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Parent Bulletin 14/09/20

Please read the latest update from Mr Solly, including our plans for re-opening:

Dear parents and carers, 

I would normally write to you each Friday but there were some key milestones due to be completed today which impact our plans. 

You will be pleased to hear that our Fire Recovery plan is making good progress and we are on schedule to welcome students back to school in the week beginning 21st September. Today, the three storey block was successfully wrapped and we can now begin to implement our plan to reintroduce staff and students to the school. Below is the planned phased restart, but please understand that these are still subject to change and the final arrangements will be confirmed on Friday this week:

 

Monday 21st  September

Tuesday 22nd  September

Wednesday 23rd September  

Thursday 24th September  

Friday 25th September  

In school 

Y11  

Y11, 7 

Y11, 10, 7 

Y11, 10, 9, 7 

All in  

At home 

Y7, 8, 9, 10  

Y8, 9, 10 

Y8, 9 

Y8 

 

It is really important that we ensure our Covid-safe arrangements are adhered to by all students and staff so we are gradually re-introducing one year group at a time. This plan is however, re-introducing students quicker than we had originally planned, which is testament to the outstanding work completed by UCC staff to recover so swiftly from the fire. The temporary classrooms are now in place and over the course of the next week they will be prepared and fully installed. Once our temporary classrooms are signed off, the entire Humanities team will be located there and this actually makes movement around the school site safer as we are no longer accessing the narrow stair wells in the three story block. 

We are planning to welcome our teaching staff back in school on Thursday 17th and Friday 18th September for essential training and to ensure our classrooms are ready for students returning. Work will be set on SMHW for students on these two days but the staff will not be online to provide support or feedback. 

We are determined to get students back into learning routines as quickly as possible and the staff are working incredibly hard to achieve this is the swiftest and safest possible manner.  It is worth noting that during our proposed phased return week our teachers will be balancing teaching commitments in school with setting remote learning and I would ask students and parents to be patient and understanding with this.

Please note a couple of important notices below: 

Year 11 Catch Up arrangements

You may have read that schools will be provided with additional funds to support 'catch-up' programmes for Year 11 students who are now in their final GCSE year. We will organise after school sessions with UCC staff for students to attend throughout the academic year to support Year 11. We will publish more details once we have successfully re-started school.

Car parking 

As we have lost a significant number of car parking spaces in order to accommodate the temporary classrooms, we are now no longer able to allow students to be collected by car from the school car park after school.  At 3:30pm, cars will be able to access the car park, which leaves parents with two options: 

  • Organise to collect your child from somewhere in Uppingham after school 
  • Wait until 3:30pm and collect your child from the school site 

I appreciate that this is inconvenient but our car park is extremely busy at the start and end of school in normal circumstances and this has been exacerbated further by a reduced capacity.  

SEND arrangements 

Since the appointment of our Associate Assistant Principal, Mrs Wiggin, our special educational needs provision has significantly improved. Mrs Wiggin is the SENCO for UCC and also part of the Senior Leadership Team. As part of improving the way we communicate with the families of children with SEND, she has asked that all enquiries via email are sent to senco@ucc.rutland.sch.uk  

Finally… 

We continue to be amazed by the wonderful messages of support, kindness and generosity from the local community. We are starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel it won’t be too long before we can re-open; I cannot wait to welcome our students back to our school.  

I will write to you again on Friday with confirmation of the final arrangements and a reminder of how we will be working to ensure we maintain a Covid-safe environment. 

Take care and stay safe, 
Mr Solly