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Woodfield Newsletter

Friday 14th May 2021

Dear Parents/ Carers,

We wish "Eid Mubarak" to all our families who celebrated the conclusion to Ramadan this week. We trust all the families were able to celebrate the occasion safely.

As was hinted at last week, we have completed plans for a return to a 3pm finish after Half Term. We will continue working in tutor groups to ensure there is minimum risk of cross contamination were a pupil or member of staff to test positive for COVID.

Laptops
If your child received a laptop during lockdown, you may be requested by the form teacher to send the laptop in with your child once a week for ICT lessons.  The form tutors will get in touch with you as to when your child has ICT lessons. This will help teach our students how to take care of their laptops and how to safely carry it to and from school. The laptops and their chargers will need to be labelled. 

Relationships and Sex Education: RSE
We are starting to teach the RSE curriculum this term. We had our parent consultation on RSE at the end of Spring term. (You can view the video of the meeting here) Relationships education is taught in Summer, first half of the term, and Sex education will be taught in the second half of the term.

The curriculum is individualised to the needs of our pupils. We will also run pupil specific workshops on Sex/Physical Safety Education in the second half of the term. If you wish to discuss the curriculum being taught in your child's form group, please speak to the teachers. The form teachers can explain the class specific curriculum and the pupil specific content of the workshop your child may attend. The discussions with the form teacher will give you the opportunity to add or tweak the content of the workshops being taught to your child.

Parents will be able to withdraw their child (following discussion with the school) from any or all aspects of Sex Education, up to and until three terms before the age of 16. We will send out a form for this (on request) towards the end of the first half of this term. This should give you enough time to think about the curriculum and have discussions with the form tutors, and decide what you want for your child. 

Last day of term
The last day of term on the school website was stated as Friday 23rd July. However, a miscalculation relating to the number of INSET days that staff have undertaken this year has emerged, and this has meant the last day for pupils will now be Wednesday 21st July 2021. We apologise for any inconvenience and rest assure that the correct algorithm has been used to calculate the term dates for the next school year.

Term Dates for 2021-2022
The term dates for 2021-2022 are now published on our website. Whilst we do not expect any changes to these dates, if we are required to do so, we will inform you of any changes.

Covid home testing
Home testing kits are now available to order for free from this website. Instructions for using an at home lateral flow testing kit can be downloaded from the government website. We began to distribute home testing kits to pupils on Monday to take home with them, and will continue to supply these every 10 days or so. Can we remind parents the government is suggesting testing twice weekly testing (or at least every 3-5 days) . If you do record a positive test for your child, follow the guidance provided by the government on this page.

Following the success of the asymptomatic testing programme on the return to school, it is vital to keep testing at home during the summer term.
  • test twice a week at home from now on
  • report results online as positive, negative or void
  • continue to test twice weekly over the half term holiday
  • test before returning to school for the summer 2 term, either the night before, or morning of, the first day back, to find and isolate any positive cases

The testing instructions are also available in  The video below shows you how to do the test, or for a more 'familiar' version, Ilyeh has again starred in a video your child will find helpful!

if you have any questions, please contact us on the usual numbers.
NHS Testing Instructions

Operation Encompass

The school has been given the opportunity to take part in a project that will run jointly between schools and the Metropolitan Police Service. This project is known as Operation Encompass. Operation Encompass is the notification to schools that a child (under 18) has been exposed to, or involved in, any domestic incident. This will ordinarily be done by the start of the next school day.

Operation Encompass will ensure that a specially trained member of the school staff, known as a Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL), is informed. The DSL can then use the information that has been shared, in confidence, to ensure the wellbeing of the child. The DSL at Woodfield is Mr Prime. 
The school may be able to make provisions or adjustments to assist the child and their family.

We are keen to offer the best support possible to all our pupils and we believe this will be extremely beneficial for all those involved.

Covid Home Testing
Please make sure you continue to keep up with the home testing regime, especially over the term break. If you feel you do not have enough tests to be able to undertake the twice weekly testing, order more from the NHS testing site. More details of the program, including how to order more test kits should your require, are in the Covid Testing section below.

Sufra Food Bank
Woodfield is also a referrer to Sufra Foodbank. A charity that provides support to vulnerable families in need of additional help. They provide essential food and toiletries to families experiencing an acute crisis. The size of their food parcels depends on the size of the family that needs support but typically last between 5 to 7 days.  They also offer other support such as:

  • Community kitchen - hot meals being delivered to those without cooking facilities as well as the elderly and isolated.
  • Advice services & refugee support
  • NHS Emergency Food Aid Service - food packs for patients
  • Community garden

This is a confidential service and any referral will be treated with strict privacy within the school. If you would like to discuss further, please contact Patsy.

Annual Reviews of EHC Plans
Annual reviews, in the current circumstances, need to take a different form. A review meeting, even if by necessity briefer than usual, can be carried out as advised by the Coronavirus Act 2020 for the Secretary of State for Education. due to the need to assign some staff from working on annual reviews to delivering the rapid testing program, the timeframe for delivering annual reviews may be adjusted. You will be well informed of any changes.

In order to complete the Annual Reviews of EHC Plans this academic year, Woodfield School will conduct reviews, virtually or over the telephone rather than face-to-face where this can be done following the guidance on reducing transmissions of coronavirus (COVI-19). Therefore parents or carers will not be invited into school for a review meeting. 

An invitation e-letter will be sent out with more details as your child's' review approaches. (Please note that the Local Authorities have stated there is a backlog with amending ECHP’s). We will be happy to chase it up for you but just so you know ultimately it is the Local Authority who updates the EHCP. You will be entitled to a draft copy of all reports. 

Please note; we have a change in our GDPR policy as to how we send review paperwork of your child to you. We will no longer send reports to parents’ personal email accounts. As of September 2020, we will only use your child’s email set for all correspondences for Annual Reviews. This encourages access to knowledge and sharing of information in a safe and controlled way from us to you.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please email on wf-senreviews@compasslp.co.uk or contact the school and speak with the SEN Administrator who will be more than happy to support you. 

Proposed dates for reviews:
Autumn Term 2020 - Oct -Dec  (Year 14, 13 and 9)
Spring Term 2021 - Jan - April (Year 9, 13, 12, 11 and 10 )
Summer Term 2021 - May- July (Year 10, 8 and 7)

Assistance from local councils
Local councils have set up guides for residents with regard to how to access a range of assistance over this time, be it medical, financial, business or even how to volunteer to assist others.

You can view these offerings from local councils by clicking the links below.

Brent
Barnet
Harrow
Ealing
Camden
Westminster


Makaton is a language programme that is used in conjunction with speech to aid the pupils’ understanding of language and help them communicate with each other more effectively. Makaton is used across the school in lessons and break times. We would love for you to learn some signs so that you can sign with your child. See the We Talk Makaton website for more.

 

Have a good weekend


Nick Cooper

Important dates

Term dates are subject to change, parents and carers will be informed of any changes.
 

If you would like hard copies (paper) of any document on our website, please contact the school office and they will arrange this
.

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