adult football pitch, a cricket square, a full sized adult rugby pitch, 400m athletics track and field provision, an outdoor learning environment including woodland area and a four-court tarmacadam multi-use games area (MUGA) parking and amenity space.

The construction of the 2 storey and 3 storey element building will provide space for 59 nursery places, 630 primary pupils and 750 secondary students and the opportunity for extensive community use.

Headteacher Emily Simpson-Horne comments: “It’s a hugely exciting time as we start to welcome students, parents, carers and staff into our Matford Brook family. Our all-through school will provide an excellent education that empowers children to believe they can, and should, change the world around them. Our values of scholarship, kindness and community are reflected in the opportunities our students, their families and those around us will have. With the incredible facilities that Matford Brook has available, there really is no limit to what we can achieve here together as we write our story.

I look forward to meeting families and members of the local community soon during open evenings and site visits and welcoming our first cohort of students for September 2023.”    

Moira Marder, Chief Executive of the Ted Wragg Trust, said: “We are delighted to have reached this milestone where we can share the excitement of these facilities with the local community. The school will provide a huge amount of opportunity to students and wider afield. As part of our ambitious and inclusive Trust of schools, strengthening communities through excellent education, Matford Brook Academy is set to have the best platform from the ground up, working in collaboration with our other schools and its local community to be the very best that they can be.”

Open evenings will be taking place in September 2022 for 3 levels of intake, with admissions opening in September for secondary places and November for primary places. Visit the website www.matfordbrook.academy to book your space.

Secondary focus:

• Monday 26^th September
• Tuesday 4^th September  

Primary and Nursery focus:

• Thursday 3^rd November
• Tuesday 8^th November

Head teacher at Queen Elizabeth’s School in Crediton, Rupert Poole said “today we have had the absolute pleasure of celebrating with all our wonderful Year 11 students their really impressive results.

“We are very proud of the achievements of our young people who have worked so hard, today is all about them and their chance to relax and reflect on their achievements.  They have worked very hard to achieve these results.”

Rupert went on to say “after all of the turmoil caused to the exam system by the pandemic, nationally speaking, this year’s results are a ‘transition year’ between 2021 (when assessment was done directly by schools and colleges) and 2019 (the last year exams took place).  However, what is most important is to recognise the hard work and determination of our students.  I am delighted to report that they have done fantastically well, meeting and exceeding the challenging targets we set for them.  This has resulted in them making excellent progress, which in turn has supported their next steps in education.  We look forward to welcoming many of them back into our fantastic Sixth Form where, as last week’s results demonstrated, students continue to make exceptional progress.

“QE’s recent Ofsted inspection, in which we were judged ‘Good’ in all areas, highlighted that the atmosphere in lessons is very focused and that we have created the conditions in which pupils can learn an ambitious curriculum.  These results are testament to that.  We could not be more pleased with the students’ outcomes, and it is also testament to the positive and mature approach they adopted to studying for their exams.”

Rupert also praised the staff at QE, reflecting on the last few years, saying “today is all about the students and recognising their achievements, but I do want to highlight our wonderful staff, and especially the work they did to support the students.  I really think the work they did, back in the days of lockdown and more recently in the run up to the exams in school, has made a massive difference and supported our students to achieve at the highest level.”

As part of the Ted Wragg Trust of schools, we are celebrating the successes and achievements of our students here at Isca Academy following the release of our GCSE results. We are exceptionally proud of all of our students and are thrilled by their results this year which reflect their hard work, dedication and commitment over many years.

Our headline results this year indicate a continued upward trend in attainment, with 70% of students achieving a grade 4 or above in both English and Maths and 54% a grade 5 or above in both subjects. These results mean that even more of our students can now go on to study Level 3 Courses at College and we are delighted that 98% of our students have already secured a route into education, employment or training this year.

Headteacher Aimee Mitchell said, “We are extremely proud of our students and all that they have achieved in what has been an extremely challenging period of their education.  Their results are a testament to the hard work, positive mindset and effort they have continued to put into their studies and to the commitment and dedication of the staff.  They now leave us with secure plans for the next step of their journey and a wealth of skills and qualities that equip them well for future success.”  She went on to say, “Our greatest strength as a school is supporting all of our students to succeed both academically and personally and I know that the rich experiences that our students have had access to will lead them on to great things beyond the Academy.”

Some notable individual successes include:

Chris Child, Tom Maynard and Violet Howson are our highest achieving students with 8 or more grade 9’s across a range of subjects. These students have applied for A Level courses at Exeter College as well as the Reach Academy and with these results, we are sure they will be successful.   Caitlin Vizard and Denisa Burca also performed exceptionally well with a suite of grade 9’s and 8’s, they are also both moving on to study A Level courses at Exeter College. We also have some students who have secured places on T Level courses.  Julian Wawczak is pursuing a T Level in Engineering after securing some excellent results in Maths and Science to name a few. Ella Rose has also secured a place on the T Level Health course and I know she will be successful with an excellent performance at GCSE.

There are so many other individual successes and all of the students’ hard work has meant they are able to move on to the destination of their choice, including a significant number going on to study Level 3 courses, Advanced Apprenticeships, or specialist vocational qualifications in their area of interest.  We wish you all the best of luck and are very much looking forward to hearing about your successes in the future. Today’s results are truly deserved, you have been a remarkable year group who have faced such challenging times, well done to you all.

