Thank you again for all the support this term - it has been again a strange one, with part of it being undertaken on line and part back in school. Students have settled back into their face to face learning and it has given us the opportunity to look carefully at how we support students further through next term and into next academic year.

Transition

We will be hosting two early transition meetings when we return next term. The first will be for parents of year six students to present the programme of support we have in place over the next term to help the transition process from primary to secondary school. The second will be for year eleven students and their parents to give more detail on the transition to sixth form programme that will take place throughout June. These meetings will both take place on Wednesday 28th April. Further details will be issued on our return.

Support for all students

As we move back to face to face learning, we are making plans for the curriculum for next year. Our overall provision will remain committed to a broad and balanced curriculum, with no changes to the breadth and different lessons that students receive. We plan a two phase approach to support students. First, having had the students back in school for a number of weeks, we have been able to assess where further intervention and support will be useful. As a result we will also undertake some further assessments with students in years seven, eight and nine early next term in science and mathematics. This will allow some movement of students in science and mathematics groups in April / May to ensure we match subject coverage to student need.

Furthermore, we are also planning to reduce the size of groups in key stage three next year in order to support students as effectively as possible. As a result there will be further changes to groupings for next year, but this will be part of the expected curriculum transition into the next academic year. The groups for next academic year will be in place from September 2021.

On site provision

We have been fortunate to have been able to continue with regular school provision without any significant disruption. We are grateful to everyone who has helped us make sure we have not needed to send bubbles home or further disrupt learning. However, the Easter break will be a time of change and a relaxing of the lockdown rules. Please can you do everything to ensure that students remain safe whilst being able to enjoy more freedom. None of us want to return to further bouts of self-isolation and lockdown for large groups of people. Students and staff have been issued with further twice weekly testing kits and this should continue over the Easter break and into next term. Please keep to regular testing.

Best wishes to all of our community.