Dear all,

As you may have seen, on Sunday the Prime Minister announced that secondary schools should give Year 10 and Year 12 students the opportunity “to supplement remote education with some face to face support”. I’d hoped that in today’s update, I’d be able to share our plan for this.

Unfortunately, the government have still not released their guidelines for how schools should do this. I’ll therefore stick to what we do know:

• We hope to offer a limited provision for Year 10 and 12 from 1^st June. I hope that this will include teaching in some core subjects, with the remainder taught online.  
• We will continue our current provision for children who are unable to stay at home because their parents are key workers.
• We will not penalise parents who choose not to send their children in.
• All children and staff onsite will be expected to follow extremely strict social distancing and hygiene rules.
• We will only be extending our provision if we are confident it is safe for both students and staff
• Once the government guidelines are released, I will write to Year 10 and 12 parents with further information; in the meantime, thank you for your patience.  

What is clear is that we do not expect a return to normal teaching for some time. Even in Year 10 and 12, at least some lessons will remain online. It is therefore more important than ever that students continue to work hard on Google Classroom.

I was therefore delighted to see that this week has been our best online week yet, with record numbers of lessons being completed. Postcards are on the way to congratulate the students who’ve been producing the best work!

We’re also doing our best to keep you up to speed with your child’s learning and our LSAs have been making lots of phone calls to update you. One message I’d like to stress is the importance of students entering the correct email address in each exit tickets – if they don’t type this correctly, their work doesn’t get sent on to us and we can’t see they’ve completed their lesson! Next week, we’ll be sending some very brief reports home which will allow you to see how many lessons your child has completed this half term. As always, I’m very grateful for your support in making sure your children can continue to make great progress at home.

With best wishes,

Patrick Farmbrough

Headteacher