Dear Parent,
Welcome to the fourth of my weekly updates for parents.
Thank you for continuing to support the school’s provision of online learning. This week will have seen a return to the pattern of pupil work set during the first two weeks of the lockdown period. It is clear from the amount and quality of completed work being returned to teachers that the vast majority of pupils are responding well to the work set.
Thank you for continuing to contact me regarding the provision of online tasks. Your feedback has been very helpful in allowing me to offer the best advice to teachers as to what works best. As a result I have reminded staff of the protocols that seem to be producing the most positive outcomes.
- All work will be set on School Synergy.
- Teachers’ should make it clear how long a piece of work ought to take to complete to a good standard.
- Deadlines for the completion and submission of work will fall within a range of dates rather than fixed for one day.
- Staff have been encouraged to use Credits to reward good quality work and discouraged from using sanctions for a failure to meet deadlines, given the range of challenges faced by different households.
- Work set for years 7, 8 and 9 is likely to change over the coming weeks away from open-ended project type tasks to ones more in-line with those set during a typical lesson.
- Work for years 10 and 12 will continue to follow exam specifications and is therefore of great importance.
We appreciate the range of support that can be offered at home and understand that this will have an impact on the quality and quantity of work that can be completed. Do please take me up on my request from last week to contact us as a matter of urgency if you have no access to a computer/laptop and/or internet connection.
For those pupils who find themselves without enough to do I can point them in the direction of two new national initiatives which have been launched this week.
The National Academy
BBC Bitesize Daily Lessons
Both these web sites offer age specific lessons for almost all subjects and are well worth looking at even if only to revisit and consolidate work studied earlier in the year.
None of us take for granted the pressure that the current arrangements are placing on our pupils, and on you, their parents. Mrs Parkinson (Senior Assistant Head Teacher) is putting the finishing touches to a separate communication to you which will outline some simple measures that can be put in place to ease the stresses and strains of online learning and lockdown. We hope that you will find it useful.
In last week’s Update I made reference to my hope that some resumption of school life would take place before the end of the academic year. I have no further information about when this will be but wanted to reassure you that I have been working with my senior team to model a series of scenarios to ensure that when we do open our doors to pupils that we will be ready to offer a working environment which is medically safe and educationally sound.
With my best wishes.
RD Jones
Headmaster