Manchester Academy's Year 11 students celebrated picking up their GCSE grades this morning.

Our former Executive Principal has received an OBE for services to education in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.

It is strange sometimes to remember that the country is in national lockdown as life is so busy at Manchester Academy. I hope we are offering all our students academic challenge and stability during this difficult time and I have been impressed with the way students have responded to schooling in a lockdown.

I hope you are well during this second period of national lockdown? It’s business as usual in Manchester Academy although last week, on Thursday and Friday, we put into operation a slightly changed timetable model to make sure that student bubbles are separated.

England has returned to a national lockdown but there is a key difference this time – schools, including Manchester Academy, remain fully open.

We have made it to the end of a long half-term, and I want to praise our students for their stamina in completing an eight-week half-term after many of them had not been in school for a long time due to lockdown.

This week we have been interviewing for the senior student leaders in Year 11, we had over 60 applications from the year group which is incredible.

Our new Head Boy/Girl, Deputy Head Boy/Girl and Prefects for the 2020-21 academic year have been finalised.

Martin Luther King said about leadership, “The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand in times of challenge and controversy.”

Schools are complex at the moment – one-way systems, group bubbles, split breaks/lunches and arrivals – yet Manchester Academy students have taken these challenges in their stride and coped brilliantly with the demands of the new term.