Weekly Update

Wednesday, 07 October 2020

School Update

Dear Parent/Carer,

I would like to begin this week’s update by praising all isolating students who have been keeping up with their remote learning; we have received fantastic feedback from teachers who are sharing examples of high-quality learning. We celebrate examples of high-quality remote learning in our show case and on our Twitter account.

Secondly, a huge thank you to parents/carers who have been incredibly supportive by ensuring their child is staying at home for the duration of isolation; ensuring their child is completing their remote learning; reading all letters and returning consent forms; moving to ParentPay; sending their child to school in the correct uniform and at the correct time each day. We really do value our strong partnership with parents/carers as we work together to give each child the best care and education possible.

In School

I am pleased to say that school is functioning very well. Staff and students report that the staggered start and end of the day and the separate break and lunch times for each year group are helping to create a very calm atmosphere. The Senior Leadership Team have noticed lessons are very purposeful with teachers delivering high quality carefully sequenced learning and students are settled, working hard, and showing good progress.

We are generally pleased with how students are moving around the school: the vast majority are in good habits of walking in single file on the left and wearing their mask; however, some students do need reminding and we ask that parents/carers support us as we continue to reinforce the message to keep everyone safe.

Positive Covid-19 Case Updates

This week’s summary of current cases is:

• Y11: 2 cases – the whole of Y11 are isolating and will return Tuesday 13^th October
• Y9: 2 cases – 9K and 9H band are isolating and will return Tuesday 13^th October
• Y7: 1 case – 7K band are isolating and will return Tuesday 13^th October

All isolation letters can be found and translated using the orange button on our Covid-19 webpage.

Covid-19 Symptoms

We have seen a significant decrease in the number of students arriving to school with potential Covid-19 symptoms or where the household should be isolating. We have robust systems in place to minimise the risk of students and staff arriving to school when they really should be at home. Clear guidance can be found here and if you have any questions, please contact school before sending your son/daughter in.

Please remember if any member of your household has tested positive or has any of the symptoms, the household should isolate, and you need to contact the school to arrange the date for your child to return to school. The symptoms are:

• A high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature).
• A new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or three or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual).
• A loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything; or things smell or taste different to normal.

Remote Learning

Finally, if your child is required to complete remote learning from home, we do require support from all parents/carers to ensure all work is complete. All remote learning is carefully planned for students to carry on the learning from their last lesson in school; when students return to class, their teachers expect this work to have been completed and to carry on teaching the next sequence of lessons. The central location for each year group’s remote learning instructions for each year group is on the website popup (See below) and a very quick guide to finding the work is here. We can support students with limited ICT facilities at home and recognise that some students require paper copies. Please order work packs via the remote learning website (links below) or contact your child’s year manager if you need support.

Thank you for your continued support.

Yours faithfully,