Update 15.05.2020
15th May 2020
Dear Parents and Carers
Some important updates for you, below:
Key Worker School - May Half term
If you are a Key worker and require a place for your child at school for the half-term week, please complete the form below by Monday 18 May https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=1u3qfje_FUCP6Rn7wsAtVZ5anT3Tt8NCpB3-WECuym5UNEY2U1pBQTVWNEpaSUhBVTVWNENUOTFUVC4u
Survey for Parents and Carers
The latest Government announcements about schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic have signalled that we will be continuing to provide home-schooling for some time to come. We are keen to continually improve this experience for the pupils: Please take a few minutes to complete the survey about your child’s experiences of home-schooling on the link below, and return by Friday 22 May.
Year 10
In accordance with the Government’s new guidelines that Year 10 pupils should have some face-to-face contact to supplement their learning over the next half term, all Heads of Department have been assessing their curriculum provision and individual pupil’s progress, so that we can work out where pupil visits to school are desirable and where continued remote learning is most appropriate. We have received no Government guidance on how the lockdown will be allowed-for in next year’s examinations and are therefore continuing to deliver the full required GCSE specifications, with some adaptations to the order of the units taught, as seems sensible.
Year 10 Work Experience Cancelled:
We have delayed making this decision for as long as possible but the Y10 work experience which was to take place 8th – 16th July 2020 has had to be cancelled. This disappointing decision has not been taken lightly, but the COVID-19 outbreak means that many employers will not be able to ensure that our pupils are safe and that they do not pose any additional risk to their staff and customers. Similarly, as a school, we could not check and risk-assess every workplace. Schoolwork will continue for pupils during the planned work experience period, although obviously not the Saturday or Sunday.
If your child’s work experience employer has not already cancelled, pupils are asked to telephone or email their employer to let them know out of courtesy. Pupils are being given some guidance on doing this; it would be appreciated if parents could support their children with their ‘phone call or email. As a College we will also contact employers.
If your child is lucky enough to be offered the opportunity to do their placement with that employer another time, please understand that doing so will be on the basis of a private arrangement between parents and the employer and would no longer be the College’s responsibility.
Please do email tthomas@cambournevc.org if you have any questions.
Activities Week Cancelled
Very sadly, we also have no choice but to cancel Activities Week, including the Year 7 Beaumanor visit in the last week of this term. We understand that the pupils will be extremely disappointed with this news. The safety of our pupils, staff, and their families remains the highest priority and the temporary closure of providers including Beaumanor make these activities impossible to run. We will do all we can to replicate some of these experiences for the pupils, when possible.
We will now be contacting providers and making a claim to our insurer as appropriate, in order to refund money paid by parents and carers as soon as possible. An email will be sent to inform you when this process has been completed. Refunds will be issued via WisePay directly to the card used when making the original payment. They normally take 3-4 working days to reach your account. If we are unable to process your refund via WisePay (you may have paid by cash or cheque, or the card used at the time of payment may have expired), Mrs Noble will contact you via email to get your bank details so that we can process your refund via bank transfer (these emails will be personally tailored and coming from pnoble@cambournevc.org).
We would like to thank parents and carers for their patience in relation to receiving refunds for cancelled trips: we know that for some families this is a very difficult time financially. We are pleased to confirm that we have now been able to refund most of the trips cancelled, but our insurer is handling thousands of claims. We are continuing to work with them in order to finalise our ongoing claims, and will be able to issue refunds for the year 7 Spanish trip to Zaragoza and the Geography trip to the Azores in due course.
Healthy-Selfie Competition – some rather more up-beat news!
The PE department are launching their “Healthy Selfie” competition in order to celebrate all the physical activity that students and families are doing.
Getting out the house, being active and raising your heart rate is so important, now more than ever. Not just for your physical health but also your mental and emotional wellbeing. It can help to reduce anxiety, increase self-esteem, improve your sleep and give you more energy to tackle the day.
We would like our students and their families when out on their daily walks, bike rides, completing physical activity or CamVC PE challenges, to take a selfie (a Healthy Selfie) to show off how they are maintaining their physical activity in this difficult time.
To share these healthy selfies, families can email (from an adult’s email address) their Healthy Selfie to cam-healthyselfie@cambournevc.org. Please ensure that you include parental or adult consent within the email in order for us to celebrate and share this on Twitter and the school website. We would like students to be wearing their school PE kit, please.
Additionally, after half term we will be launching our school inter-form competition and we hope everyone in the Cambourne family will be able to join in with this.
To make this a bit more competitive, you can already start to score points for your year group and tutor group before the official launch. Don’t forget to complete the Microsoft Form in order to register your points and give yoru tutor group and year group a headstart:
Please do check out our PE twitter page @CamVC_PE to find out more.
Thank-a-Teacher
If your child would like to thank any member of the teaching or support staff for their work during or before school closure, please consider sending a virtual postcard via this link: https://thankateacher.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Thank-a-Teacher-Day-2020-Tool-Kit.pdf
And finally – ‘shout-outs’ and examples of the great work done by pupils at home this week can be seen on our social media pages:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/CambourneVC/photos/?ref=page_internal
Wishing you all a lovely – and safe – weekend,
Claire Coates
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