Welcome to the informal weekly round up which, for me at least, is becoming quite a cathartic experience!

Three words sum up this week for me – WHAT A WEEK!

I’d like to start by paying tribute to our fantastic students. Your work has continued to pour in in ever expanding ways and using a range of ingenious media – please do check out our official facebook feed which is where we post work sent to us.

Also this week, it has been a real highlight to see so many students in online assemblies. Thank you for taking part in these. I will organise more very soon and continue to trial ways of helping us all keep in touch. You may have heard that Micrsoft Teams has done an update which means a 3 x 3 grid is now possible. This will give us a better feel than the current view so we will be switching to this going forwards.

Secondly, I’d like to thank parents for your responses and messages. Please be aware that we are definitely moving ahead with Microsoft Teams and more online live experiences, but we need to get this right for students and invest in staff also so that it can be a really successful launch when we get there – hopefully soon after half term. Please bear in mind that before this crisis, the school’s online learning platform was in need of a significant overhaul so we have already made huge strides forward in the recent weeks and months. As I promised when I took on the role of Principal just under a year ago, I will not stop working with staff to improve every element of the school, but it does take time and we are living in the most unusual times.

Lastly, please can I take a momet to thank my staff. You have proved yourself to be resilient and dedicated. Please continue what you are doing – contacting parents, setting work online and in work packs, listening to students concerns and offering as much feedback as possible given that we now have students worked in a very personalised way.

As the central statement of our new vision confirm encourages us to “build community”, so I would ask that we continue to work together for the good of our young people.

I will write more formally next week with details of the arrangements after half term and our response to the phased plan return plan for Year 10. For now, though, I would like to wish you a happy and safe weekend.

God bless each one of you
John Cornish, Principal