Headteacher Autumn 2020 Message
Welcome back all pupils, parents and staff to the new autumn term and our new website which is currently under development!
I have enjoyed hearing all about the adventures that the pupils had in their summer holidays and it was an immense joy to all of us, to see them all arriving on 9th September! They looked so refreshed, so grown up and so ready to learn!
Our staff may have had 7 weeks ‘off’ but I can assure you there was a lot of preparation over the summer, to ensure that all classes and ‘bubbles’ were ready to receive pupils safely.
We continue to operate under the stress of the Covid-19 outbreak however, we have robust school risk assessment in place and are doing our best to keep things as normal as we possibly can. Should we have anyone in our school community diagnosed with Covid-19, we will immediately put all steps in place as agreed with NYCC and Public Health England.
On a happier note, we refurbished 13 bedrooms over the summer and they look absolutely stunning: fit for our kings and queens! The College students have already personalised their own areas and they love the new décor. We have added an accessible pathway all around the farm. Darren has also almost finished building an outdoor classroom for the farm as well as refurbishing a playground, classrooms and study areas for our new Inclusion/SEMH group. We welcome Sarah Hodgson as their new teacher; some of you might remember Sarah from last year when she was employed by us as a temporary SENCO.
We are very proud of our unique curriculum; we have had excellent support from the local authority to create brand new schemes of work in each subject and those new plans along with our pathways, will be published online by the end of this term. This builds on the hard work from last year; I am really impressed by our teachers who have all willingly taken one (or two!) subject areas each and created whole school plans. We have still grouped the children into informal, semi-formal and formal learners, in line with many special schools, following the Rochford recommendations. We are finding that this better meets the needs of each student and allows them more meaningful social opportunities within a peer group.
We are so looking forward to seeing you all in person one day, when the current crisis is over but as ever thank you to all our parents, staff and most of all the children for your support in making our school the best it can be!
Marianne Best, Headteacher
