Tuesday 17 March 2020

Dear Parents/Carers

Firstly, thank you to everyone for your support at this challenging time, in particular to our committed staff for working so hard to ensure that our school remains open and fully operational for our students. We will continue to be open unless otherwise advised by Public Health England or the government. If the staffing levels warrant a change to the timetable, then please be assured we will be protecting examination year groups.

That said, if schools are forced to close, I am mindful that staff will need quality time to be properly prepared. This is very difficult to do, whilst teaching students at the same time. Therefore, I will be closing the School on Friday 20 March to all students, except Year 13 who will continue with their mock examinations. On this day, teachers will have refresher training on Show My Homework and Microsoft Teams followed by time in their departments to collate resources, which can be promptly shared with parents and students should the school close.

If, however, a decision is made by government and/or Public Health England to close schools earlier then I will communicate our plans for student work in my daily update. Should we need to introduce partial closure by sending individual year groups home, we will endeavour to support parents whose occupations find them in the frontline of managing the response to the Coronavirus epidemic by seeking to keep the children of these parents at school in the event of a part closure. In order for us to be best prepared, please could you email admin@sns.hackney.sch.uk if you are in one of the following occupations: healthcare, education, social services and emergency services and you do not have access to childcare in the event of partial closure or the closure on Friday 20 March,

As you are aware from yesterday’s communication, we have ramped up our washing and cleaning provision. We have used the school tannoy system to remind students to wash regularly, before school, break, lunchtime and after school. We are fortunate to have secured more cleaning staff from the council who will be with us each day all day for the foreseeable future. We have also cancelled our after-school meetings, to allow for cleaning from 4.30pm until 7.00pm focusing particularly on handles, desktops and doors. We will then close the school at 7pm. There will be no external lettings; in the morning before school there will further cleaning from 6am to 8am. From today, we have introduced staggered and take away lunches to reduce the number of students congregating, responding to the government’s advice on social distancing.

A reminder that Year 8 parents’ evening is cancelled, we will continue with the options process and the deadline for submission of choices remains Friday 3 April. We will add a link to access our online options form on the school website here by the end of this week, along with clear guidance. All of the information following our options evening held on Wednesday 4 March is also available in the same location. If additional support or guidance is required, please do email Luc.Bry@sns.hackney.sch.uk.

Thank you to those of you have sent food items for the homeless in our local community. Please do keep items coming for our most vulnerable community members.

Lastly, the government are now giving daily updates, so should anything change for schools, I will communicate this later this evening. Please click here for useful links and resources.

Yours faithfully,

Zehra Jaffer