25th September 2020

Dear Parents and Carers,

I’m trying to return to fortnightly bulletins, but it seemed sensible to write to you at the end of our first week with everyone in school to let you know how it has been and to update you on some of the small changes we’ve made.

Staff and students have all done a great job this week and I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how normal everything has felt. Lessons have been calm and business-like. Behaviour has been excellent.

Students have continued to impress me this week with their willingness to comply with all the safety precautions we put in place for them such as sticking to their own side of the field, staying in their own side of the canteen and queuing for their own till. Since the law changed to prohibit people gathering in groups of more than six, allowing students to mix in large groups in their free time feels out of step. If a student tests positive for Covid, part of our tracking and tracing would be to ask who they had been with at break or lunch so it’s important that students can give us that information. To limit students potential expose to Covid, and to make tracking and tracing easier should that happen, we have asked them to sit or stand in groups of no more than six.

We have given out more than 500 disposable masks to students this week who forgot to bring or lost their own. The cost of that is substantial. From now on, students will need to give their name to get a mask and we’ll be monitoring who they are with a view to asking parents to cover some of the cost. If families are in financial hardship and struggling to meet the extra cost of masks then I’m of course happy to support and to provide masks free of charge. I’m also happy to support students who forget their mask from time to time – we all do. I’m not happy however to keep providing masks for students who are just being disorganised or careless.

The system of students wearing PE kit to school is working well, but some students are taking the opportunity to wear their favourite sports kit regardless of whether it is uniform or not. Please ensure that your children come to school in Samuel Ward PE kit on PE days. We know not everyone has SWA branded jogging bottoms or hoodies, so we are quite happy accept something close to it. I hope this chart will be useful.

PE Uniform 

Ideal

Acceptable

Not Acceptable 

Grey hooded SWA sweatshirt or plain grey hooded sweatshirt 

Samuel Ward hoodies from sports trips e.g. ski trip 

Any other types of hoodies including other colours, branded or non-plain 

Grey SWA polo shirt or plain grey polo shirt 

Sports Leaders polo shirt 

Any other types of polo shirt or t-shirt, including other colours, branded or non-plain 

SWA navy jogging bottoms or plain navy jogging bottoms 

 

Any other jogging bottoms, including other colours, branded or non-plain 

Plain navy shorts 

Plain navy shorts with plain navy or black leggings underneath 

Leggings with no shorts 

Branded or non-plain leggings 

Striped leggings (e.g. adidas) 

Navy or white sports socks/trainer socks 

 

 

The canteen have not been able to produce enough food on more than one occasion this week and some children have not been able to buy lunch. That really isn’t good enough and I apologise to all of those students. The problem has been that because we are running a hot food service at all three serveries, demand for that has risen while our capacity has remained the same.  We are looking at an urgent temporary solution for Monday and a more long term solution as soon as possible.

Finally, thanks to those of you who have completed the short survey on IT access from home. Several of you have written with some more detailed feedback which is all very helpful. If you haven’t seen the survey, you can find it here.

I’ll close by saying how grateful I am to all of you for your support with our efforts to provide an excellent education, a safe environment and a much-needed dose of normality wherever we can. 

Have a good weekend,

Andy Hunter

Headteacher