September 25th 2020

Dear Parents/ Guardians

Thank you for your support of your child and us since our return to school. The students continue to settle well to their new school environment and we continue to be happy to see them back in school.

We hope you have already activated the Google Classroom Guardian feature to receive a weekly summary of work set each Friday. Please use your Guardian Summary to enable you to ensure any necessary catching-up is done over the weekend.

We are aware that some families’ financial circumstances have changed due to Covid-19. There is support available, so if this is the case for you please see our

Free School Meals and Links to Information about other possible Financial Support Letter

All staff are working hard to identify and address any learning loss amongst students, though this learning loss has been minimised by the efforts of very many students and their families during lockdown.

Our decisions prior to the summer to prioritise the delivery of a full secondary curriculum in specialist spaces for all our students ensures an interesting and varied daily learning experience for students, who as a result are navigating with good humour a range of one way systems round the beautiful patchwork of buildings which is Brockhill! The students are to be commended for their adaptability!

However, school leaders on arrival to school in the mornings are finding inboxes overwhelmed by the volume of email correspondence or telephone messages from a very small number of parents requesting urgent information, explanation and frequently demanding immediate contact about a range of matters over which we have either no control, little knowledge or have already provided the relevant information.

This is simply not sustainable: replying to all this correspondence – again we stress from a very small minority of parents – is both draining and now getting in the way of implementation of our Covid 19 recovery plan and ensuring the smooth running of the school for the whole school community.

It is quite natural in a community of 1400 students that their families will hold a range of views and needs, but it is simply not fair to the whole school community for such a very small number of parents to expect to monopolise so much of school leaders’ and staff time on a regular or daily basis.

As we head into what may be a challenging autumn and then winter we and all the staff need to devote our full attention to doing the very best for all the students in our care on a site and in a setting, which we know very well.

With your support, trust and the space and time to do so we will take the best possible decisions to ensure this school year is as successful as it can possibly be for all our students.

Yours Sincerely,

Sonette Schwartz

Principal

 

Charles Joseph

Senior Vice Principal