March 24^th 2020

Dear Parents

 

Today teachers started to send classes information about work to undertake over Google Classrooms and any necessary materials to use during and outside sessions, via the school email system. Google Classrooms allows us to set work and deadlines for students.

The only generalized issue we encountered with this today is that some messages from Google Classrooms can find their way into the Junk Folder. Please therefore ask your daughter or son to check their Junk Folder regularly.

Please find guides on the website under the information heading and then key information.

Please ensure you download and save a copy of these documents, in case internet becomes slower and less reliable.

We will continue to scale up our use of Google Classrooms during this week.

Wednesday, March 25^th Periods 1 – 3.

Thursday, March 26^th Periods 1 – 4

Friday, March 27^th Periods 1 – 5

While we are scaling up our use of Google Classrooms we request that students in Years 7 – 10 follow their normal timetable as closely as possible in the lessons where work is not yet set on Google Classrooms by making full use of the E resources available for each subject and ensuring they have passwords set up in each subject. Students in Year 12 should access materials for their A level subjects in Student Resources.

We provided links to the key documents to support with this in our letter of last Friday and again Monday. Please do check back, download and also save these if you have not done so already.

Students may email questions to teachers between 9am and 3pm. Teachers and may sometimes reply via a class email if they judge this is helpful to more students. They will also do so in school hours, so answers may be delayed by a day or over a weekend.

Those students who rise best to the challenge of maintaining a regular daily routine and good study habits will, we are absolutely certain, perform best whenever we are able to resume ‘normal’ provision. We are sure you will do all you can to ensure your child(ren) maintain good and regular study habits – we will too.

This will help them start their home learning journey and keep them safe. As children spend more time on line they may become more vulnerable and we are today providing you with a useful link to promote conversations between parents and children about Online Safety:

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

 

Last night’s address by the Prime Minister leads us to reiterate the following from Gov.UK: 

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.

Gov.UK Guidance further signals that children of 12 and above can generally remain at home alone in the family home, whilst parents are at work. The full guidance may be viewed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers

Government has stated GCSE and A level examinations will not take place this summer but they will ensure students receive their examination results.  There are a lot of ‘maybes’ appearing in the media about this but once the Government’s proposals around this are published we will let you know.

We will contact you again about student Home Learning at the end of the school day tomorrow, Wednesday, March 25^th.

Thereafter, we will reduce our level of contact with you via daily letter but of course let you know whenever we have firm information to pass to you.

Thank you all for your continued support.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Sonette Schwartz                                                                                                               Charles Joseph