New Government guidelines, 18 December 2020
Last night, the Government updated its guidance regarding the start of term in January and has advised that secondary schools in England should not fully re-open to all students following the Christmas holidays until Monday 11th January. As planned, Monday 4th January remains an INSET day and there will be no learning provision.
Year 11
The academy will be open as planned from Tuesday 5th January for Year 11 including before school intervention and period 6 sessions. Students will attend their normal timetabled lessons. Buses will run as normal.
Years 7-10: vulnerable children and children of critical workers
The academy will also be open for:
- students classed as vulnerable – these could be those who have a social worker and those with EHCPs
- children of critical workers who do not have childcare at home and require supervision during school hours. For example, this could include NHS staff.
If you believe your child falls into one of the above two categories, please complete the following form by 9am on Monday 4th January: https://forms.gle/acooRtqr81UfomHk9
All other Year 7-10 Students
All other Year 7-10 students will not attend school, but will join live lessons remotely from home for the first week of term (Tuesday 5th to Friday 8th January) in line with their usual timetable. Students will be required to log into Satchel One and click the Microsoft Teams link to join their live lessons. The link will take students straight to the live lesson without them needing to log into Microsoft Office; this option uses the web browser version of Microsoft Teams. Alternatively, students can download Microsoft Teams app using their academy email address and password. When clicking the link, the app will open and students will access the lesson. Students have been reminded how to do this today and are expected to engage fully with this, either using a family device or their mobile phones. As a reminder, lessons take place at the following times:
Period 1: 08.40
Period 2: 09.40
Period 3: 11.00
Period 4: 12.00
Period 5: 13.40
Period 6: 14.40 (for enrichment sessions, eg. Year 7 Latin; details of available sessions will be on Satchel One)
Lesson attendance registers will be taken as usual and the parents of any students not joining the live lessons will be contacted. Thank you in advance for your support with ensuring your child joins their lessons. If your child cannot access Satchel One, please email our IT team to ask for a password reset on [email protected].
We appreciate that this change is short notice and may inconvenience you but it is essential that we closely follow all Government guidance on Covid-19 in order to safeguard our students, staff and wider school community.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to get in touch. In the meantime, we look forward to seeing your child, either on their remote live lessons from Tuesday 5th January and then back in school from Monday 11th January, or on Tuesday 5th January if your child is Year 11, or if your Y7-10 child is classed as vulnerable or you are a critical worker and do not have childcare at home.
Mr P Slaughter, Principal
