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Principal's update: Friday 26 June 2020

Published on 29/06/20

Dear All,

I hope my email finds you all well and adjusting to the easing of lockdown. We have been delighted to welcome Year Ten back into school this last two weeks and pleased to report excellent attendance.  Next week (29th June 2020) we have a week of Science (please check your emails as the day students attend may be different). This is followed by two weeks of face to face teaching for option subjects.  We are also planning to introduce Y10 and Y9  to new GCSE courses – this may need to be done on paper and with technology rather than face to face – more to follow on this.

Staff have been teaching more lessons using Teams ‘live’ this week and continue to build up the amount of live teaching scheduled.  Please make sure you return the consent form so that we are all clear about expectations and online safety https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=qYFLD_HKc0-l_ki4jvUH4AgqmLT2h4VBn8AWm8-tRvhUMlRFMlJXSkFSVkFGRktZRFgyTTZKUjJRMC4u Thank you to parents and carers who have already done this.

We will continue to set work in Class Charts including the links to live lessons, students should continue to check their Teams calendar every day for live lessons just in case they miss an email or link.  There is also work on Teams under the assignments tab as well as on Classcharts – this is being set by individual teachers.  Of course, we will continue with paper where it has been requested – that is posted out each week.  My apologies for any problems with Classcharts or Teams earlier this week.  Our main school Management Information Software had a glitch which caused knock on problems in Classcharts and Teams. This was resolved on Wednesday so everything should be back to normal now. Our apologies if students couldn’t find work or Teams lessons were missed.

We will not be taking any INSET time this week or next week as originally planned on the calendar – we will be taking a day at the end of term - Friday  17th July 2020 for essential staff training so there will no students in school that day.  I hope that will not inconvenience our key worker parents/carers too much.

Can we also thank our parents and carers who have volunteered to become parent/carer governors – this is an essential role and will be key to our ongoing journey. I am looking forward to welcoming the elected governors to our new board in September 2020.

Next week would have been the official leaving date for Year Eleven – I am so sorry that the year has ended this way for them.  As soon as we can arrange events in school, we will invite you all for a celebration event.  In the meantime, we are working to reschedule the Prom and preparing a virtual celebration video.  We will send out information about GCSE results day as soon as we have confirmed the details with exam boards and considered appropriate safety measures.  You may not be coming back to HVC this academic year but you have never left our thoughts – you will always be a Hope Valley student no matter where you go.  I wish every single one of you success and happiness in the future.  We will meet again and we will celebrate your time at HVC.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely weekend when it arrives.  Kind regards.

Mrs Gaynor Jones
Principal
Hope Valley College