Transition to SBL Academy 

Tutor Groups and the House System

When students arrive at Secondary School they are placed into Tutor Groups.  Each tutor group is assigned to one of our 4 house teams; Atlas, Callisto, Europa or Titan.  Each House has it’s own identity and house colour which is highlighted by coloured stripes on the house tie.  A Head of House leads each Tutor Team, monitoring the progress of students and initiating support where necessary.

Students will spend the first 20 minutes of each morning with their Tutor and Tutor group.  They will also attend some lessons with their tutor group.  

Tutor groups at SBL are carefully constructed and decisions are made in order to maximise learning outcomes for students.  We will do our best to ensure that your child is placed with at least one other student that they know, however this can never be guaranteed.

In order to contribute to this process we ask parents/carers to give the names of three children that your child knows and would feel comfortable working with.  These names will not be treated in preference order.   

The Data Collection Form allows you to provide us with this key information.

What can you do to help your child settle in to a new school?

We encourage students to view moving to secondary school as a time to meet new people and make new friends.  In September we will welcome students from approximately twenty different Primary Schools and this year we have a number of children who will be the only child coming from their Primary School.  We will pair these students carefully looking at their talents and interests. 

In order to support your child to make the move to a new school you can:

It may be that your son or daughter is the only child coming from a primary school, or is in a school where a very small number are transferring to SBL.  If this is the case, please do your best to indicate names of children we could pair your child with.  

Some students have older siblings at Sir Bernard Lovell Academy.  We do take this in to account when placing students into Houses.  Sometimes we may have to place a Year 7 student into a different house to an older sibling in order to maintain a ‘friendship’ pairing.