Dear Parents and Carers,
I hope everyone remains safe and well as we reach the end of another week both in school and at home. We continue to settle into this routine of remote learning and face to face learning and the staff rota which ensures we are covering both styles of learning and minimising the number of staff who need to be in school on any one day.
For the majority of our pupils, learning will continue to take place remotely online at home. Teachers are continuing to report to me that more children are now accessing all or most of the work being set each day which is good. School will continue to provide online learning for children remaining at home from Year 3 to Year 6 and this will be updated on a regular basis. The Year 3 teachers are currently trialling “live” lessons with their pupils to see what works best and they will look to share this with other staff. We have held more sessions this week for teachers to meet together either face to face or remotely to update how it is going, share good practice and ensure good levels of consistency across the year groups and we will continue to do this. If you are having difficulties with the remote learning then please ring the school and ask for me. I will assess what the issue is and then if needed pass you on to our Systems Manager Mr Couch who can provide expert technical advice. We will look at each case individually and come up with the best solution we can.
This week we have been able to help around 6 families on a range of issues.
School is open to vulnerable children and children of critical workers. The advice remains that if you are a key worker and working from home, then if you can, please keep your child at home. It still remains the case that we have probably now reached a safe limit as to how many pupils we can have in school on any one day, particularly in Year 4 and Year 5, given the measures and restrictions we still have to put in place. As I mentioned above, I need to allow staff to be able to run the remote learning effectively while other staff run the face to face lessons in school. I cannot expect staff to do both at the same time. If you wish to send your child into school from next week onwards, you need to ring and speak to me first so again I can assess the situation and make a decision. I will now have to prioritise cases e.g. where both parents or carers are critical workers over where one parent or carer works and another is at home and I can no longer guarantee places and your child may have to go on a waiting list.
Again I have to say a big thank you so far to parents as you have all been very good and supportive in communicating with the school to check the arrangements and inform us of any changes. This makes it so much easier to manage the current situation.
Key Worker/Vulnerable Group.
For the pupils who are currently in school, these are the arrangements to ensure we can provide as normal an experience as possible for the children. We have organised them into year groups so there are 4 groups for learning rather than the 8 classes. They will not necessarily always be taught by their regular class teacher as some weeks they may be doing the remote learning for the other pupils at home. If your child normally has a school dinner that will still be the case as we will be providing hot meals as normal. The school day will run from 9:00am to 3:00pm (we are not currently running our Breakfast Club or After School Club). The children should be in full school uniform each day; Friday will still be non-uniform but the children do not need to bring £1. We will not be using the sports coaches at this time but still want to do PE in school. I have timetabled myself to do some PE with the groups. Next week the children will have PE on the following days so should come to school in their PE kit on that day: Monday – Year 6, Tuesday – Year 4 and Wednesday – Year 5.
Covid-19
We ask that you continue to remain vigilant to any symptoms of Coronavirus within members of your household and do not send your child to school if they display any of the symptoms (even if they are key worker or vulnerable pupils). If in doubt, please get yourselves or your child tested. All Waltham Forest residents are able to get tested even if they are not showing any Coronavirus symptoms, as this will reduce the spread of infection to others. If your child or a member of your family tests positive for Coronavirus, you will need to self-isolate as a family for 10 days and inform the school, even if your child is working at home. This is now going to be the situation in school until at least 8th March, following the government announcement yesterday. The school will continue to follow all aspects of enhanced cleaning and protocols outlined in risk assessments, which will be reviewed. We understand that these are very challenging times for us all, both emotionally and physically. The safety of our school and community remains paramount and we ask for your support at this time. We will continue to be in touch through texts and newsletters to keep you updated of the situation as it progresses and teachers will be in regular contact via the remote learning platforms. We will continue to be here if you should need any support and please do not hesitate to get in touch by phone or email.
Friday Assembly
Remote Learning Awards:
3H – Georgios, Daryna and Ruthie
3K – Scarlett, Oscar and Ayrin
4P – Krischann, Nathaniel and Jayden H
4RC – Mia, Dominik and Neddy
5L – Emilia, Billion and Olivia
5O – Michaela, Aisosa and Rebecca
6PM – Kayleigh, Klara and Natalia
6C – Joshua, Kacper and Michael
Key Worker/Vulnerable Pupil Awards:
Year 3 – Not in school this week (back on 8th February)
Year 4 – Adriyel, David, Nadia and DJuliana
Year 5 – Kieran, Ronan and Lucas
Year 6 – Micha, Maria and Neshae
Group of the Week – Year 5 for their commitment to learning this week and the great work they have been doing in class.
Virtual Assembly
I did my very first virtual assembly last week and hopefully many of you were able to catch it at some point. Thank you for the positive feedback which has come in since last Friday. This week’s Friday Assembly has also been shared on-line and went “live” from Friday morning via j2homework. The theme this week was a brief history of our school to celebrate our 120th birthday on Monday. I have also attached a picture we took on Monday of the 43 children who were on school on our birthday. I will be doing one of these every week during the current lockdown period.
Federation
The new federated governing body will continue to hold meetings next week to prepare for the federation between the two schools which is still due to formally take place at Easter. I will of course continue to keep you updated throughout the next few weeks and hope to share some important news very soon.
Covid-19 Case in School
Our Year 5 group was able to return to school on Monday which is good, but then on Tuesday we had to send the Year 3 group home to self-isolate which again is incredibly frustrating for everyone, but we have to keep our staff and pupils safe at this time. We identified all the pupils and staff who needed to self-isolate and switch to remote learning and all being well they will return to school on Monday 8th February.
120th Birthday of St Joseph’s School
As I am sure you all know by now, 2021 marks the 120th anniversary of the founding of St Joseph’s School way back in January 1901. This Monday 25th January was the actual “birthday” of the school and in normal times we would have organised whole school celebrations across the week to mark this. In previous years such as 2001, 2011 and 2016 we have had the Bishop of Brentwood visiting school to lead a special Mass. Of course we cannot do any of these things at this moment and although we were able to mark our birthday in school, I am waiting for everyone to return before we organise a true celebration of the last 120 years. One amazing coincidence is that on the first day of school on 25th January 1901, there were 43 pupils in school. This Monday, 25th January 2021 we had exactly the same number of children attending! One thing we were able to do on Monday was to get our “school” together outside in the playground and take some photos in the lovely winter sunshine. We are sharing these along with my virtual history assembly on the school which has gone out today for everyone to see.
As I mentioned above, the government has announced 8th March as the earliest that schools could reopen, so let’s hope that things improve over the next few weeks and we can have everyone back on 8th March or as soon after that as possible. Of course nothing is certain in the world at the moment and a lot of things have to be in place, but it is good to have a possible restart date to work towards. I will of course keep you updated each week. Hopefully by the middle of February around the half term break, we should know more about if and when schools may be able to reopen in March.
Meanwhile I continue to wish all our families the very best and hope and pray you all keep safe and look out for each other.
Yours sincerely,
J Alexander (Head teacher)
