Daily update 31st March 2020 – I hope you are all remaining well.

Safeguarding and Child Protection
We have written an annex to our safeguarding and child protection policy in order to take account of the current circumstances. This is also available to view on our website. Please read it carefully as it explains in detail our procedures at this unusual time and also has useful information about mental health support and services. If you are at all concerned about any child please use the numbers available in this annex to contact someone.

Easter holidays
Having been communicating with the small number of families who have needed to access the in-school provision at this time we are aware that there is a need to continue this provision throughout the Easter holidays. We will therefore be remaining open over the Easter holidays to support the families of keyworkers and those children who are vulnerable; this will include the bank holidays. This provision will look very different to a normal school day and we will speak with the families concerned about what this provision will look like for their children.

Those students in Years 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12 who have been working at home will not be set work by their teachers during the Easter holidays. We are awaiting information about the awarding of qualifications ‘mid-week’ so, depending on that information, we might ask students in Year 11 and Year 13 to continue to complete work in specific subjects. I will let you know this information when I can. Whilst we believe that it is important for students to be able to relax during the Easter holidays, the current situation means that many families won’t have the same Easter holidays as they are used to or what had been planned and would welcome something meaningful to do and some structure and routine to the days. We have therefore created some ‘challenge’ tasks which we will send out tomorrow, which are not compulsory to complete but might support you over the holidays with different activities to do, as individuals or as families.

Review of home learning
A survey has been created to seek your views on our home learning provision which we will send out via the students tomorrow. We have received lots of feedback already but we would like to get as many views as possible so that we can make any helpful adjustments over the Easter holidays, for a better system after Easter, should we find that the school must remain closed for longer. We would like you to complete this with your child(ren) so that we get a joined up response from families. More information on this tomorrow.

Thank you for your lovely messages, they are keeping the staff buoyant too.

With very best wishes,

Jo Tunnicliffe
Headteacher