Newsletters

Latest Newsletters

• 09 Jul 2021
  End of Term Letter from Mr Jefferson

  Please find letter attached.
  
  Have a lovely Summer.
  
  Take care.

• 07 Jul 2021
  Response to survey : Change to School Day

  Dear Parent/Guardian
  
  Please can I thank you all for your responses to the consultation regarding a change to the school day once a fortnight. The responses were mostly in favour of the change but, even so, we have decided not to go ahead with this next term. We are hoping to make this change later in the school year once we know more about whether we need to continue with any COVID precautions. In response to the comments made in the survey, I thought it would be worth explaining in a little more detail the reason we are hoping to make this change eventually.
  • Teachers are expected to plan, mark, communicate with parents, provide supervision during break times, provide pastoral support to pupils in two and half hours a week when they are not teaching classes.
  • Continuous professional development, departmental meetings, line management, parent’s evenings, extracurricular activities and fixtures all take place outside of the working day.
  • Teachers have had to change their planning and adjust all lessons to be delivered online over the last year as well as increase the pastoral support they give to pupils both online and in person which has been at a great personal cost.
  • We are hoping to remove a form period once a fortnight (not a lesson) to give teachers a little more time within their working hours to support this considerable workload.
  • Pupils would not lose any lesson time and would benefit from the improvements that would come from teachers being given some additional time.
  • We could consider moving the early finish to a Friday as suggested by some parents.
  
  As a school we appreciate that there would be some difficulties remembering which day finished early, we would endeavor to provide multiple reminders if we decided to go ahead.
  
  In September we have decided to continue with using the Abbey Road entrance for Senior pupils and the Rating Lane entrance for Primary pupils.
  
  We will still have a staggered start and end to the school day but the timings are very much shorter than this year:
  
  Key Stage 1 (Reception, year 1 and year 2) Start at 8:30am and finish at 3:20pm
  Key Stage 2 (Years 3, 4 ,5 and 6) Start at 8:40am and finish at 3:30pm
  Key Stage 3 (Years 7, 8 and 9) Start at 8:50am and finish at 3:45pm
  Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11) Start at 8:40am and finish at 3:35pm
  
  In the Primary School we would ask parents to line up, as they have been doing all year, but we will be moving the lines of parents much faster.
  
  We will be communicating any new information regarding the start of the new school year to parents once we receive it from the Department of Education.
  
  Thank you all for being so flexible and supportive all year. We have been very grateful to you all.
  
  Many thanks
  
  Mr S. Jefferson
  Headteacher