It has been a challenging week for the entire school family. First and foremost I would like to thank my colleagues, our students and all parents/carers for all of your efforts, immense support and wonderful degree of patience amidst such uncertainty and concerning times. As the COVID-19 situation has progressed at a pace, all schools in our country now find themselves closed to the vast majority of students with effect from 3:15pm today, 20th March 2020 until further notice. A very small group of students will be able to attend in order to support their particular situation e.g. their parent/carer is a vital key worker or where specific needs have been identified – parents/carers of these students have been contacted separately about these arrangements.
Even in unprecedented times such as these it is truly heart-warming and humbling to see how members of our school family have come together to look after each other and to maintain a level of normality for as many as possible over the past week.
As we look to an uncertain few weeks, may I remind you that staff will be setting work to be done by students from home. We do appreciate that this is less than ideal however, our hope is to continue to provide students with relevant and interesting challenges and tasks which allow them to progress at an appropriate and realistic pace towards the next phase of their education. Students will be required to access this work online which will be set on a weekly basis, following their normal daily timetable as much as possible. Please see the advice for parents/carers about how to help your child organise their time with their online work.
As you will be aware, discussions are taking place at a national level with Exam Boards regarding the awarding of examination grades and today, Qualifications Wales has published information outlining the key aspects of the process, which will draw on different sources of evidence such as marks achieved by learners in previous internal and external assessments as well as standardised teacher assessed qualification grades. You can access this information using the link below.
We have been talking in school about how best to look after ourselves, our families, friends and elderly neighbours over the coming weeks. There are few Headteachers who can boast that they work in a school which is underpinned by such a caring and supportive family network, and for that I am truly grateful.
We do hope you stay well and are able to enjoy some unexpected time with your families, and we look forward to seeing you all again soon. I will keep you posted via the website with regular updates so please do take the time to check in with that.