22nd May 2020

Dear Parents and carers,

We are continuing to work on our provision for remote learning. The Q&A sessions are going well though attendance is not as high as I would have liked. Perhaps they will pick up a little bit as students get used to them. It was also good to see assemblies posted on You Tube for Years 7-10 this week. If you children haven’t watched those, please encourage them to do so.

Our main area of work has been to prepare for re-opening the school in a limited way after half term. We have greatly increased the capacity of our provision for vulnerable children and the children of key workers, going from less than five this week to nearly fifty after half term, as more parents return to work. We are also well advanced in our plans for Year 10, beginning from 8th June. In order to brief staff before we re-open for Year 10, we will be holding a staff training day on Friday 5th June. On that day we won’t be setting any work or running any Q&A sessions.

To give you a brief outline, we are hoping to invite Year 10 to come to school in small groups for one day a week. We will split the year into quarters and then each quarter into groups of half a class. Each quarter year will attend one day a week, on the same day each week. They will have lessons in English, maths, science and either history or geography. We are working on systems to keep those small groups of up to 15 students isolated from other groups.  We are still expecting some more specific government guidance and there is still the potential for that guidance to turn all of our plans on their heads. With that in mind, I will aim to send to parents and carers of Year 10 students a detailed plan on or Monday 1st June, giving them a full week to digest it and make any preparations they need to.

Another job on my desk today is to write a message to go in the Year 11 Yearbook. We’ve all been trying our best to adjust to the new situation we find ourselves in, but that task has reminded me of all that we are missing at the moment. I hope that you and your children are well. I am looking forward to the day when we can welcome them all back and get back on with normal life.

Have a good half term,

Andy Hunter