T3 Letter

Details

Cre­ated: Thurs­day, 07 Jan­u­ary 2021 12:13

Writ­ten by V Har­rop

6^th Jan­u­ary 2021

Dear Par­ents and Carers

I had not antic­i­pated writ­ing to you with another change and update quite so soon!

You will have seen the news and heard the lat­est announce­ment about school clo­sure and the move to remote learn­ing for all stu­dents for term 3. We are so frus­trated for our young peo­ple that, yet again, they have a huge dis­rup­tion to their learn­ing and edu­ca­tion but it seems that the lat­est news is unavoid­able. Fol­low­ing this announce­ment about National lock­down and school clo­sures, I wanted to clar­ify as much as pos­si­ble. As always, we will pull together to do our utmost to keep stu­dents safe and on track.

Remote Learn­ing:

All year groups will now be remote learn­ing from home – the school will pro­vide remote lessons and learn­ing accessed via Show My Home­work in the usual way. Do get in touch if you are expe­ri­enc­ing any prob­lems with this, includ­ing IT access, or you need any sup­port. Form Tutors will be run­ning remote tutor times at the start of the day, to check in with their groups and check they are set up for the day.

Read more …

Jan­u­ary Exams

Details

Cre­ated: Tues­day, 05 Jan­u­ary 2021 08:43

Writ­ten by J Lee

Fol­low­ing on from the Government’s announce­ment on Mon­day evening, the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion has con­firmed that Jan­u­ary BTEC and Cam­bridge Nation­als exams will take place as planned.

Please direct any enquiries to This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..uk.

Mass Testing

Details

Cre­ated: Mon­day, 04 Jan­u­ary 2021 14:39

Writ­ten by V Har­rop

We are pleased to let you know that be will be offer­ing rapid COVID test­ing when stu­dents return to school. This will mean only those who test pos­i­tive will need to self-​isolate.

The new test is called a lat­eral flow test, and gives a result in 30 min­utes. Stu­dents will be asked to test them­selves and will be sup­ported by a team of staff and par­ent vol­un­teers. The video below offers more infor­ma­tion on this type of testing.

The key objec­tives to test­ing all staff/​students are to reduce the trans­mis­sion of Covid within the school and reduce the num­ber of peo­ple need­ing to self-​isolate.

More infor­ma­tion on the mass Covid test­ing can be found here, within the ded­i­cated Covid Test­ing folder.

Start of term Jan­u­ary 2021

Details

Cre­ated: Thurs­day, 31 Decem­ber 2020 18:21

Writ­ten by Deb­bie Shall­cross

Week Begin­ning: Mon­day 4^th January

• All year groups will now be remote learn­ing from home – the school will pro­vide remote lessons and learn­ing accessed via Show My Home­work in the usual way
• Exams and ‘warm up’ ses­sions for those Y10-​13 involved will con­tinue as planned with some addi­tional ‘warm up’ ses­sions – see below. School uni­form as usual please.
• The school will also pro­vide super­vi­sion for those vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents and chil­dren of key­work­ers who need to be in school whilst they access their remote lessons and learn­ing mate­ri­als. School uni­form as usual please.

• Y11 and Y13 return for face to face teach­ing, other year groups remain remote.
• Key­worker chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble stu­dents con­tinue as 1st week.

• All stu­dents return for face to face teaching.

This delay to the return to school is to allow the school to plan for the pro­posed rapid test­ing pro­gramme designed to reduce the spread of Covid-​19 by iden­ti­fy­ing asymp­to­matic cases quickly and min­imis­ing dis­rup­tion. We will be plan­ning how this will be staffed, accom­mo­dated and resourced so we will keep you updated with details in due course.

Test­ing Pro­gramme in school
Dur­ing the first week of term, we will be work­ing out a plan to carry out the pro­posed test­ing pro­gramme. The extent of the test­ing we are able to accom­mo­date will depend on a num­ber of fac­tors, includ­ing staffing and resourc­ing. We will ini­tially be focus­ing on a plan to test staff and Y11 and Y13 stu­dents to min­imise fur­ther dis­rup­tion to teach­ing and exam groups. Test­ing is vol­un­tary and a let­ter will fol­low next week, ask­ing par­ents and car­ers for con­sent for their child to be tested, with fur­ther details. A sim­ple guide to the swab test is included here.

The test­ing work­force will be made up of school staff and vol­un­teers and train­ing will be pro­vided for all those involved. The Lat­eral Flow Device tests are sim­ple to use and young peo­ple swab them­selves, with a trained per­son super­vis­ing them in appro­pri­ate PPE. Tests are then processed and recorded by the test­ing work­force. They pro­duce a result in around 30 min­utes. We would be hugely grate­ful for any sup­port with run­ning this valu­able pro­gramme, even for vol­un­teers able to offer a few hours a week, which will help our young peo­ple resume their edu­ca­tion with­out the level of dis­rup­tion that they have been hav­ing to endure.

If any par­ent or carer or mem­ber of our com­mu­nity would be will­ing to vol­un­teer to be part of the test­ing work­force, please con­tact the school for more details, by email­ing your name, con­tact details and avail­abil­ity to This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

BTEC EXAMS
BTEC unit exams will still go ahead as planned. Every can­di­date has already received a per­son­alised timetable and all infor­ma­tion is on the exams page of the web­site. Here is the summary:

There are a num­ber of ‘warm up’ or revi­sion ses­sions planned. Stu­dents involved will need to come in to school and go directly to their warm up room at the appro­pri­ate times as follows:

Warms Ups /​Revi­sion Ses­sions

Any ques­tions or con­cerns relat­ing to exams dur­ing the break should be emailed to This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Vul­ner­a­ble Stu­dents and Chil­dren of Keyworkers

We need to plan the staffing for any vul­ner­a­ble and key­worker stu­dents attend­ing for the first week as teach­ing staff will already be fully occu­pied in teach­ing either face to face or remote lessons. To help us with this if your child falls into either cat­e­gory and needs to attend school, please mes­sage us using MyEd as soon as pos­si­ble with your child’s name, form and which days (from 4^th Jan to 15^th Jan 2021) your child will need to be in school and whether they will be buy­ing food/​drinks from the can­teen. This group will be based in the IT Plaza in the red build­ing as before and should go directly there at their usual arrival time. Stu­dents will need to bring head­phones to plug in to the com­put­ers to lis­ten to their remote lessons indi­vid­u­ally to avoid dis­turb­ing other stu­dents in the room who will all be access­ing dif­fer­ent lessons. Stu­dents should be in their nor­mal school uniform.

Once again, we appre­ci­ate your patience and under­stand­ing and we will do all we can to ensure things go as smoothly as possible.

I wish you all a Happy New Year and hope that 2021 brings all in our com­mu­nity health, hap­pi­ness and hope for more pos­i­tive times ahead.

With best wishes to you all
Vicky Willis
Head­teacher

End of Term Letter

Details

Cre­ated: Fri­day, 11 Decem­ber 2020 11:13

Writ­ten by V Har­rop