The consensus of opinion from our recent consultation with parents and students was two-thirds in favour of changing the length of the school day.  We will therefore be going ahead with the changes from September 2022.

This means that we will re-arrange the school day to finish at 3.30pm from Monday through to Thursday and will continue to finish at 2.30pm on Fridays. The school day from Monday to Thursday will be shortened by reducing morning form time to 25 minutes, shortening lunchtime to 45 minutes everyday and removing the 10 minute ‘break’ between period 6 and 7.

As outlined in our consultation, the advantages of doing this include:

• More productive use of staff and students time in the school day
• Improved staff wellbeing, retention and recruitment
• Continuing Period 7 whilst finishing at a comparable time to other schools
• More time for students to participate in independent study/other activities after school

In addition I would like to address some common questions raised during the consultation:

• Period 7 will remain a key part of our KWS curriculum, running from 3.00pm to 3.30pm Monday to Thursday.
• Students participating in Body options for P7 which require changing into PE kit, will have the option to do so at lunchtime.
• We are currently not using the full serving capacity of our food hall. We have three additional serving hatches which we will use as student numbers increase, along with other potential options to add more capacity, eg. pods in other areas of the site, as used by many other local secondary schools. We will also increase the number of till points in the main serving area.
• We appreciate that the change will cause issues for a handful of families that collect siblings from local primary schools before collecting students from KWS. We would like to reassure you that the school buildings will continue to remain open until at least 5pm and that students can make use of the supervised library facilities to do academic work until at least 4pm.

We have spoken to Herts County Council who will be factoring in the changes to transport, as they commission and co-ordinate external bus services for the next academic year.  We hope to be able to distribute new bus timetables by the time we break for the summer holidays in July.

These changes will commence from 1st September 2022 and we would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who took the time to respond to the consultation.

Tony Smith

Headteacher

The Term Dates for the 2022/23 Academic Year have now been published on the website – Click Here

We are consulting on changes to our admission arrangements for September 2023-August 2024. 

These changes are to accommodate advice from Hertfordshire  County  Council on the definition and explanation for home address where two applications are received for the same child in our Admissions Criteria for 2023/24. The revised wording to be included in our document will come under the ‘Distance Measuring and Home Address’ heading on the sixth and seventh page of our Criteria. 

The Admissions Committee in agreement with Katherine Warington School’s Board of Trustees have considered this proposal and in consultation with HCC have formulated new admissions criteria to take effect from September 2023.  A copy of the proposed criteria is available on the school website.

The key changes to our admissions criteria are:

Distance Measuring and Home Addresses

The address provided must be the child’s current permanent address at the time of application.

• “At the time of application” means the closing date for applications.
• “Permanent” means that the child has lived at that address for at least a year.  Where a family has not lived at an address for a year, they must be able to demonstrate that they own the property or have a tenancy agreement for a minimum of 12 months and the child must be resident in the property at the time of application.

The application can only be processed using one address. If a child lives at more than one address (for example due to a separation) the address used will be the one which the child lives at for the majority of the time. If a child lives at two addresses equally, the address of the parent/carer that claims Child Benefit/Child Tax Credit will be considered as the child’s main residence.

If a family is not in receipt of Child Benefit/Tax Credit alternative documentation will be requested.

If a child’s residence is in dispute, parents/carers should provide court documentation to evidence the address that should be used for admission allocation purposes.

If two different applications are received for the same child from the same address, eg containing  different preferences, the application from the parent in receipt of Child Benefit will be processed if the applications cannot be reconciled.

We welcome your comments prior to the close of consultation so that our decision fully embraces the wishes of the school community. 

Should you wish to respond to this consultation, please do so in writing to Mrs R Robertson, Governance Professional, by 9.00am on Friday 10 December 2021 (r.robertson@kwschool.co.uk). We will not be able to acknowledge or respond individually to your comments but they will be taken into account. 

At the end of the period of consultation, i.e. Friday 10 December 2021, the Admissions Committee of the Board of Trustees will meet to consider any responses and prepare a report and recommendation to the Board of Trustees who will determine the admissions criteria for September 2023 -August 2024 by 28 February 2022.

KWS Admissions 2023-24 (1)