It has been a shorter week with the Bank Holiday. I hope everyone had a good long weekend. That does not mean we have not been busy here at WBCA.

The senior staff got together last Friday night for a team building escape room followed by a long strategy session over dinner. This was a fantastic chance for us all to talk about the opportunities we want to offer students at the Academy. Fortunately we were able to escape.

We now have the welcome packs being printed. We are really pleased with them, they come in at a 40 page A4 welcome booklet as well as a series of forms for you to complete. The booklet is divided into three sections; Getting Ready; Life at WBCA and Getting Involved. We hope it will be a really comprehensive guide to starting at the Academy and they should arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday next week. If you have not received one by the Friday, let us know.

This booklet has seen us put key dates throughout the year from everything from Sports Day to Parents Evenings. We have spent a lot of time calendaring so you have as much notice as possible of our events.

Away from the welcome packs we had a short site visit on Thursday in the pouring rain, the weather has stopped some trades operating this week but we can see, in the attached photo, that they have started to put the undercoat of the final finish on the outside of the building. We have also been told that we should have a full sample classroom operational by the start of June and it will be great to see it with carpets, ceiling tiles, painted and finished.

We also visited the Bethel Centre to discuss arrangements for our induction day and Sandwell College who are open to a partnership with us to use some of their excellent facilities next year.

Interviews are continuing, with all remaining non teaching jobs being advertised in the next week or so. There are a large number of interviews for the final teaching posts scheduled over the next week and a half.

Added to the above we have our policies ready to send to Ofsted, a master procurement list ready for our furniture tender, insurance being arranged, gas being connected, our SIMS management system ready to receive students details, phone systems being arranged, reading software ordered and dozens of other areas of progress to get us up and running.

I wish you all a good weekend.

George Faux

Principal