Exciting news — next week is our King Ethelbert School Careers Week 2021!! We will be starting with our launch of the KES Virtual Careers Fair, followed by focus days which will include learning about university, subject-specific careers and apprenticeships.
Plan for the week:
Monday 8th February
Launch of our KES Virtual Careers Fair to ALL year groups.
This has been developed by EBP (East Kent Business Partnership) who we work closely with.
Over40 businesses and higher education institutions have contributed to this platform.
Students will be sent the login details, please support your child with accessing and browsing the platform. This platform will be available to use for 5 days until 12th February (24 hours a day).
Year 9 are now able to start exploring the options for subjects they can study for KS4. Our staff have worked really hard to set up a site containing all of the information you’ll need, please hit the link below to take a look!
I wrote to you recently to share the Ofqual consultation on the grades that year 11 will receive. The results of this consultation are not yet published but it is clear that the intention is to allow the maximum time possible for year 11 students to complete work and make the best possible progress. With this in mind, we have collated a bespoke report for Y11, adapted to report on progress and remote learning as opposed to detailed anticipated grades at this stage, to allow students to complete as much assessment evidence as possible in the remaining time, which will help inform their grade.
This will report on:
attendance to remote lessons
engagement in remote lessons
completion of remote learning work/tasks
quality of remote learning work submitted
Each of these will be graded on our usual 4 – 1 scale and criteria for these will be communicated with the report. This will be sent out to parents/carers via MyEd on Thursday 11th February for you to read and digest over the half term break.
We would usually look forward to welcoming parents and students into school, at this time to meet with subject teachers and discuss progress but clearly the current exceptional circumstances do not allow for this. Instead, we would like to offer year 11 parents and students the opportunity to talk to subject teachers by telephone. These calls will take place over the first 2 weeks of term 4, beginning Tuesday 23rd February. Your child’s teachers will be coordinating these calls around their live remote lessons and meeting commitments so we will be asking parents to indicate which subjects you would like to speak to and your availability, am or pm. This will help us to streamline calls a little and we will do our best to respond to all requests. As with a usual consultation event, please be aware that we need to keep these calls to 10 minutes to allow staff to meet all appointment requests. A reply slip to capture these requests will be with your child’s report and we ask that you complete and return this via MyEd by 9am Monday 22nd February.
The key message to year 11 at this stage is to stay positive and use the remaining time well to ensure they have completed all work, tasks and assessments set by their teachers. We do not yet know the outcome of the consultation of the specifics of how grades will be decided but the best thing students can be doing is engaging in lessons and completing tasks set to the best of their ability. Once again, I commend the majority of students who are already engaging well in lessons and working hard. It really is the toughest times for young people and our year 11 students have shown strength, maturity and determination, as well as a kindness to others and human spirit beyond their years. We will continue to do all that we can to support students and parents through these challenges — do keep in touch with us about anything that is worrying you.
