Letter to Parents (12/06/2020)
Dear parents and carers,
Thank you for your ongoing support during our closure period. We continue to be closed as an academy, but in line with government guidance, will be offering some face to face sessions to small numbers of Year 10 and 12 students in the coming weeks.
We have a risk assessment in place, specific to the current pandemic situation, which can be found on our website. The majority of our staff and our students continue to work from home, as per government guidance. Our teachers are supporting with online learning, which is our preferred method of working, but we understand that access to technology can be limited, especially when there are multiple people working from home in a household, so we have also been providing paper packs where required. If you have not collected a Half Term 6 work pack but would like one, then please arrange a time during your weekly welfare phone call with your child’s tutor or support teacher, when you can come in to collect. We cannot accept visitors without appointments at this time, so please do arrange your collection slot in advance so that we can have the work pack ready.
Our plans for Year 10 and 12 sessions have gone out directly to families in these year groups. Year 10 parents/carers should have received a personalised email with arrival and departure times and allocated entrances for sessions the sessions they have booked. If you have any queries, please direct them to enquiries@havelockacademy.co.uk . Staffing and groups have been arranged based on the numbers booked in, so we are not in a position to accept students who turn up without having been booked in, in advance.
We continue to provide on site childcare for students who class as vulnerable, as per the government guidance at the start of the closure period, along with students with key worker parents. Key workers should have registered with us on the google form sent out at the start of closure. This childcare provision, in order to help keep our country moving, must be booked a week in advance, via our Assistant Principal for Safeguarding, Robyn Laurie. We cannot accept late bookings due to health and safety requirements, as we need to ensure we have sufficient space for social distancing and sufficient staff to student ratios available and cannot always do this at short notice.
For any Year 10 or 12 students returning for the pre-arranged face to face sessions, or students of key worker children using our childcare provision, we strongly encourage you to avoid public transport where at all possible for your journey to and from school. If your child travels on public transport, they will be encouraged to wear a face covering during their journey to and from school. These should be disposed of at home, as they present a contamination risk if brought into school. Please ensure that your child has a sealed bag which they can put their covering into when they arrive at school, to be disposed of at home. The face covering must not be out of a sealed bag during the school day.
Whilst our preparations have been thorough and we feel that risks to staff and students have been minimised as much as possible, we would like to remind parents that a significant element of the risk assessment is that students follow the rules in place in school. Failure to follow social distancing would likely put staff and other students at risk and it will not be tolerated – we have an addition to our behaviour policy which has been shared with all Year 10 and 12 families in advance of any return, which allows us to exclude for any behaviour which increases the risk of infection for a member of staff or student. We are confident that this will not be required but it will be reassuring for parents to know that we would not allow such behaviour to put anyone at risk, and any resulting consequences such as exclusion would be fully supported by DRET.
A number of people have asked me what the situation will be like in September. Unfortunately, we are not in a position to answer this at this time, but as soon as we do know more from the government, we will be in touch with everyone.
Our website is the best place to access support and information and we are updating this regularly. We also have a Facebook page and a Twitter account so you can follow us on social media, where we celebrate much of the good work that is going on from home. The website includes links to online learning support materials which should be useful for parents and students.
All families should be receiving a weekly welfare call to check in with parents/carers and students and help with any issues that may arise with the home learning. As many staff are working from home, these calls may come from a withheld number, so please be aware of this and pick up. We can arrange a preferred time to call you each week if that is something that would be helpful – please just let us know.
Thank you once again for your ongoing support.
Stay safe, and kind regards,
The Staff Team at Havelock Academy
Academic Year 2019/2020
