Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope this letter finds you and your family well. We all know these are testing times and I genuinely think that as a community we are doing brilliantly. Thank you to all our students, who on the whole have embraced online learning and have shown great resilience and understanding at this time. Thank you also to our staff who are working hard to plan lessons and stay connected with students, and of course to you as parents for all your vital support. I know it is not always easy – all families will have different circumstances and pressures to deal with, and of course, some of you will be personally affected by the crisis we are living through. No doubt for many it of us it now feels more than a little monotonous.

As a school, we are continually reviewing our home learning provision to enable optimum learning for our students and to support our staff taking into consideration that in addition to teaching, many of our staff are juggling home learning with their own children and worried about their own personal circumstances, friends and families.

Thank you to the parents who have completed the recent survey about home learning, your feedback helps us to further improve our provision. I am very grateful for all the positive comments which have been very well received by staff and certainly boost morale at this time.

The majority of parents felt the amount of work set was just right and that most of our young people are spending two or more hours a day on their studies. The biggest challenge for home learning was the working environment followed by wi-fi connection or not enough devices. Parents welcomed the tutor contact, however, there was still concern that some students are feeling disconnected from school. To help strengthen the sense of belonging at this time, the pastoral team is rolling out Microsoft Teams tutor sessions across the year groups starting with Year 10 and Year 12 this week. We hope your child will join in with these opportunities ‘to meet’ their tutor and the rest of their tutor group. Please kindly go through the attached online conferencing guidelines with your child/children.

Thank you for your suggestions in the survey which we will explore in more detail in the next few days. Apologies to our parents who have more than one child at SNS, if you wish to complete a further survey to reflect the experiences of your other child/children please email admin@sns.hackney.sch.uk and we will send you a link. Please complete by noon on Wednesday 13 May.

Mental Health and Wellbeing

Hackney Educational Psychology Service Telephone Advice Line

The Educational Psychology Service is offering a telephone advice line for parents and carers. This is open to all families living in Hackney who would like support and advice. It offers an opportunity to talk about your child/children with an educational psychologist for up to 30 minutes on a phone line. They can help by talking through your concerns, making suggestions for practical activities, sending resources, signposting to other services, answering questions and generally helping you to think about ways to support your child/children across a wide range of areas.

The service runs from 10.am to 12.30.pm and 2.pm to 4.30pm on Wednesdays on 020 8820 5719.

Domestic Abuse

We know that this period has seen a worrying increase in domestic violence and abuse. Please see some useful contacts below:

Hackney Council's Domestic Abuse Intervention Service are still operating during the Coronavirus crisis and can provide you with help and support. You can contact DAIS on:

Additional helplines that can provide you with confidential support and advice:

  • You can call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline 24-hours for free on 0808 2000 247 or you can call the free National Stalking Helpline on 0808 802 0330
  • If you are concerned about the safety of children you can call the Council's Children and Families Service on 020 8356 5500 Monday - Friday 9am-5pm or on their out of hours number: 020 8356 2710

Reporting to the Police

If you, or someone you know, is in immediate danger call 999. If you're unable to talk aloud, you can make a silent call to the police by dialing 999 and pressing 55 when prompted to do so.

If you do not fear for your immediate safety, you can report abuse by calling 101 or visiting bit.ly/report-domestic-abuse.

Deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired: In case of an emergency, call the 999 textphone on 18000. You can also text 999 if you've pre-registered for the Emergency SMS service on bit.ly/emergency-sms. In non-emergencies or for general advice you can call the police's non-emergency textphone number: 18001 101.

In addition to this please click the link below to see additional resources to support children and young people at this time.

www.vamhn.co.uk/covid-19-resources.html

SNS Home Learning Project

I do hope you managed to watch our poet in residence, Adisa, perform his poem in tribute to the NHS on our website and his performance has encouraged our youngsters to write their own words. You can watch his video here. The deadline for these is Monday 11 May. A new theme will be launched next week. Thank you to everyone who has already contributed to our project. We are keen to show our gratitude to all of our key workers so please keep your contributions coming. We are delighted to let you know that our design and technology department produced 500 PPE visors which were delivered to Homerton Hospital, St Anne’s Nursing Home and St Joseph’s Hospice this week. Well done team!

Year 8 Options

Year 8 Options letters are now in the post and parents should be receiving these very soon. If you have any questions relating to options please contact Lucy Bryant, Deputy Headteacher (Curriculum).

Finally, it seems this weekend we will have some clarity around the emerging roadmap for schools reopening. As ever we are closely monitoring government advice and guidance. Whilst we are looking forward to returning to some sort of normality, we will only return to school when it is safe to do so. We will continue to update and inform you to ensure you are best able to support and prepare your child/ren so that when they do return to school, they are able to understand and abide by the measures implemented to reduce transmission of the virus.

Once again thank you for all your support. I leave you with a quote from Albert Einstein on this week’s theme of opportunity:

“Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

Wishing you a safe and restful, long weekend.

Zehra Jaffer