25th January 2021- On-site teaching will not be taking place due to poor weather conditions around the schools.

Information regarding remote learning will be available from your Class Teacher via email, or on Google Classroom.

I hope you are all well and are coping with home schooling. We have been really impressed with the level of engagement from all the children. Well done to them and to you too! Juggling supporting home learning with work, and life in general, is not at all easy so be kind to yourself. You are doing a great job!

The children will inevitably have good and bad days and short periods of demotivation are to be expected. Please talk to your child’s class teacher or myself if it is becoming a bigger problem and we will help out as much as we can.

Thank you to all those who have sent in positive feedback to the staff and myself. Please do keep the feedback coming, positive or otherwise. We are continually looking to improve and develop our remote offer, so your input is welcome. We cannot promise to suit everyone all the time but we will certainly listen and try to adapt where we can!

We are very aware that most of what we provide requires online access. If this gives you a problem, please let us know. We are more than happy to provide printed packs or, where possible, can try to help out with devices.

Being on line for a lot of the time also presents its own safeguarding concerns. Your teachers should now have provided some e-safety lessons to ensure the children are reminded of how to stay safe when accessing online learning. Please talk to your children about this and remind them about personal e-safety. I know that, with work commitments, it is not always possible for you to be in the same room as the children when they are accessing the internet but please check browsing histories if necessary and ensure that parental controls are set appropriately.

A lot of direct contact with your child is done via Zoom at the moment. As a staff team, we have discussed how we can safeguard all children and adults in this process and a risk assessment for this is on our website. A lot of it is common sense but is a useful reminder to check backgrounds when zooming and to assume appropriate dress. In short, we have the same behaviour expectations on Zoom as we do in school…that does not mean that we expect the children to be wearing uniform though!

Please can you also be aware that we will not conduct a live Zoom session if we cannot see your child, as we need to ensure we know who is present. If a child is unable to allow video access, we will ask them to leave the session and will try again at another time.

We have asked that staff only communicate the links and times for Zoom sessions via their Google Classroom or by email with parents or carers. We are unable to do so with children directly. Where possible, we would like parents or carers to, at least, be in the same room as their child whilst they are on a Zoom but do understand that sometimes you may be on a work call. If this is the case, the session may be recorded by the member of staff in order to safeguard themselves and your child. We will always tell you if we are recording. The videos will never be shared and will be deleted after an appropriate period of time. We will also be recording all 1:1 sessions for the same reasons; purely for safeguarding no other reason.

I hope all the above makes sense. As usual, please get in touch if you have any queries or concerns.