• 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

Dear Corbet Parents/Guardians and Pupils

Please find attached a ‘Home learning support pack’ which contains lots of information we hope will be useful in these difficult times, including advice about pupils working from home, well being activities, support contacts and more.

Stay safe and best wishes.

Home learning support pack

Some reading suggestions:

https://www.worldofdavidwalliams.com/elevenses/

https://toppsta.com/blog/view/bookish-ideas-if-you’re-self-isolating-with-the-kids

https://stories.audible.com/start-listen

Dear parents / carers

I would like to confirm the following arrangements from Monday 23rd March.

The Corbet School will be open for a limited number of children within the staffing available. This is a picture that could change as people have to start to isolate or become unwell. Therefore, we will do our best to remain open whilst we have staff available. Any student attending will be picked up by the buses at the normal time and will be dropped off at the normal time by the school buses. At this stage we will have no before or after school provision although we do want to support parents in the very best way that we can through this crisis and will speak to parents individually next week.

To support us with this could I please strongly reiterate the guidance from the DfE, if children can safely stay at home, they should, to limit the chance of the virus spreading.

That is why the government has asked parents to keep their children at home, wherever possible, and ask schools to remain open only for those children who absolutely need to attend.

Schools are, therefore being asked to continue to provide care for a limited number of children. The government have advised that we follow these key principles.

1. If it is at all possible for children to be at home, then they should be.
2. If a child needs specialist support, is vulnerable or has a parent who is a critical worker, then educational provision will be available for them.
3. Parents should not rely for childcare upon those who are advised to be in the stringent social distancing category such as grandparents, friends, or family members with underlying conditions.
4. Parents should also do everything they can to ensure children are not mixing socially in a way which can continue to spread the virus. They should observe the same social distancing principles as adults.
5. Residential special schools, boarding schools and special settings continue to care for children wherever possible.

If your work is critical to the COVID-19 response, or you work in one of the critical sectors listed below, and you cannot keep your child safe at home then your children will be prioritised for education provision:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision/guidance-for-schools-colleges-and-local-authorities-on-maintaining-educational-provision

If you feel that you fall into the category of key worker or your child falls into a vulnerable group and you are not able to safely care for them at home please complete the survey monkey questionnaire to enable us to plan provision for Monday. https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/RXS6DXD

If it is at all possible, we would like to know numbers by midday today for our initial planning.
I understand that some parents may miss this deadline due to work commitments. Please could I ask that you respond before Monday so that we know which children are due to attend school to enable us to safeguard them properly.

If you have not responded we will assume your child is not attending school and therefore we will not be expecting them.

If you have indicated that we are expecting your child, we will follow our normal absence procedures.

We may be asking for evidence of key worker status or the reasons that your child cannot be safely cared for at home, as clearly, we may have to prioritise care for these most in need within the limitations of staffing available. I know this is an exceptionally difficult time for parents and we all need to follow guidance issued by the government. We will continue to put work onto SMHW, and teachers will respond to questions on there.

This picture will change daily in terms of staffing available in school and I would ask that parents bear with us and support us through this exceptionally difficult time.

Yours sincerely

Dr Jane Tinker
Headteacher

Dear Parent / Guardian

We wish to inform you that there is a confirmed case of Coronavirus of a student in the school. The pupil hasn’t attended school since Friday 13th March and was confirmed to us today.

We have taken advice from Public Health England, Shropshire Council, and the Department for Education and followed the latest guidance from the government.

We take the health of the children and our staff very seriously; therefore, we have decided to take the following precautionary measures. The school will be closed for the next two days, Thursday and Friday, to allow for a thorough clean of the building. You will already know that we have introduced increased cleaning and hand washing and further measures will continue to be implemented.

Please also refer to the Department for Education ‘New guidance for households with symptoms’ which was distributed on Tuesday 17th March.

We understand that you may have concerns, but we want to reassure you and reiterate that we have followed all the guidance and advice currently available.

We have taken this decision in conjunction with our board of Governors, Public Health England and the local authority amid the operational concerns of maintaining safe working practices.

During this period we would kindly ask parents to e-mail absence@corbetschool.net if their child is symptomatic and the date from which they will be self-isolating. We will review pupil and staff absence levels on Sunday 22nd March and advise parents of our plans for week commencing Monday 23rd March. We would like to advise that this is likely to be a phased opening of school, but further details will be provided in due course.

I am sorry that, at this stage, I cannot give any further guidance about next week but as we all know the picture changes every day and we can only respond to advice as we receive it. I would like to thank parents for their support at this exceptionally difficult time for us all.

Yours sincerely,
Dr Jane Tinker,
Headteacher

Tuesday, 17 March 2020

Dear Parents / Guardians

In this letter, you can find information about how we are managing the current situation and the support available to students and staff. We will keep this updated and will let students and staff know by email and on social media when we have made updates. The health, welfare and wellbeing of our students and staff is our number one priority. Due to the current unprecedented situation with coronavirus, we have had to put the following measures in place today:

• Extended tutor period, whilst the school’s senior leadership team assess staffing levels and pupil absence.
• Students have been grouped according to available staffing levels and given alternative activities linked to the curriculum wherever possible.
• Several school events have been cancelled; these have been communicated separately.
• After school clubs have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, including library provision at the end of the day.
• Our school remains open and we are continuing to operate as well as we can with the staff available.
• Attendance:
•  I would ask that parents and students follow the self-isolation directives.
• We ask parents of student’s with critical medical conditions or those in the vulnerable category to ensure that they have sought medical advice on their child’s attendance in school. If the advice is that the student should be self-isolating, please be assured that this will not have a negative impact on their attendance record, and we will support this advice/decision.

Steps the school may look to take if the staffing situation is unsustainable:

• Partial school closure to be communicated on the website, email and text.

School Closure:
The school, on guidance from Public Health England, will remain open and operational until instructed otherwise.
Safe staffing levels will be monitored, and school provision adapted within the guidelines provided by the DfE. We still await further clarification regarding overseas trips and public examinations and are actively seeking answers to these concerns.
Please continue to refer to the DfE daily e-mail for further updates.

We are grateful to our parents/carers, staff and students for all their cooperation, help and support at this challenging time.

Yours sincerely

Dr Jane Tinker
Headteacher