December 3rd 2021

                                                          

Dear Parents / Guardians

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

Next week, we will be asking teachers and associates to nominate students for consistent completion to their personal best standard of class and homework assignments. We hope to award and send out a large number of Commendations before Christmas. So please do encourage your daughters and sons to target those teacher and associate 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 have written separately 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 170 students and 9 members of staff test positive for COVID-19 – that is 24 students and 1 member of staff this week. 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 update you once weekly 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, 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 in respect of uniform we may send students home and / or confiscate items, then requesting parents attend school by appointment to pick them up.

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

Sonette Schwartz                                                                                    Charles Joseph

Executive Principal                                                                                          Principal