2nd July 2020

Dear Parent(s)/Carer(s),

SNS Home Learning Week 12

I do hope this letter finds you well. It was good to see so many of you at our parents’ forums this week. These meetings have provided such valuable opportunities to engage with you and we have learnt much from listening to your views. The discussions have also helped us to further develop our offer to better meet the needs of our students. As we look ahead and plan for our return to school, I am determined to continue these forums to ensure the school and our parents forge the strongest of partnerships to support our young people to have the highest quality of learning experiences that we can offer them.

Next week our parent forums continue with the BAME Parents Forum on Wednesday 8 July at 7pm and a second Year 10 Parents Forum on Thursday 9 July at 7pm. Please email my PA, Sophie Preedy, on sop.pre@sns.hackney.sch.uk should you wish to attend.

Today the government released guidance on September opening for all year groups. The leadership team and governors are reviewing the guidance and establishing the model for our return over the next few days. As always once I have concrete plans, I will share these with you. We are very much looking forward to having all the students back in school. As ever, the health and safety of our school community are of paramount importance, so we need to ensure we have fully risk assessed and taken all the necessary steps to reduce the transmission of the virus.

Plans for our Year 10 and Year 12 summer school are near complete. Letters home to parents will be sent out next week. Please remember that social distancing requirements will continue to be in place. Our Year 10 and Year 12 will have already experienced this in the time that they were at school. Everyone in our community must play a part to keep all of us safe. Thank you to our students who have shown maturity in this regard.

As you may be aware the government-funded laptop scheme co-ordinated by the local authority for our students eligible for Free School Meals to receive a laptop and/or wireless routers to access the internet. Whilst we are grateful for this, the number we were allocated did not cover all the students who are eligible. I am pleased to inform you that through your generous donations to the PTFA together with one of our parents donating ten brand new laptops to the school, we can now equip every eligible student in Year 10. This is brilliant news – thank you so much one and all.

Lastly, our theme of the week is cultural capital. So, I end this week’s letter with a beautiful quote from Stephen Hawking which seems rather apt.

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.”

Wishing you all well.

Zehra Jaffer