Ormiston Park Academy Win Big at National Awards Night

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Ormiston Park Academy in Aveley scooped three top prizes at the annual Ormiston Academies Trust Awards. Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) is one of the largest not-for-profit multi-academy trusts in England. Multi-academy trusts are charities that run schools to give local children a great education. OAT educate over 30,000 pupils across six English regions, in 32 secondary schools, seven primary schools and one special school. The awards are highly contested each year with hundreds of nominations being received by OAT.
We are extremely proud of our amazing staff and student winners to have beaten so many to be awarded the best of the best. The successful recipients were:

Ormiston Park Academy in Aveley scooped three top prizes at the annual Ormiston Academies Trust Awards.   Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) is one of the largest not-for-profit multi-academy trusts in England. Multi-academy trusts are charities that run schools to give local children a great education. OAT educate over 30,000 pupils across six English regions, in 32 secondary schools, seven primary schools and one special school.  The awards are highly contested each year with hundreds of nominations being received by OAT. 

We are extremely proud of our amazing staff and student winners to have beaten so many to be awarded the best of the best.  The successful recipients were:

• Sylvia Stavreva (Year 10) – Winner – Covid-19 Response Champion – Remote Learning Superstar Award
• Florin Nicorici (Head of Year 9) – Winner – Enrichment Champion – Looking Beyond Covid-19 Award
• Oluwatomilola Olowookere (Year 11) – Runner Up – #iwill Pupil Social Action Award

Our winners received a box of goodies along with their trophies and certificates and were invited to the virtual awards evening where their efforts were recognised through video nominations.

Read their nominations below:

Nomination for Sylvia Stavreva

During Covid it would have been easy not to engage with education, or to simply follow instructions and complete only the required work. As a school, we were fortunate that many students worked incredibly hard during lockdown. However, one student stood out amongst others. Not only did Sylvia show exemplary independence during lockdown, producing work of an exceptionally high quality, she undertook her own independent learning, researching further information around subject areas so that her knowledge and understanding surpassed the material taught. Alongside this, during some lessons, Sylvia helped out small groups of students who were struggling, using break-out rooms to help with their understanding. This had an extremely positive impact on those students and helped them to make progress. This has continued since being back, with Sylvia working as a mentor and helping students in class. Alongside this, Sylvia has helped Teachers with on-line Year 6 meetings, talking to parents about the school community and showing complete commitment to studies and extra-curricular work on-line during the pandemic. Attendance and contributions in class was exemplary and she was a credit to every subject she studies.

Nomination for Florin Nicorici

Florin Nicorici  ‘FLO’ is the definition of an enrichment champion in OPA, he lives and breathes enrichment and is always striving to offer exciting opportunities for our students to participate in. FLO is always on the go. OPA didn’t want clubs and extracurricular activities to stop entirely during the pandemic, we did our best to run a limited timetable and extracurricular activities that could be carried out safely and followed guidelines continued, that was partly down to FLO’s passion and commitment.  FLO is always planning the next activity, driving the minibus to take our students to the next learning experience beyond the classroom walls.  His enthusiasm is infectious, that enthusiasm transfers onto students and staff. FLO leads various extracurricular activities himself, these include Boxing, Cooking and Chess clubs, He also leads the CCF in OPA. The Combined Cadet Force is a youth organisation in the United Kingdom, sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, which operates in our academy and is highly successful, FLO challenges his group of 30+ cadets every week. FLO who is Head of year 9 has recently embarked on a huge challenge, he has signed his entire year group up to participate in the DofE this year. This is a highly ambitious challenge that will offer our students a life-changing experience, an opportunity to discover new interests and talents. The DofE is a recognised mark of achievement; respected by employers. FLO knows how important going the extra mile for our students is and how important enrichment and learning outside of the classroom is, this is why his day never finishes at 3pm, FLO works most evenings and gives up so much of his own  time at the weekends to support the students of OPA,  and he always does so with a smile on his face and is always happy to be there. OPA are proud to call FLO our true enrichment champion.

Nomination for Oluwatomilola Olowookere

Tomi, through her unwavering enthusiasm, commitment and ideas, made an enormous contribution to the school’s iWill project to fundraise and build a library last year. She participated and organised many fundraising events such as a TA for a day scheme (when students supported staff in lessons for a contribution to the library), appealed successfully to the wider community for book donations and contacted a whole range of commercial and charitable organisations (setting up a pseudo-office in a member of staff’s room to field calls). She also galvanised and inspired members of the team with her passion and subsequently other students, particularly in years 8 and 9, began to emulate her confidence and professional demeanour. It was also satisfying to see the sense of accomplishment in the whole iWill team when the library was completed. As the school did not have a library prior to iWill, I am confident that the impact of Tomi’s (and the other members of the iWill team’s) hard work and commitment will be felt across the generations at OPA and am grateful for the opportunity, as the school’s iWill lead, to recognise the enormous efforts of Tomi and her fellow participants.

Sabine, in her role as Accelerated Reader co-ordinator (and de facto librarian) made an immeasurable contribution, through her day to day running of the new iWill-funded library this year and her own incredible efforts to put books in the hands of students during the first lockdown, to social action in the Academy and the wider community. Sabine has been in charge of the school’s Accelerated Reader and reading intervention programme for the last 4 years. The scheme started as a handful of bookshelves in the English department and has expanded, most notably with the injection of £17,000 from iWill, to a fully-fledged well-stocked library that caters for all students with plans to widen access to the community at large (whose public library was closed two years ago). Furthermore, using the books she has accrued over the years from various sources and from iWill donations, Sabine decided that during the first lockdown students needed books. Therefore, with incredible selflessness and determination, she regularly spoke to parents about reading, arranged for safe picking up and dropping off of books and facilitated the sitting of AR quizzes online. I have no doubt that Sabine’s actions before, during and after lockdown have made an incalculable contribution to the school and the wider community and as such I am delighted to nominate her as the staff member who has best embodied the concept of social action in the last year.