Dear Parents/ Carers / Students
I hope you and your family are well. Aside from reviewing the proposals set out by the DfE in terms of getting students back to school, I managed to see my elderly mother yesterday for the first time in 8 weeks. We managed to meet in an outside environment and stand at least 2m apart with my two daughters exchanging some cakes they had baked for her. It was a small but important step. Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic ‘drags its feet’, being able to see a close relative outside one’s family hopefully helps towards our eventual journey of getting back to some kind of normal.
As a school, we are looking carefully at how best to support Year 10 and 12 students. We have written to Year 7-9 parents to explain that we do not expect to see their child until September and will continue to set work and give feedback through Show My Homework.
With Year 10 and 12, we are looking at expanding on-line lessons and give 1:1 opportunities in school before the end of term. Mr Phillips and Mr Torrance will be writing to you later this week with further information. The problem we have in maintaining social distancing and running normal lessons is shown in the photo on the right. We spaced our chairs in the School Hall 2m apart – the school Hall can normally accommodate 240 students – but under this guideline we could only manage 20 chairs. Applied to a classroom situation, the maximum number we could fit in was 8! We will be exploring as many options as possible but a return to normal timetables seems a bit of a distant shore at the moment.
I hope you enjoyed reading our May edition of Birchwood News celebrating the very best of our students’ amazing lockdown homework. We will repeat this formula for June.
Finally, can I thank all the Mums and Dads for supporting us and helping your child complete their homework. Whilst I’m sure this has its frustrations, I have received a number of emails from parents saying how much better their French, Algebra, and Biology was now!!
Best regards and keep safe.
Dr Ingate
Principal