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Parent Bulletin 03/07/20

Please see the latest bulletin from Mr Solly below...

Dear parents and carers,

I hope this newsletter finds you and your families safe and well. Since we first entered lockdown at the end of March, we have all been experiencing novel ways of leading our lives. This has been challenging, sometimes upsetting, sometimes rewarding and consistently uncertain. Our children have needed the calm reassurance of the key adults in their lives and at times this has been hard to provide. The uncertainty of the future, a lack of control and a constantly changing national landscape has tested all of our resilience in ways I hope we never have to experience again. This week we saw the city of Leicester enter an extended lockdown period and I am sure this has affected many members of our school community in some way. Our thoughts are with those affected and we hope the situation improves there quickly. However, this difficult journey has been punctuated with glimmers of light, hope and optimism. Our students have been the main source of these and we have been inspired by their stories of kindness, compassion and courage. Having completed 2 full weeks of face to face teaching for Year 10, our staff have remarked at how wonderful it has been to welcome students back to UCC and we are delighted with how this provision has gone so far. As a school community we are looking forward to seeing students from all other year groups in the not too distant future. 

Relating to this, yesterday we received the publication of an important guidance document for schools that outlines government plans for all students to return to full time education in September. We have a busy fortnight ahead of us as we digest these guidelines and construct a plan to enable all UCC students to re-start school in September. I will spend time next week liaising with colleagues across the school and following this I intend to publish our plans to parents and students in the final week of term. You can read through the document online here. Given that all schools have unique characteristics, it is impossible for the guidance to be fully implemented by every school in the country. We will assess the key aspects of the guidance that will enable us to safely re-open UCC to all students and make adaptations where necessary that reflect the nature of our school site and context.

One of the headlines you may have seen this week is that the government intend to fine parents who do not send their children back to school in September. I do not think this approach is helpful and I would like to reassure you all that we will not issue fines at the start of term. Instead, we want to work in partnership with all our families and where there are individual concerns we want to be supportive and find ways of successfully re-integrating students back into school by building up everyone's confidence in our arrangements. 

I hope you all have a great weekend.
Mr Solly