Dear Parents/Carers,
I hope that you are all well and that your children are enjoying the end of the Half-Term break. I am writing with some key updates ahead of the start of Autumn Half-Term 2 which begins for all students on Tuesday November 3rd at 9.15am.
Firstly, I am pleased to give another positive update re-Coronavirus. We have still had no new cases reported in school since Monday September 21st, and so once more, the school remains fully open on a full-time basis for all students. Providing your child remains well, they should continue to attend school as normal.
I would also like to make you aware that even if the Coronavirus situation does worsen this winter in Birmingham or nationwide and mainstream schools are asked to partially close, the government’s position is that as an Alternative Provision school, we would remain fully open on a full-time basis. As you would expect however, we have been working hard in recent weeks to plan for scenarios where individual students or a “Key Stage Bubble” may have to self-isolate in the event of further cases- full details on how we would ensure students would not miss out on learning are available in our Remote Education Policy at: https://www.theedgeacademy.co.uk/policies/
Having reviewed our previous pandemic risk assessment, I am pleased to confirm that we have been able to make arrangements from the start of Autumn Half-Term 2 for all students to be able to access our free Breakfast Club once again from 8.45am every morning. Key Stage 4 students (those in Years 10 and 11) who had been accessing this from the later time of 9.15am since September as part of a “staggered start” will now be able to arrive at school for breakfast from 8.45am and will return to school starting at 9.15am with form time before the beginning of lessons at 9.35am. In order to keep our safety measures robust, Key Stage 4 students must now enter and leave the school building via the rear entrance which is now clearly signposted.
Our risk assessment (again available at https://www.theedgeacademy.co.uk/policies/) remains largely unchanged otherwise- school will continue to operate in two separate bubbles, one for Key Stage 3 students (Years 7,8 and 9) and one for Key Stage 4 (Years 10 and 11). I would be grateful if you could reinforce this with your children ahead of the start of the new half-term; in the event of any cases where students attempt to enter an “out of bounds area” for their bubble, we will contact you immediately.
For the first time ever, we are now an over-subscribed school against our Department for Education funded place numbers, but we are delighted to continue to admit new starters and expand given that we have the building space and staffing capacity to do so. As a result of our rapidly growing roll, we have now created an additional teaching group for Year 11 students which will come into effect from the start of Autumn Half-Term 2. In other refinements to our “Safe, Ready, Respectful” curriculum, we have also been able to timetable in additional AQA “essential skills” unit award lessons for Year 10 students and change the order of some of our Key Stage 3 lessons from the start of term; we will obviously talk all of these adjustments through with students upon their return.
I would like to thank all students for the positive start they made last half-term and we continue to have high expectations of them being “ready to learn” for the remainder of the year. Although the vast majority of our students continue to consistently respect our mobile phone policy, following too many breaches of the policy from Year 9 students, this year group only will now not be permitted to keep phones with them from the start of term. If it is essential for students in Year 9 to bring phones to school, they will be required to either hand them into reception or place them in their lockers when signing in at the start of the day.
As you know, communication is important to us, and having established that large numbers of our students and parents/carers use Snapchat, from now on we will now be sharing all of the updates we post on our other social media platforms on Snapchat too. If you would like to sign up to our official account, our username is “edgenorthfield” or alternatively, follow the link at: https://www.snapchat.com/add/edgenorthfield
Finally, please be aware that Deanne Davies departed at the end of Autumn Half-Term 1, and we wish her well in her new role. The rest of our safeguarding team remain fully unchanged and alongside the [email protected] e-mail address, their individual contact details are:
Adam Smith (Vice Principal and Designated Safeguarding Lead)- [email protected]
Jas Greene (Deputy Designated Safeguarding Lead and Attendance Manager)- [email protected]
Calum Hill (Designated Senior Person and Lead Teacher of Maths)- [email protected]
As Principal, I am also a part of the core safeguarding team and a Designated Senior Person; please also feel free to contact me directly at [email protected] regarding any safeguarding as well as any general issues. I very much look forward to the new half-term!
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Wakefield
Principal