Dear Parent/Carer,
The welcome return of our students to school has been underway today for Year 11, 12 and 13. The staff have been very much looking forward to seeing our students back in school and getting on with face-to-face learning. It was brilliant to see our students arriving this morning smiling, eager and ready to get back to work into the classroom with their teachers. Ensuring the safety of everyone during the return to school has been a key focus of the planning and I am pleased to say that the return has gone extremely smoothly and been very successful. Of course, until we have access to the entire building, students will be in year group bases for all, or the vast majority, of their learning. We are trying to facilitate practical lessons as best as we can, when we can, but there will inevitably be some compromises. We are working hard to mitigate these issues wherever we can.
I can confirm that the return of Year 10 on Monday 20th November will take place as planned. Year 10 will be based in the English area where they normally have registration. Teachers will come to students for their lessons. Our Year 10 students need to gather outside the front of the building at 8.20am. Staff will be around to direct them and supervise them. In a slight change to the previous plan, they will enter the building through the main street English side entrance and proceed to their English form rooms. We are all really looking forward to welcoming our Year 10 students back on Monday!
I am very conscious of the fact that we need to return face-to-face contact with our Key Stage 3 students as soon as practically possible. Their return is the main focus of our current planning. I am also now in a position to confirm the plan for the return of Year 7, 8 and 9 students to school. Until we get access to the entire building, it will not be possible to return more than one Key Stage 3 year group safely to the building at any one time. Therefore, we will be establishing a temporary rota to return each year group on a rolling programme until we can get access to the entire building. We will need students in the following year groups to report for school on the dates shown. On the days that students are not in school, remote learning will continue and there are further details about remote learning later in this letter.
- Wednesday 22nd November – Year 7 in school
- Thursday 23rd November – Year 9 in school
- Friday 24th November – Year 8 in school
- Monday 27th November – Year 7 in school
- Tuesday 28th November – Year 8 in school
- Wednesday 29th November – Year 9 in school
We are aiming to have the whole school back in the building together as soon as possible after this last rotation. I will of course update parents further in my communications next week.
Remote Learning
As Key Stage 3 students start to attend school on the days detailed above we are making our best efforts to maintain the live lesson provision of approximately 10 live lessons each week around this: 2 in the Core Subjects (Maths, English and Science) and one in the Foundation subjects (Geography, History and Languages). This will mean that there should be more live lessons daily for students, especially during the week commencing 27th November which, alongside narrated PowerPoints assigned to students via Frog, will complement the student's face to face in school provision. A revised timetable of Live lessons for Years 7-9 will be shared via the students' email to allow students to plan their time out effectively. If there are any technical issues, to ensure that students don't miss out on content, the teachers will continue to share the resources when they send out the Live Lesson link and, in many cases, share the recording of the session in the next assignment so students can access it. Logistically this is quite a challenge as more staff are teaching Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5 students physically in school so it might be that some lessons will start during our usual Period 7 slot (2.45 pm) which might be unavoidable due to the complexities of timetabling the sessions.
Vulnerable provision
We were able to welcome back a number key students from Year 7, 8, 9 and 10 today as part of our vulnerable provision. Students were grateful to be back to school and enjoyed engaging with the remote learning offer in school. We are hoping to offer some more places within the vulnerable provision to some further key students next week.
Welfare calls
Pastoral staff have been in contact home to a number of students from their year groups and making sure that they can access their work as well as checking on their welfare. These calls will continue for the next week but the pastoral teams will try to contact all the students from their year groups.
Thank you again for your patience and understanding.
Yours sincerely,
STEVE CAMPBELL
PRINCIPAL