This event will provide the opportunity to hear about the proposal to merge Ormiston Cliff Park Infant Academy and Ormiston Cliff Park Junior Academy into a single all-through primary school for pupils aged 3–11, from 1 September 2021. It will also provide the opportunity to ask questions. 

What are we proposing?

On 1 December 2018, Cliff Park Infant School and Cliff Park Junior School became part of the Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) family as two separate schools, which was an extremely positive move in providing us with security for our future success. Since that time, we have continued to work closely together, including sharing a reception area, joint teacher training events and a joint local governing body and chair of governors.

We now feel the time is right to embark on the next phase of our journey and we therefore propose merging our infant and junior schools to become a single primary school. In doing so, the junior school would formally close, though the experience for staff and pupils will remain largely the same, and the age range of the infant school would be expanded to 11 years.

On a day-to-day basis there will be no change in provision in either school. The differing needs of each age group will continue to be met. The care and importance given to each individual child, which is a strength of both schools, will always remain paramount. We believe that bringing the schools together is a natural progression to the joint work that has occurred in the last two years. 

It is incredibly important to us that we hear the views of everyone in our community in relation to the plans for one single primary because we want to ensure that any change has our children’s best interests at the heart. A formal consultation period for this will run from Tuesday 12 January until midday on Friday 26 March.

There will be many opportunities for you to share your views, including written feedback, online events and (if Covid-19 restrictions allow) face-to-face stakeholder events. We have created a dedicated consultation website to keep you updated, at www.proposedacademy.co.uk/ocp-primary-merger.