New Term begins of Online Learning
Tomorrow, the 20th April, is the start of the final term of the 2019-2020 school year. This is normally a very busy term with exams classes preparing for final exams, practicals, project deadlines, and the more enjoyable aspects of planning for the end of year awards, graduation ceremonies etc. Due to the COVID-19 epidemic and current lockdown, it will no doubt be a very unusual and different term.
The three weeks in the run-up to the Easter were a learning curve for us all, with everyone adjusting and upskilling with online learning and staying isolated at home. Thankfully our staff, students and parents/guardians embraced this change so positively. Thanks to all who completed the survey at the end of the last term, your feedback was very much appreciated. In response to the feedback and comments from students, teachers and parents/guardians we have developed a set of guidelines that will hopefully make the next few weeks more structured and sustainable and address some of the issues that were occurring. Parents/guardians should have received a text earlier with a link to a letter outlining the guidelines, but I am attaching them here in case you didn’t.
It is vital that our students keep engaging with the material teachers are setting, both from an educational point of view, but also for a focus each day for them. We do understand the issues of poor ICT facilities, poor Broadband etc and we would encourage you to let us know if there are ways we can assist/advise. I know some of you have issues of several children in a home using the same laptop, hopefully the more structured approach to assigning work will assist in this regard. I would also encourage your child to install the Team app on their phone.
Of course, there is no real replacement for the classroom environment, but we will do our very best to assist our students as we head into the final term. Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any assistance over the next few weeks.
Kind regards and keep safe, DQuinn.