HEADTEACHER UPDATE 28.9.20

To all our Snape Wood Families:

First and foremost, I would like to say a huge thank you to all our grown-ups who have adhered to the protocols put in place at the beginning and end of the day – Thank you for keeping everyone safe and doing your bit.

Sadly, there are a few grown-ups who are not adhering to the protocols – this is causing un-necessary anxiety and stress for some of our families.  As a result, we are asking all our families to adhere to the following measures:

Covid Test Update:

Thank you for your on-going understanding and support as we continue to try our very best to ensure that as many of our pupils as possible are in school every day. We continue to do all we can to ensure the safety of pupils and are encouraged by how well our bubble provision is working so far and how happy the children are coming in to school every day.

To those families that are:

1) Currently self-isolating                               2) Trying to get a test                    3) Awaiting test results

We can’t thank you enough for your patience. Please know that we are just as frustrated as you with the time it is taking to get tests and follow up results. We too want to be able to resume our daily onsite education for all of our pupils alongside their peers and teachers; but the last thing any of us want is a year group or whole school lockdown. Please know as a school we are following national government procedures and will be held fully accountable if we deviate from this.

As you are aware in the event of a child being tested positive for Covid, the school will seek advice from Public Health England and will mostly be told to close a bubble and for the bubble (pupils and staff) to self- isolate for 14 days.

SYMPTOM CHECKERS – PLEASE SEE THE FLOW CHART TO HELP YOU - SEE PICTURE

Parental Awareness of Home Learning if a year group or the school is advised to close:

If a year group bubble or the whole school were advised by Public Health England to  close for 14 days, this would be likely to happen at short notice, it is important our school is prepared to support your child with their home learning.

As a school our next challenge is to plan and prepare for this, whilst taking into account the needs of all 190 pupils and their households within our community.

The government would like schools (ideally) to have an online learning platform where children can be assisted in their learning from home.

As a school we are currently investigating the following ‘learning platforms ‘whilst being incredibly mindful of our school demographic so that this is something that all of our children can access; such as:

• Google Classrooms,
• Microsoft teams,
• APPs with recorded lessons and related activities,
• SWPS home learning website page and year group email addresses,
• Paper packs

You may have heard of the government ‘promising’ disadvantaged students (43% of current SWPS pupils) access to a laptop/Ipad and to 4G wireless routers; this ‘offer’ which is now only available for pupils in school years 3 to 11. The government have created additional restrictions which have been put in place, meaning that all schools nationally can only apply when:

THE FOLLOWING TABLE OF INFORMATION HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM THE DFE WEBSITE:

Obviously to use an online platform, this assumes that each SWPS pupil within a household has access to: The internet, a tablet, PC Desktop Computer or a Laptop.

With this in mind it is important that the leadership team at SWPS has a clear, accurate and completely honest understanding of which of our SWPS children would significantly struggle to access online learning.

For these children, we need to look at how we can support them with text books and other resources which may include the loaning out of school equipment - TBC.

Parental Home Learning Survey: (All parents to complete please)

So that we don’t make assumptions about each child’s ability to access remote learning, we are asking ALL PARENTS TO COMPLETE an online survey by this Friday please. Allowing us to make the most appropriate decision on which ‘learning platform ‘which are listed within the survey. As the government’s new requirement is for all pupils to both complete and submit their home learning each day to their teachers, and schools will be held to account on this.

WHEN ALL PARENTS COMEPLETE THE SURVEY this will enable us to plan and prepare suitable work for children at short notice if they have to work from home and heavily support parents in the delivery of home lessons.

We hope to have this in place from after October half term, but only for pupils who are absent due to Covid -19, until then we are actively sending age appropriate paper home learning packs to pupils in  Years N-6 . For both Nursery and F2 pupils we are asking parents to use the SWPS home learning pages as these have some age appropriate activities for your child.

The link to the parental survey will be sent out today via TEXT MESSAGE, PLEASE ONLY FILL IT OUT ONCE PER FAMILY AND PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR RESPONSES BY FRIDAY AT 1PM.

I hope all of the information above keeps you informed and up to date with all we are trying our very best to do in school.                                                         

Thank you for your continued support and understanding. Mrs Choudhury (Headteacher