Archives for April 2020

The Parenting Team is continuing their service of telephone consultations. Parents and carers can simply call the office on 01743 250950 or email parenting.team@shropshire.gov.uk to arrange a consultation at a time convenient to them. Professionals can also contact the office and arrange appointments for parents/carers if they have gained their consent to pass on their telephone number.

Taking the current situation into account the parenting team can support parents and carers with:

• managing difficult questions and worries from children due to the current situation
• managing challenging behaviour which might be a result of the changes to their everyday lives
• maintaining good relationships with children during this time
• suggestions on activities to do with children
• talk through and reflect on the online course content with a Parenting Practitioner

The online Understanding Your Child courses are also still available:

1. Clicking on the In Our Place website.
2. Then put the access code DARWIN18 in the box
3. Choose from the following courses:-

• Understanding pregnancy, labour, birth and your baby
• Understanding your baby
• Understanding your child
• Understanding your teenager’s brain
• Understanding pregnancy, labour, birth and your baby: for women couples

Parenting Team: 01743 250950

Work days: Mon – Thu

In the event of a parent / carer becoming a key worker through a change in circumstances, please contact admin@corbetschool.net if requesting a childcare place.

• Letter_to_students_-_Summer_2020_grading OFQUAL

Dear Parent / Carer

This is only the second weekly update since lockdown and already it really does feel much longer than that. I do hope that the students and yourselves are all coping and finding our wellbeing activities helpful alongside all the schoolwork being set. The most important thing is to have a routine and a plan where this is possible, so that we all feel that we have met our daily goals. You may have seen that we have also being looking out to see how we can help out in the community and I am proud to say have donated the safety glasses from the Science Department as PPE at the hospitals and are due to go into production of visors. Thank you to all our fantastic staff and students who will be helping in the community, it really will be making a difference – keep up the great work! In these strange and new times, it is important that we look out for each other and be kind to ourselves and others; a message I regularly give to the students in assemblies. Maybe our challenge over the Easter break should be to try to do one kind thing each day to keep us all going.

Easter holidays:
During the holidays, teachers will not be asked to set daily work for students or to reply to messages on Show My Homework sent during this time. It is important that staff and students have a break before ‘working from home’ begins again next term.

Year 10s and Year 11s may wish to continue working towards their exams during the Easter holidays as they would have done if school was open.

Whole school communication:
This will be weekly now, on a Wednesday and please do continue to look out for e-mail updates throughout the week from other members of staff.

Due to school being closed and only skeleton staff in school please can we ask that if you need to contact us to do so via email: admin@corbetschool.net. This will allow us to direct your question to our staff who are mostly now working from home. Please also check the new Facebook group – ‘The Corbet School – Coronavirus Updates’, and the school website where we are putting any daily updates, we receive that may be useful to you.

Year 11 exams:
The most up to date guidance was issued by Mr Simms on 23rd March 2020.
Ofqual stated last week: We are rapidly working up plans to implement the arrangements the Secretary of State for Education has set out for exams this summer and, with exam boards and teaching bodies, are making considerable progress.

Students understandably want reassurance, and teachers urgently need to know what to do, and when. We expect to publish detailed information about the process and timetable which will apply this summer next week. This will include the steps we would like teachers to follow and more detailed guidance on how to consider the full range of evidence they will have available when submitting their assessment grades. We are talking to teaching representatives to make sure that what we are planning is manageable and appropriate, so that students, parents, carers and teachers can have confidence in the approach.

We will outline by Easter the process we will follow to make sure grades are fair across schools and colleges, as well as our proposals for appeals. We will also say more as soon as possible about the arrangements for additional exams in the new academic year.

We want to reassure students waiting for news that we are doing everything we can to make sure they are not disadvantaged by these unprecedented circumstances.

Year 10 exams:
Formal exams have been cancelled for this academic year. Mock exams should take place for the year group during the autumn term and we will let you have more information on this when we have it.

Teaching & Learning:
We sent out a ‘Home learning support pack’ last Friday which contains lots of information we hope will be useful in these difficult times, including advice about students working from home, wellbeing activities, support contacts and more. Parents/guardians please check your emails; Students please check Show My Homework for the pack.

You will see within the pack that we will be setting 2 – 3 pieces of work on Show My Homework each day for Years 7 – 9. In addition, they should be doing some daily reading and spending a little time on some of the wellbeing ideas in the pack.

Students in Years 10 & 11 should be sticking to their normal timetable and be completing a piece of work/revision for each lesson they would normally have on that particular day. Specific work will be set for them on Show My Homework. The approximate amount time to be spent on each piece of work will be detailed below the description on Show My Homework.

All students should be accessing Show My Homework daily to ensure they don’t miss work or messages from their teachers.

Options forms:
We have received the vast majority of pupil choices now. The last few are being chased this week and then we hope to be working on curriculum planning for the year group over the Easter holidays.

Site access: In line with recent guidance on ‘non-essential travel’, neither students or parents/guardians will be able to come into school to collect items. We will update you when the situation changes.

Finance:
Locker refunds: we are unable to process these at this time please be assured that they will be provided in due course.

Finally, I do hope that the sun puts in another appearance over the next couple of weeks and that you and your families stay well.

Yours sincerely
Dr Jane Tinker
Headteacher

Coronavirus COVID19 and Personal Protection Equipment

The Chief Medical Officer has raised the risk of catching coronavirus to high. To reduce the spread of infection, protect those most vulnerable and keep critical services going, we are asking you if you can help us.

This is a call to all businesses and organisations in the county, please help us to help your community.  Shropshire Council provides support to a range of people and to do this safely we desperately need more personal protective equipment (PPE).  If you own a nail bar, beauty salon, veterinary surgery or any other type of business that uses PPE and do have any spare unopened boxes, particularly gloves, aprons or goggles, we would be really grateful if you can let us have it, as a matter of urgency.

Please contact our PPE coordinator Mike Parry Mike.Parry@Shropshire.gov.uk if you are able to help us with this, they will provide further information on how we will collect it from you.

A big thank you in advance for your support.

Public Health,

Shropshire Council