23 September 2020
Confirmed Student Covid-19 Case in the College
My letter to you on Monday informed you of the fact that we had our first confirmed student Covid-19 case. Our detailed risk assessment and pre-planning ensured that this case was dealt with very quickly and efficiently. It is very unfortunate that a group of our Year 7 students have had their very positive start at Collingwood disrupted because of this but, of course, the health and safety of our students is paramount. Systems are in place to ensure relevant work can be accessed by these students so that they do not fall behind in their studies and therefore can make a good return to College in the near future. On this occasion work will be communicated by e-mail but from Monday we will ensure that any student who is self-isolating will be able to access their work on the Microsoft365 applications - OneNote or Teams - in order for them to access the classwork. At the back of this newsletter there are help sheets to assist students with OneNote and Teams. Their teachers will let them know which platform to use. Therefore students and parents are politely requested not to email staff for work until they have looked in the designated applications.
We send our best wishes to the student who tested positive for the virus and hope they make a speedy recovery.
Obviously, we all hope that there are no further cases but, if they do occur, I am confident that we are well-placed to respond effectively in the future.
Main College / Sixth Form Open Evenings and Academic Review Event
Regrettably these will not go ahead due to the current situation and therefore there will be no need for any early College closures on the published dates - Thursday 1 October, Thursday 8 October and Wednesday 21 October will be normal College days. Further details on how we intend to manage the Academic Review event will be published soon. The term dates have been revised and can be found here on our website within College Information. Please note that the dates in the student planner are incorrect due to certain amendments being made after publication.
Information for Those Parents Who Have Children in Year 6
If you have children in Year 6 please can I suggest you access the ‘Information for Prospective Year 7 Students’ page on our website where you will find details of events that are replacing our traditional Open Evening and Parental Tours this year. These include a virtual tour of the site, a voiced Open Evening PowerPoint presentation, a video produced by our students on the ‘Collingwood Experience’ and dates for a number of ‘Meet the Principal’ talks.
IT Audit
During the Summer term we conducted a comprehensive IT audit of the students in the College. We would now like to extend this to our Year 7 students and use the information gained to support families with equipment or IT advice where a need has been identified:
Truancy Calls
Please be advised that during periods of high student absence, truancy call messages may be sent to parents before all incoming absence calls have been logged.
If your child is absent and you have already informed the College using the student absence line you can ignore truancy call messages. Please do not contact the College.
If your child is absent and you have not informed the College when you receive the truancy call message, please call the College absence line on 01276 457650.