Dear Parent/Carers,

I hope you all had a wonderful, well-rested break, connecting with family and friends with the easing of the national restrictions. To those of you who celebrated Pesach, Easter and the start of Ramadhan – we hope these occasions were truly special for you and yours.

Lateral Flow Testing – Home Testing

We must continue to be alert to Covid levels within the community and the prospect that some students and staff may need to self-isolate in the event of a positive case. We will do all that we can to balance this risk and safeguard the Year 11 and 13 students, especially as they complete their Centre Assessed Grades (CAGS).

Students should continue to conduct lateral flow testing on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. As always, if your child’s test has a positive result, please email admin@sns.hackney.sch.uk as soon as possible. This inbox is checked 7 days a week, regularly throughout the day. If you require another home testing kit, please email us.

A reminder that test kits are available for households, please follow this link for more information and to order.

Parent/Carer Forum Recordings

On Monday 29 March, we held two Parent/Carer Forums, one on Supporting Your Child’s Return and the other for parent/carers of SEND Students. Both forums were recorded and have been made available in the Year Group forum folders if you were not able to join.

Behaviour and Relationships Policy Update

The pastoral focus for the transition back on-site over the last three weeks of the Spring term was about reconnecting with teachers and peers, re-establishing routines and reconfiguring ourselves from online learning back to face to face learning. The School adjusted its Behaviour and Relationships Policy to support this difficult time.

We expect all students to be the best they can be, fully engaging with learning and respectful to the community.

From today, Monday 19th April, all students in Year 7 to 10 will receive homework as per usual. We will be introducing detentions for students who accumulate three behaviour incidents in one week. These detentions will be for thirty minutes on Tuesdays after school, parents will be notified on the Monday before the detention.

Students must come to school in full school uniform, including lanyard and coats are not to be worn in the building. They must also be equipped with the correct stationery equipment (pen, pencil, ruler as per our equipment list) and a reading book. Failing to do this leads to our students not being prepared for learning and disrupts the learning of others. Behaviour incidents will be issued for lack of equipment, hence please support your child to be best prepared for the classroom by packing school bags the night before.

Face masks will continue to be required in the communal areas and classrooms.

Thank you for your support in this matter.

Curriculum Plans and School Day 2021-2022

On Wednesday 21 April at 6.00pm, we will be holding a forum for parents’ to present our curriculum plans for the new era, together with the new timetable of the school day, starting in September 2021. You can find a link to this forum here.

Sexual Harassment and Sexual Abuse in Schools Parents Forum Wednesday 5 May 6-7pm

Before the end of last term, the website 'Everyone's Invited' has drawn much publicity for the shocking testimonials from over 10,000 people describing sexual abuse by other young people. As a result, the government announced that they were launching a review into sexual abuse in schools.

NEW Dedicated NSPCC helpline 0800 136 663

The new helpline will provide both children and adults who are potential victims of sexual abuse in schools with the appropriate support and advice. This includes how to contact the police and report crimes if they wish. The helpline will also provide support to parents and professionals too. Ofsted are conducting a review of the safeguarding policies of all schools over the next two months to ensure these are robust measures in place.

At SNS, we are working with our students and Safer Schools Police Team to ensure all students feel and are safe from harassment and abuse. We will be holding a parents’ forum with the Safer Schools Team Sergeant Hayley Keyes on Wednesday 5th May at 6pm to learn about the school’s response, partnership working with the safer schools’ team and give parents/carers an opportunity to learn about how to support their child.

National Survey of Children, The Big Ask

Please see below extract from today’s guidance from the Department for Education.

The new Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has today launched The Big Ask – the largest ever consultation with children aged 4 to 17 in England. It aims to find out children’s concerns and aspirations about the future, so that we can put children at the heart of our country’s recovery from the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
All schools are encouraged to support their pupils to complete this survey. A range of teaching resources have also been produced, including lesson plans and activity packs, to help teachers incorporate this into their lessons.
Parents, care leavers and those working with children are also invited to complete the adult survey to share their views about the future for children and young people today, and what they think is holding young people back.
The results from this survey will help the Children’s Commissioner identify the barriers preventing children from reaching their potential, put forward solutions and set ambitious goals for the country to achieve.

Key Dates

A reminder that you can view our key dates on the school website here.

And finally…

Thank you to everyone in the school community, staff, students, parents and wider community, for your phenomenal support and endeavours.

As we move into more hopeful times, I end this letter with a quote from Rosa Parks.

“To bring about change, you must not be afraid to take the first step. We will fail when we fail to try.”

Best wishes,

Zehra Jaffer