Dear Parents/Carers
I hope this letter finds you and your families well.
Remote Learning
As we approach the end of the first half of spring term I write to update you on the current situation here in school.
We have now had six weeks of full school closure, except for our nursery which has been fully open. We have just a limited number of children in school who are children of critical workers or children who are currently vulnerable, and this can be for a range of reasons. We have been running four class Bubbles with a capacity of 15 children in each Bubble. All of our COVID-19 risk assessments are in place and we have a very good record of keeping the children and our staff safe whilst in school.
Some parents will have received a letter requesting that their child returns to school on Tuesday 23rd February, this is a limited number of children so that we can keep our robust health and safety practice in place. For all other children the expectation is that they continue to access our Remote Learning Offer on a daily basis and this will vary in terms of amount of hours depending on the age of your child.
We recently surveyed all our parents and received a great response, thank you to all parents who took the time to do so. The results of the survey show the following
83% of children are accessing Remote Learning daily
61% of children need adult support
37% of parents’ answers, under the comments section, would generally like more teacher interaction, a more balanced delivery of subjects, delivery models/ better explanation of expectation and more support/guidance
42% of parents’ answers given under the comments section would like more live teaching. Where live teaching is happening 93% said that live teaching was useful for their child.
A number of parents found that the quality of the audio was very poor and this prevented their child from accessing the lesson.
There were some really constructive positive comments such as, ‘thank you for supporting the children during these hard times’ and ‘my child was encouraged to learn when he saw his teacher’.
Our teachers will now be adapting some of their delivery models to meet the requests of the parents who responded to the survey. So please look out for further information from your child’s class teacher in regard to the changes. Hopefully we will soon have more information on the Government’s plans to reopen schools, however at this point we know that it will not be before 8th March at the earliest.
Other news
- Gary Wong – School Business Manager, is leaving our school and his last day is this Friday 12th February. I am sure you will all join me in wishing him all the very best of luck at his new school. Gary has been working at our school for 11 years and during that time he has made a significant contribution to our school.
- March Wood (Forest School) will soon be ‘springing’ back to life. Such a huge amount has been going on during the winter months and we are all excited to see and experience this wonderful environment. As soon as school opens our Forest School will open and the children will be having the best experiences outdoors after being kept indoors for such a long time. If you are interested in getting involved or finding out more then please do not hesitate to get in touch with the school.
- We really want to attract more families to join our school, so if you know of any friends with children please do encourage them to get in touch with us and we will be more than happy to talk to them, or run some COVID safe tours of our amazing school. We are a bit hidden away here and not everyone knows about us, so please spread the word and share our website address at devonshirehill.com and encourage more families to become part of our fantastic school.
- Sadly, the funeral for Vi Cope was on Wednesday 10th February. This was a time for us all to reflect on the contribution that Vi made to our school over so many years. It was an honour to see so many of her past colleagues and friends gathering outside our school as the funeral procession passed by, giving so many an opportunity to pay their last respects to Vi and her family during such a difficult time.
I wish you all a safe half term, and in the meantime if there is anything the school can do to support you then please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Please note we are closed on Monday 22nd February for staff training.
Yours sincerely
Julie D’Abreu
Headteacher