St James School, Exeter have proudly and successfully taken place in this year’s Exe Valley Challenge! The Challenge is an annual event that takes place at Isca Academy consisting of a range of primary and secondary schools from Exeter and the surrounding areas. In total there were 55 teams. The goal is to complete a circular route around the River Exe. The route can either be 5, 7 or 10 miles and to complete it, the students can only use basic map reading, orienteering skills and their wits!

This year, from the school, 14 students from year 7 took part in the Challenge. They consisted of 3 teams. We are proud to announce that team 2 won best overall boys’ team and then best team overall out of 55 teams. They had to navigate the 10 mile course along the canal from Isca. Additionally, team 2 scored particularly well by arriving at the checkpoint at exactly the right moment meaning they got 100% on their timing. In addition to this, they scored 99.8% on their questions. This represents a fantastic achievement for not only the group, but the wider school too. For their efforts they will be awarded medals and an engraved cup.

The schools motto of ‘Work Hard, be kind’ has clearly been achieved!

The students in the team were as follows:

• Team 1 – Miles Peters, Tom Corbridge, Casper Stannard, Alex Penn, Makwan Hassaniyan.
• Team 2 – Oliver Gillick, Malik-Ama Darden-Croft, Elias Gomez-Cabo, Wilf Cook.
• Team 3 – Lalita White, Alfie Johnston, Tilly Mann, Jess Woodcock, Keira King.

We would like to extend our warm thanks to all those at Isca for organising the event. It was a fantastic day!

Ten students from St James recently joined students from St Lukes, Cranbrook, Exmouth Community college, Maynard, Tiverton and St Peters in an event aimed at ‘Girls into STEM’ which was held at the Maynard School.

The day comprised two team challenges as well as some talks and Q&A session delivered by five women currently in a range of engineering careers. For the first challenge students had to design a new product aimed at improving the well being of any target audience. They then had to present their idea to the ‘Dragons.’ Our teams designed a portable sensory tent that parents could use and adapt if they had children with specific sensory needs and a diffuser that was also a calming light so that it would allow people to destress during the day.

The second team challenge was to calibrate and programme ‘Ozobots’ and then design a map that the Ozobot had to navigate, adding in additional tricks as it completed the journey.

The final part of the day was the presentations by the STEM ambassadors and the students heard talks from women in a range of different engineering roles, highlight the different routes that they had taken to get into their current roles.

The day was a great opportunity for the students to hear about the different skills and routes into engineering, looking in detail at how design ideas are brought to market as well as working collaboratively in teams and with students from other schools in the area.

Young people from Devon are taking part in a unique competition to develop innovative solutions to try and solve major environmental problems faced across the globe.

More than 50 students from schools in Exeter, Crediton and Plymouth are taking part in the first Ted Wragg Trust Innovation Competition, tackling the complex issues of sustainable transport links and the problem of microplastics.

The groups are developing their ideas as part of the Trust-wide contest, which seeks to discover students who demonstrate an aptitude for finding innovative solutions to challenging issues and using technology to make the world a better place.

The students, aged from eight to 15, are from Marine Academy Primary, Plymouth, Queen Elizabeth’s School, Crediton; and the Exeter schools – Whipton Barton, West Exe, St Luke’s, Exwick Heights, Isca Academy, St James School, and Cranbrook Educational Campus. Ideas are due to be submitted in June.

Moira Marder, Chief Executive of the Ted Wragg Trust, said: “At our ambitious and inclusive Trust of schools, we want to encourage our students to ‘think globally’ and to engage with the problems we are all facing as a society. Our young people will be the decision makers of the future and we’re looking forward to seeing the results of this challenge, where they work together and think creatively to try and solve these issues. Right across the Ted Wragg Trust, we hear from our students about their concerns for the environment and the future of the planet, and this is one way of helping them to get their voices heard. As a Trust we believe in the power of education to transform lives, strengthen communities, to make the world a better place which is emphasised by this competition.

“We’re delighted to be working with Exeter College and other partners in industry on this competition.”

The competition is being run in collaboration with the South West Institute of Technology and Exeter College, with a celebration event planned for July at the college’s Institute of Technology.

It has also brought together business and education, with mentors supporting the development of the concepts from an industry perspective. The mentors include Andy Shaw from Canva, Charlotte Hoffmann from Amazon Logistics Community Operations, and Anthony Martin from Exeter College.

And there is a prestigious panel of judges – Rob Bosworth, Vice Principal and Deputy Chief Executive Officer at Exeter College; Dr Sally Basker, Chief Executive Officer of Exeter Science Park; Ash Roots, Chief Digital Officer at Exeter University and Charlotte Hoffman, Programme Manager at Amazon Logistics Community Operations.

Gary King, Director of Creative Technologies at West Exe School and project lead for the Innovations Competition, said: “I am very excited to see how students tackle one of two very big problems, which are not only global issues currently, but directly affect our local region too; Microplastics in our oceans and sustainable transport links to Plymouth and Exeter. The Ted Wragg Innovation Competition is a fantastic and unique challenge for our students to bring fresh ideas to big problems, which great minds and organisations are also currently attempting to address and develop solutions for on a global scale. Working in this real-world context offers students a chance to stretch their thinking beyond the confines of the curriculum and really bring together all aspects of their learning such as; problem solving, team work/collaboration, the ability to analyse and evaluate, applying knowledge in new situations, calculated risk-taking, entrepreneurial thinking and presentation skills to name but a few.