Dear Parents and Carers

I can honestly say that we have been bowled over with how well your children have returned to college this week and in the case of our Year 7 pupils have immersed themselves so quickly into the life of our college. They look so smart in their uniforms. Thank you for your support with this. It really does demonstrate how committed you are to creating a climate for learning in which your children will thrive.

Hopefully they will have shared with you more details of the arrangements for our year group bubbles and you will feel reassured by the measures we have put in place to keep children and staff safe. Having the chance to spend time explaining this to each year group and “walking” them through it has been invaluable and we believe that Monday, when all our pupils are in for the first time, will be more successful as a result. Thank you for your understanding for this bubble induction period.

We all know it is crucial that we follow the Public Health guidance about when you should not send your child into school if they are demonstrating any of the three symptoms and what to do next. This guidance can be found at

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/symptoms/coronavirus-in-children/

ParentPay money for lunches

Over the summer we have had our ICT infrastructure upgraded. This will give our pupils a better and more robust system. This has created some issues with the software moving over to our new servers. One complication has been adding and deducting amounts to individual ParentPay accounts. We have contacted the company who supply this service and hope to have it resolved very soon. To ensure all pupils receive their lunch we have continued to provide lunches and no charges will be incurred for any pupil who has received a lunch in school this week.

However, from Monday 7th September charges will begin again for lunches. If the network issues are still unresolved, a record of lunches taken will be created and charges will be applied to ParentPay accounts retrospectively. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and expect that the company can help us resolve this issue very quickly.

Contacting the college

A reminder that in light of current circumstances, we would ask that all parents / carers use the telephone as the primary means of contact. To adhere to current guidelines, meetings with staff will be strictly by pre-arranged appointments only.

I hope that everyone has a restful weekend as we look forward to welcoming back all of our children on Monday morning.

Yours faithfully

Mr A Boyle

Headteacher