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Worthing High School

Worthing High School

Covid19 Update Letter to all parents/carers dated 20.3.20

LETTER TO ALL PARENTS AND CARERS AT 15.15 ON FRIDAY 20 MARCH 2020

Dear Parents and Carers

I wanted to say a big thank you to all of you for your letters and emails of support during this very challenging and testing time.

Sadly our school will close from today until further notice. We are in contact with parents/carers of vulnerable and key worker students in Years 7, 8, 9 and 10 who wish to continue to attend and a more detailed email will be going to the parent/carer of each child registered to attend from Monday 23 March later today.

Our staff will be on hand to provide support for those students studying at home and will also be supporting students with their online learning materials by email and through our various learning portals.

From Monday 23 March, our school will be running with a reduced reception team, pastoral team and some of our staff may also be self-isolating. In this challenging time, my staff will try to respond to emails in the usual 48 hours’ time frame but please can I ask you all to bear with staff as they are also dealing with a number of other issues at this time.

Please could you use the following email addresses:

office@worthinghigh.net – general enquires

workfromhome@worthinghigh.net – IT/Book/Resources issues for students studying at home

covid19@worthinghigh.net – for attendance updates

reportabuse@worthinghigh.net – for any safeguarding concerns

If any students, working from home, wish to come to school to collect books/resources etc. please can they come to main reception after 9am and before 13.30. Please remember that students should not be socialising with each other and so we would not expect groups of students to arrive together. No one who is self-isolating should come onto the school site.

I would also like to say a huge to thank you to all of our year 11 students whose time with us has come to a sad and abrupt end.  Our year 11 leavers’ assembly was perhaps not as polished as we would have liked it, but it was absolutely the right thing to do and give them a sense of closure when there is very little certainty anywhere else.

We are working hard to gain clarity over the situation with GCSE qualifications but unfortunately, at the moment, are unable to share anything definite with you. We will, of course, update you as soon as we have any more information. We will be sending out a final report to each Year 11 student. This will provide a final prediction and it is this grade we will submit should the Department for Education ask for a predicted grade to be taken as a final result. These grades will be based on a number of factors and take into consideration the hard work and significant progress made since the mock exams. We hope to have these out early next week.  Class of 2020 have been outstanding!

I would like to urge parents and carers to support Year 11 students by encouraging them to continue working as they have lost a significant chunk of schooling, whether this is in preparation for their next stage of study, developing curriculum vitae’s or carrying on with GCSE studies. Whilst we do not have the capacity to set this work, their school accounts and access to online platforms are and will remain open to facilitate this until the end of the summer term.

Finally, all that is left for me to add is that I am extremely proud of how Worthing High School staff responded to the demands placed on them and our students have been excellent in supporting requests made by staff in clearing out lockers, collecting books etc. in such a short time frame.

Please encourage and support your child’s learning whilst at home.   Normal service will resume at some point and it will be important that we have done as much as possible to reduce the time lost at school.  Students should keep a diary/read/study and where appropriate exercise and try to maintain some normality.

I wish you, our staff, students and all of our families all the very best.  Please stay safe and look after each other.

With kind regards

Pan Panayiotou

Headteacher