Dear Parent/Carer
With week one of the new national lock-down at an end, I would firstly like to thank all of you that have contacted the school with your messages of thanks and support for all staff and all that you are doing to maintain our provision of education remotely. Teaching lessons online is still a relatively new concept and often requires different preparation and follow-up than face to face lessons in school. Our staff working from home will be experiencing many of the same challenges that you as working parents may be having – sharing broadband bandwidth, finding spaces for all the family to work, monitoring screen time and managing their own family life. I am firmly of the view that there is much we are getting right but as ever, if there are aspects of remote learning that you need help and support with please let us know.
Thank you for all you are doing at home to keep students engaged and involved with their learning – we know it is not easy! The pastoral team have spent considerable time this week contacting home where students have not been accessing their lessons and we hope the advice and support offered will help in these circumstances.
We will be making a slight change to the timings of online lessons. In September we introduced staggered lunchtimes to help us maintain social distancing but during this current phase of remote learning, the split lunchtimes have the ability to cause some difficulty for parents with children in different year groups trying to work from home and managing their own schedules.
To that end, whilst we are remote learning, from Monday 11th January lesson start and finish times will be the same for all year groups as follows:
P1 9.00am -10.00am
P2 10.00am -11.00am
Break 11.00am – 11.30am
P3 11.30am – 12.30pm
P4 12.30pm – 1.30pm
Lunch 1.30pm – 2.00pm
P5 2.00pm – 3.00pm
Please note that lessons may end shortly before the hour mark to allow both staff and students to break from the screen for a few minutes and set-up/access their next lesson. We know these timings are slightly different from Edulink as our internal systems are set up for a pre-COVID school day and this is not a quick or easy fix to make.
Finally, for parents of students taking public examinations in Years 10, 11, 12 and 13 this year, the government announced on Tuesday that this Summer’s GCSE and A Level exams have been cancelled. We do not yet know the specific details of how students will be awarded their grades and also await information on the assessment of vocational qualifications. As soon as we are in a position to share this with parents and students we will do so.
Please continue to stay safe,
Yours faithfully
Neil Dunn
Headteacher