Coronavirus Daily Update 25.03.20

Covid-19 (Coronavirus)

 Daily Update 25^th March 2020

1. The College is now closed

•  This does NOT affect the emergency childcare provision for the children of key workers and vulnerable children.
• Parents should continue to contact the College as normal (e-mail, phone); my colleagues are still working, but from home.

2. Emergency Childcare Provision (ECP)

•  This provision is an offer to parents in key roles who are not able to find childcare, and whose children cannot be left at home safely.
• Government guidance stresses that all students should remain at home if at all possible. The guidance actually says the provision should only be taken up “if required” as a “last resort”. Thank you so much to parents for observing this. We have reduced our skeleton staffing, and more families are safer as a result.
• If your child is attending ECP @ College, please e-mail by 08.00 a.m. each day s/he attends. We need this for safeguarding reasons, and to plan.
• Further details are contained in previous daily updates.
• We will continue the ECP from Monday to Friday, including Bank Holidays, throughout the Easter holiday period (30^th March – 13^th April)

3. School Transport

•  This is only relevant to students attending ECP.
• All of the CV school bus routes have stopped.
• HOWEVER, if your child is eligible for school transport, and would need to use it on a given day or days, please e-mail and and by 12.00 on the day before, with your child’s name, route (eg CV 59) and pick up point. Your child must show their bus pass.

4. Trips: Bude (Year 8) and Belgian Battlefields (Year 9)

•  Please do not make any further payments for either of these trips.
• You will understand it is likely that both will be cancelled, much to my regret. We are in discussion with the travel companies and will advise you further when we have clear information.

5. Free School Meals

•  The good news is that we have the vouchers for Tesco; £12 per child per week for three weeks.
• The less good news is that we are having some technical issues sending them out. If you have not received them by the end of today (Wednesday) as intended, they will be with you tomorrow morning (Thursday)

6. Remote Learning

• If you are experiencing any problems, please e-mail your child’s teacher in the first instance. You can also e-mail or phone all staff as usual; phone calls are being diverted to e-mail.
• Please note that we will not be setting work from Monday 30^th March to Monday 13^th April inclusive (the “Easter holidays”).
• Please see the Guidance below

7. Other Student Issues

•  Y13 students should remain calm and not “jump” if they are getting changed offers from universities. Please do not change firm/insurance offers without consulting Miss Haynes first:

LINKS AND FURTHER INFORMATION

The following link is the government’s advice to schools, last updated 20^th March

Guidance to Educational Settings About Covid-19

The next link is Devon County Council’s dedicated website for parents for Coronavirus advice

https://www.devon.gov.uk/document/schools-and-families/

Department for Education Coronavirus helpline:

Phone: 0800 046 8687  Opening hours: 8am to 6pm (Monday to Friday)

Email:

Should you have any specific queries regarding Covid-19 and Clyst Vale, please e-mail Mrs Ann Hopkins (College Manager) on .

Kevin Bawn, Principal

Guidance for Remote Learning

As you know, we plan to send work to students every day that they would normally have a lesson with us. This will mainly be via email. My colleagues are working hard to try and ensure the work is meaningful and accessible and that it allows students to make progress at home. Please can I ask that:

• You ask students to check their emails every morning and organise their day.
• Students email their teachers if they need to ask a question or have problems accessing the work. This needs to be done between 9am and 4pm. If students are able to keep to their normal routine of lessons as timetabled and send questions during the normal time for their science lesson this will allow the teacher to prioritise their responses. But please do not worry if this is not possible due to your own routine at home.
• Students do not normally email work back to their teachers unless they are asked to do so. Please bear in mind that a teacher could be sending work to more than 100 students on a given day. This also eases pressure on students to meet a series of deadlines. Teachers will prioritise and review specific pieces of students’ work as appropriate.
• Some subjects will set “assessed tasks”, especially for exam years. Students will be asked to mark most of the work themselves, using specially prepared mark schemes that will be emailed to them. This is the model which subjects are using for Year 10 exams (below). Where we ask them to complete a task under exam conditions, please encourage them to do so (this means not using their notes, textbooks or the internet and completing the task in one seating). Subjects may use the marks to help plan provision when we get back to school and prioritising the areas where they have shown weaker understanding.
• For year 10: students have been given (or will get in the post) the mock papers. Follow your teachers’ instructions. Most are asking that they put the papers away somewhere safe until after Easter.
• For year 11: Please refer back to my message in my separate letter to Year 11: the best thing our students can do now is keep learning and keep their minds active. We will continue to send work at least until we have finished the course in May.
  • You could well have an opportunity to sit exams in maybe the Autumn, or next summer, so you don’t want to let all that learning slide.
  • Some subjects have not completed the GCSE course yet, so even without an exam it is worth learning the rest of the syllabus.
  • In some subjects it would be valuable to go over certain topics more deeply.
  • In some subjects you may have coursework or non-examined assessments which can be completed.
  • You really will find Year 12 or first year at College much harder with a six-month break from learning.
  • Your teachers will send out reading and resource lists relevant to a range of Year 12/College courses.
  • No learning is ever wasted
• For year 12: we will continue to set work throughout this period, making sure we cover both the Y12/ AS (where appropriate) course first before moving on to A2 content. It is really important that students do their best to keep up with the work set. Subjects will be sending a mix of content lessons, research, small assessments, exam practice and more, and I anticipate many subjects will organise formal assessments for Y12/AS content once we are back in school.
• For year 13: We understand that the uncertainty around allocation of grades will make it difficult for some students to find the motivation to complete work. I have asked colleagues to keep contacting students and sending them relevant tasks to do for every timetabled lesson. Where the course content has already been covered, these tasks may take the form of wider reading around the subject. We are still awaiting finer details regarding our input in the allocation of grades so it would not be appropriate for staff to discuss this with students or parents. Do, however, encourage students to get in touch if they need help with the work set.