Message from the Principal
Friday, January 22, 2021
Dear families,
I hope that you and your loved ones are good and well, and that your young person/people are as content as they can be learning at home.
The staff and I have been hugely impressed with the engagement levels of the students and their appetite for learning this half-term. The amount of students engaging with their work, handing in assignments and being involved in interactive lessons is significantly higher than the previous lockdown. Thank you with your support in this as we all seek to keep life as normal as it can be for our children at the moment.
I am also happy to provide you with the following updates:
Exams for Years 10 & 11
We have still not heard anything concrete with regards to how students will be examined this year. This affects all students in Year 11 with their full quote of qualifications and also Year 10 with their GCSE Statistics that was planned for this year. As soon as the consultation is finished and we receive confirmation of what is happening we will be in touch to confirm our next steps. We are also in constant contact with all local Post 16 providers and will work with them to help you progress on to the courses that you want, and deserve to do next year and beyond.
As previously, the message for all students is to keep working hard, engaging with every lessons and completing all work. Our staff are here to work with you and support them so do ask when, not ‘if’, your son/daughter needs support as we all require assistance at some point.
Parental Questionnaire
Thank you to those families of students in Years 9 & 11 who filled out our parental questionnaire just prior to Christmas. The questionnaire covered online parents evenings and AM day, learning in lockdown and general questions on school life. Families of students in Years 9 & 11 were selected as they had experienced an online Parents Evening as well as AM Day. Later in the year we will also send the same questionnaire to Years 7, 8 and 10. I am delighted to share with you the following highlights from each of those 3 sections:
98% found the system easy to use
76% preferred the Parents Evening and AM Day being online
82% said that as a school we had communicated well during the lockdown last year
83% thought that the work set helped their child learn whilst at home
95% said that their child was happy at Preston
96% praised our high expectations for the students
And crucially 97% would recommend Preston to another parent
These numbers are obviously really pleasing, as were the comments received as well. As always, we welcome and encourage any feedback so please do get in touch if there is anything that we can improve upon or help you with (or you want to tell me about an amazing member of staff!)
Written feedback to students
Normally when students are learning in school, they are used to us providing ‘whole class feedback’ for them, highlighting the strengths and gaps in their work. This is in addition to the many bits of verbal feedback that we give during each lesson. Throughout lockdown we will continue with these methods of feedback, except when key individual pieces of work are marked for students. These are sometimes what families expect in terms of feedback but the majority of what you will see, as we ask staff to post it as an assignment on Google Classroom, is the whole class feedback.
AM time registration
Part of the high expectations mentioned earlier is always trying to get the best for the students. Our students’ engagement is very good but, as always, we want it to be better. Starting on Monday 25th January we will be introducing morning AM time for students. All students need to log in to their AM/PSHE class on Google Classroom to register for the morning, at some point between 8.40-8.50am. They can do this by speaking to their teacher or saying ‘good morning’ in the comments/chat section. There will not be any messages given out and students do not need to stay on for the whole 10 minutes, they just need to wait for their AM to verbally acknowledge them, so that they are marked present. Students who do not ‘attend’ the AM session but then go on to lessons in the morning will be marked as ‘late’. Students not logging in to and/or not handing work in for lessons on a day will be marked as absent. Thank you in advance for your support with this.
As always, if I can help with anything at all please do get in touch. My email address and that of all teaching staff are on the school website under the ‘contact us’ tab. Your ongoing support is much appreciated and we will continue to work with you the best way that we can to help support our community through this challenging time.
Best wishes
Gregg Morrison
