27 January 2021
Dear Parents and Carers
I hope that you are having a good week and enjoyed, briefly, the snowy conditions at the start of the week.
Reopening of schools
Yesterday the Prime Minister said that schools would reopen only “cautiously”, and he could not confirm when this will happen. He suggested that schools might reopen first in English regions with a lower COVID-19 infection rate. Reception, Year 1, and Year 6 pupils in primary schools, and those students sitting GCSEs and A-levels are expected to be the first to return under plans being drawn up by Gavin Williamson, mirroring the first national lockdown last year. Mr Johnson also said that children would get support to catch up and that exams would be "fair and properly adjusted to reflect what everyone has gone through in the past 12 months".
We anticipate an announcement this week.
Onsite provision - numbers
During this period of national lockdown, we have been told that we should only allow vulnerable children and the children of critical workers to attend. The government guidance states that ‘all other pupils and students should not attend’. Our Year Group bubbles are full and, regrettably, we cannot offer places to any students who are not in the groups identified above.
Onsite provision: February half-term
We were informed by the government yesterday that schools will close as usual over February half-term and are not expected to remain open to vulnerable children and the children of critical workers during that week.
INSET Day - Monday 22 February
A reminder that we have an INSET day on Monday 22 February and therefore there will be no remote or onsite provision on that day.
March Reports 2021
Due to the unprecedented circumstances and imminent announcement from OFQUAL about GCSE and A-level exams we are changing the March report format.
Staff will complete an engagement report for each student as per the assessment calendar using the following criteria that has been updated to reflect our remote learning provision. These criteria will be used for Years 7-11. For Years 12 and 13 an engagement grade and a remote formative assessment grade will be entered. We will be uploading the engagement reports to EduLink for parents/carers and students to view as per the assessment calendar. The Sixth Form formative assessment grades will be for internal use only.
Please note the final reporting series in the summer term is still planned to go ahead in the normal format.
Surrey Heath Mental Health Support Team
The College is excited to announce that we have been chosen to work with Surrey and Borders NHS Partnership Trust with their new Mental Health Support Teams (MHST) in schools for the Surrey Heath area. The MHST will provide early intervention for children and young people with mild mental health and emotional wellbeing difficulties. They will also work closely with our staff and students to support a whole school approach to mental health. More details will come in the coming weeks, but we are delighted the senior clinician in the team is an ex-Collingwood student! The pandemic has already impacted on some of the face to face work the MHST were planning to begin, however the team will be sending out some surveys in the next couple of weeks to parents, staff and students to give you the opportunity to have your say in how the service is developed and delivered at Collingwood, as well as which resources that might be needed to support your child(ren)s mental health at this challenging time. In the meantime, they have already begun to share useful resources, such as the one the following page, that students and parents can utilise. This can be used alongside the Student Wellbeing area set up on OneNote up by Mr Batterbee, which students can access via EduLink.
Stay safe.
Mr Tanner - Principal