At the end of an extraordinary term Miss Hughes-Williams sends out a message to us all as we begin a rather different holiday than perhaps the one we expected:
Many thanks for all your wonderful messages of support and appreciation over the past fortnight. Thank you also for your patience and proportionality as we navigate these unprecedented times together.
The challenges remain high for everyone and it has been heartening to see our communities coming together to support each other in such caring and creative ways.
We will remain open for the few during the holiday period to help support our frontline services. Staff will not be setting further work over the next two weeks, however, some have and will publish suggestions for possible activities in these days of social distancing. We are continuing to review and evaluate our distance learning programme and will refine and modify accordingly after the holiday.
You will no doubt be aware that the government announced their plans today for providing pupils with grades in the absence of examinations. We will be sending out the letter provided for students in Year 11 and 13 today for purposes of initial clarification. Please be assured that we have the situation in hand and are not in a position to respond to queries regarding individual pupil’s grades. Once again my thanks in advance for your understanding and we will ensure that all is honest and fair.
We are all managing huge amounts of uncertainty as we mitigate the unknown and it is tempting to fill every gap with action. Good quality judgement is often characterised by the things we choose not to do rather than that which is conducted in haste. The balance is always a fine one. I hope that you find some time to go off-line in the coming days and for those of you going out each day to keep frontline services running I add my own personal thanks. I will sign off the week with what is becoming a standard farewell; stay safe, stay well and look after each other.
J Hughes-Williams