November 24th 2021

                                                          

Dear Parents / Guardians

 

Thank you for all your support of your children and us.

At the end of last half-term we sent out 426 commendations to students, who had worked well and been nominated by their teachers for consistent completion to their personal best standard of class and homework assignments. We hope to award and send out even more Commendations before Christmas, so please do encourage your daughters and sons to target those teacher nominations through their hard work.

Teachers are currently offering 34 lunchtime clubs over the school week, and we would like all students to sign up for one club. Please encourage your daughter or son to sign up and attend: Lunchtime Clubs 2021 / 2022

Since September we have resumed some Sports’ fixtures with other schools along with trips in our beautiful local area. From January, we aim to return to offering on site after school revision sessions to Years 11 & 13 students but want the maximum number of students to access the Live Online sessions with their teachers in the meantime. We are also hoping to resume some public performances with limited audience size and extensive COVID-19 precautions in place, as we go forward.

We would like to remind you that students will be learning remotely on Friday, December 17th with work set in Google Classroom for all students. Students should stick to their normal timetable and work on those tasks through the day and submit all work at the end of the day. Teachers will also set Homework Assignments in Google Classroom as per the Homework Timetable. No online live lessons will take place with teachers. No student should attend school on Friday, December 17th. We will be writing separately next week to parents of Year 7 students about booking of appointments for the Year 7 Parents’ Consultation Day on Friday, December 17th.

Since we returned in September we have had 135 students and 8 members of staff test positive for COVID-19. Many of the students have been asymptomatic and identified by in school or home testing. Where we have positive cases in a class we often retest the class on the following day. Going forward, we will provide you with a once weekly update on positive cases and maintain our current testing regime until the end of the February half-term. 

We hear with concern of high numbers of cases in some Kent schools and request that students wear masks from here on out, in order to support us to continue to operate normally. This is particularly important in classrooms and indoor spaces where social distancing is simply not possible. Otherwise, we continue to operate all precautions we announced to you via our letter of Letter of September 2^nd – Arrangements for September and Beyond

We would like to remind parents and students that mobile phones should be turned off and in the bottoms of bags during Tutor time and lessons. Students must not use mobile phones before break or lunch when use will be permitted. This means that mobile phones should remain in students’ bags when moving between lessons. Students must not wear or carry headphones or ear pods in school at any time. Students must only wear a black or dark blue waterproof – non leather – coat. Where students do not meet our clear expectations we may confiscate the items and request parents attend school by appointment to pick them up.

Yours Sincerely,

 

Sonette Schwartz                                                                                    Charles Joseph

Executive Principal                                                                                          Principal