Headteacher’s Letter – 26/02/21
26th February 2021
Dear parents and carers,
We hope your families are safe and well.
It has been a busy week of announcements so I thought I would take this opportunity to write to tell you of our plans around the return of students and examinations.
The government announcement on Monday outlined that students will start to return to school from 8th March. We are excited to be welcoming our students back and are eager to continue the good work that has been going on in live lessons during lockdown. This return will be staggered to allow for the testing of students to identify anyone who may be suffering from coronavirus.
As you will have heard in the news, students returning to school will be offered the chance to have a lateral flow test for coronavirus. This nationwide plan is in place to identify any asymptomatic sufferers of COVID-19 and help prevent the spread of the virus in the school community. Students will be offered three tests on site that will be staggered over a period of time. Each year group will be tested just before or on their return to school and will be told when their second and third tests are. After this point, all students will be provided with home testing kits to allow twice weekly testing at home. Students will be supported in this both on site and in preparation for home testing to make sure they are confident in how to carry out these tests. In order for students to be tested, we require the consent of parents. You should have received from us a consent form (https://forms.gle/77G7AqRFVNKfGPJ66) and we ask that you return this to us by Sunday 28th February (completing one entry per student) to let us know if you do or do not consent for your child to participate in the lateral flow testing. Once we have these completed consent forms, we will be able to write to you next week giving details of the return date and timings of the day for each year group. For further information regarding the arrangement for testing, please see the NHS information letter attached.
To support students and families with their return to school, students will have a virtual year assembly and tutor time next Friday 5th March. This will start at 9am and students will login to their virtual form classes for this. This session should finish at around 10.30am. There will be no live lessons for the remainder of the day and students will have work set to complete in their Google Classrooms. Staff will be on site preparing classrooms and planning for the return to face-to-face learning.
When students return to school, we will be working in year bubbles as we did in the winter term. Students will follow the routines they followed in the first term and tutors will go over all these details next Friday in their virtual tutor time.
All students have now had their blazers updated with the new school name and Year 7s have collected these. All students are expected to wear full, correct uniform from Monday 8th March onwards. If students have not had their badges changed or have not collected their uniform, they can organise this with their tutor/Head of Year on their return. As with the winter term, students will need to wear their PE kits for the whole day on days where they have PE.
Yesterday, the Department for Education announced how they would like schools to work in reaching Teacher Assessed Grades for their students who would have been taking exams in the summer. We have already been working on our approach to assessments that will be happening in the coming weeks and we will be writing next week, in detail, to all families of students who will be having assessments linked to Teacher Assessed Grades this year.
I will be writing to you again early next week with more specific details about the return to school.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Woods
Headteacher