Dear Parents & Carers
The series of announcements made this week has shed some light on the path education is treading over the next term and a half or so, but there is still much to learn. The exams announcements in particular left out a lot of detail which has been promised in the coming weeks. Here’s what we know and what we are waiting for.
- We will test all consenting students for Covid-19 with lateral flow tests next Thursday 4 and Friday 5 March. This will allow us to fully re-open for all year groups on Monday 8 March. You will receive your child’s appointment early next week via SchoolPost.
- We will then test all students twice again in school between Monday 8 and Wednesday 17 March. Appointments will be confirmed but will be during the school day.
- The home testing kits for students will be with us before Monday 15 March, which will allow all students to start testing at home twice a week following their third test in school. We will share a schedule with you and explain how to log the results with us in due course.
This all means that, by Thursday 18 March, we should have settled back into routines and some semblance of normality and will be able to focus entirely on learning.
The remainder of this half term will see quite a few classroom-based assessments as we establish how well students have learnt through lockdown and where the gaps in knowledge and skills are. In the background, our teaching and learning team have been working with Heads of Departments on a post-Covid curriculum. This is for Years 7-9 and will start after the Easter break. We will publish this in full on our website with links to further information and materials so you can support your child at home. This curriculum will then be reviewed and republished in the autumn. Departments have gone through their Key Stage 3 curriculum and established the vital skills and content which weaves into the GCSE years. It is these skills and this content we will focus on after Easter and into the next academic year, making sure all our students in Years 7-9 are where they need to be by the end of Year 9. More information on this will follow later this term.
For Years 11 and 13, the much awaited announcements arrived yesterday following the consultation. Around 500,000 people contributed to the consultation, with 52% of those being students. (I will always wonder why this wasn’t done last September as part of planning for a possible second wave, but so be it.) This document lacks a lot of detail, however it does set out some key points:
- Teachers will set the students’ grades and the grades will not be adjusted by an algorithm.
- To inform this grade, we can draw on evidence from the start of the course, from lockdown, and from learning that takes place from Monday 8 March until the point when these year groups leave in the summer.
- Students are to be assessed only against the content which has been taught. This is a really important point as where we had to adapt or delay our curriculum due to lockdowns and forced absence during the autumn term, this won’t count against students.
- Schools should publish the sources of evidence so all students know what is being used.
- Exam boards will provide question banks for school-based tests, but it is up to schools to decide whether to use them and, if they are using them, how they will be sat.
Whilst this gives some idea of what is coming, more detail is expected by the end of March. We will work up our plans and I can promise you we will be completely transparent about all of it so everybody can see our process.
For Years 10 and 12, we will continue the exam courses, using assessment to ensure we are plugging gaps in learning. However, you should know that within the profession there is a lot of pressure being put on the Government to tell us now how the exams students will take in 2022 will be adjusted to allow for the disruption they have experienced. We do expect there to be an exam season in 2022, assuming this pandemic is defeated by the vaccines, but it is right and proper that adjustments are made and are clearly communicated.
I hope to be able to share further details with you as we go through the rest of this term and into the summer term. In the meantime, thank you for all your support throughout this lockdown and we look forward to seeing your kids on Monday 8 March (though maybe not quite as much as you look forward to getting them out of the house).
Best wishes
Andy Perry – Head Teacher
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