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Letter to parents 20th March
March 20th 2020
Dear Parents
For some time we have been planning steps we would take to support students and their parents in the event of closure or partial closure. Today we are providing initial information to parents, whose children or indeed families are self-isolating and / or will not be attending from next week in respect of how we will support students learning during their absence from school.
Today, we attach key documents to begin the task of supporting your child with their learning at home. These documents can also be found under Key Information on the schools website.
1. Accessing email and Unify Portal (student resources)
2. SIMS student App
3. SIMS Parent App
4. Key E Resources
On Monday, we request that students in Years 7 – 10 follow their normal timetable as closely as possible by making full use of the E resources available for each subject and ensuring they have passwords set up in each subject. This will help them start their home learning journey and keep them safe. Students in Year 12 should access materials for their A level subjects in Student Resources.
From Tuesday, teachers will also be sending classes information about work to undertake and any necessary materials during and outside sessions via the school email system.
Teachers will be preparing for this on Monday and we will provide you with further information about this on Monday evening but lessons that we have been able to draw from other countries suggest strongly that we should not rely on all students being able to go on line, access ‘live’ lessons and / or download large amounts of information simultaneously.
Clearly, this is a first for us and we have prepared our systems quickly. However, I am confident they will support our students as well as is possible in these circumstances.
Those who rise best to this challenge will, I am absolutely certain, perform best whenever we are able to resume ‘normal’ provision. I am sure you will do all you can to ensure they maintain good and regular study habits – we will too.
For all our information we refer to the Government guidance for educational settings and will continue to do so following partial closure.
From Monday next week we will offer provision for children of key workers and students who may be vulnerable.
The Government’s list of key workers has now been defined and is readily available on line. Guidance in respect of educational settings remaining open has also been further clarified an extract of which appears below:
And the most recent scientific advice on how to further limit the spread of COVID-19 is clear. If children can stay safely at home, they should, to limit the chance of the virus spreading. That is why the government has asked parents to keep their children at home, wherever possible, and asked schools to remain open only for those children who absolutely need to attend.
The full guidance may be viewed here:
Those students for whom we received a completed participation form today may attend on Monday morning as per our letter of yesterday, Thursday March 19th.
As far as we know from checking with the Bus companies timetables will run normally next week with the exception of Crosskeys Bus D, details of which we will send separately.
We will contact you with further details about student Home Learning at the end of the school day next Monday March 23rd.
Thank you all for your continued support.
Yours sincerely
Sonette Schwartz Charles Joseph
Principal Senior Vice Principal
