Dear Parents
Well done – that’s the first full week under our belts! Thank you for your engagement and positivity (and patience!) with the remote learning roll-out this week. It is hard to imagine that this time last week, most children had yet to log into Teams for the first time and now they are well on their way to becoming experts!
We are delighted to hear that the children have been enjoying engaging with their teachers live on Teams in the mornings and afternoons during the week and we look forward to the continuing development of the remote learning to meet the children’s emotional and learning needs as best we can. As previously, we recognise that some families would prefer to access the recordings, rather than the live sessions, while others are choosing to continue with paper-based work which fits around their work schedules. Please do feel free to make whatever are the right choices about remote learning for you and your family situation; the school will support as much as possible.
Laptops
Following last week’s newsletter, several families have come forward and taken up the offer of loaning a laptop from the school; we know that this has eased access to Teams for some families. If there are other families who are struggling with access to appropriate devices, please do make yourselves known to the school - it may not be a financial struggle so much as a logistical one, since many families have more than one child trying to access home learning and sometimes one or both parents are also trying to work from home. This week, we accepted an offer of 15 brand new ChromeBooks, as part of the Schools Partnership with ACS in Cobham – we hope to take delivery of these next week and will then have further capacity to offer computers to families in need. We are very grateful to ACS Cobham for their generous donation.
Online Safety
In order to support children’s online safety at home – and in line with our usual Computing curriculum for each term – we are uploading to Teams some short weekly activities from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection team (CEOP) to support online safety. These are designed for parents and children to work through together and we hope you will find them useful. If you are looking for further information about online safety – including how to set up parental controls and how to set settings to private, the NSPCC website has some very useful advice. It is also regularly updated with age recommendations for apps and games as they become available, so it is worth bookmarking. https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/
Children’s Mental Health
The effect of lockdown on children’s mental health is a recognised concern nationally and we know that many of our children at home are missing their friends and the structure and routine of a school day. This is one of the most difficult consequences of the Government’s directive to close schools in order to keep children, families, staff and the wider community safe and physically well. We hope the worst of the peak will soon be over and we can welcome children back into schools at that time. In the meantime, the Xavier Educational Psychologist team has produced a parent guide to supporting children’s mental health during lockdown and we hope the information will be useful for supporting you and your family click here
PE Sessions
Planet Soccer usually provide weekly PE sessions for our children in school and our coach, Mr Mark Fenton, has recorded a weekly PE session for children in KS1 and another for KS2. These have been filmed in a classroom and are designed to be able to be used indoors or outdoors, depending on the space families have available. The first session is “Jumping.” Siblings in the same key stage will be able to participate together, but the activities can be used by one child on their own. We know families are doing lots of walks, cycles and scoots to keep children’s (and adults!) activity levels high, but we hope that the children will enjoy the PE sessions and that it will help them to stay physically active at home during the lockdown period. These sessions can be found on Teams.
School Access Onsite
Thank you to the whole school community for supporting us by keeping numbers in school low. You will be aware that there has been one complete school closure locally this week and several of our fellow Xavier schools have had bubbles closed due to positive cases, with staff and vulnerable children at home unwell or isolating. Where staff are unwell, this affects not only the vulnerable children onsite, but also the remote learning offer at home. We have had one further positive case among a staff member this week, but our infection control procedures are so far operating well and we are striving to keep it that way. We are working really hard to keep both provisions operating effectively and we are so grateful for your support with this.
Free School Meals
Parents will be aware that there has been a lot of controversy in the media about inadequate food packages for families. We are pleased to confirm that Cardinal Newman has been operating a supermarket voucher system, rather than food packages for our families who qualify for needs-based Free School Meals. This operated well during the last lockdown and again over the Christmas holidays, so we anticipate continuing this provision for as long as it is needed. We run regular checks for entitlement to Free School Meals, but if your family situation has changed and you think you may now qualify, do please let the school office know.
We also access weekly Food Bank provision for families who can make use of this support and we have continued to support families in need via parent donations and School Fund where necessary. We know that the financial implications of the pandemic are continuing to bite and would encourage any families who are struggling (whether entitled to FSM or not) to please make themselves known to the school.
Monday Collective Worship 8:45am
From Monday, the Senior Leadership Team hope to lead a whole school collective worship each week via Teams. This would be our usual Monday “assembly” slot and we would like to bring the whole of our school community together in prayer at the start of the week. This will take place at 8:45am and last about ten or fifteen minutes, giving the children time for a stretch and a movement break before their first live call with their class teacher. Children who are onsite will take part in the same assembly slightly later in the morning.
If it is possible for an adult to supervise this, it would be a lovely symbol of community if we could each light a candle at home during the collective worship each week. The children are familiar with the candle on our school badge, symbolising Jesus as the light of the world, and with our St John Henry Newman school prayer “Lead kindly light… Lord Jesus lead me on.” Mr Flower will lead the first whole school collective worship on Monday morning.
Finally, thank you to all those families who have sent messages of support and thanks to staff this week. We have been so grateful for the blessing of our kind and supportive school community in this very busy time for schools. Thank you.
We wish all our school families a very happy weekend.
Catherine Burnham
Headteacher
