WLD Update for Parents & Carers - Tuesday 19th Jan 2021

Good afternoon,

Attitude to Learning reports:  These reports covering last term are being issued today or early tomorrow.  If your son or daughter is in Year 11 you may well be asking "but what grade are they going to get?".  We have thought about this very carefully and the following points may be useful to all parents & carers:

• Primarily, as we do not yet know the way in which the grades will be determined we cannot estimate a grade.
• Information that we give to parents & carers always needs to be honest, reliable and useful. This is the case for attitude to learning – the descriptors allow us all to identify issues that can be addressed and will lead to improved progress;
• We know from our study of previous years that positive attitude to learning leads to good results.  It is not complicated – those who work hard and work with us do well. Year 11 were given their nationally expected grades last term so those with good attitude to learning are likely to achieve those grades or better;
• Teachers have been working hard to modify the curriculum and enable students to fill gaps in learning.  That, coupled with positive student attitude, leads to good progress by each individual student.

As a more technical explanation, to give a projected or current grade to Year 11, or anyone else, relies on the distribution of grades being broadly the same from year to year.  This is explicitly not the case this year – the consultation from Ofqual says “The usual assurances of comparability between years, between individual students, between schools and colleges and between exam boards will not be possible”.   We have to focus on curriculum, addressing knowledge gaps and helping our students to be positive and motivated and to work hard – this will lead to the best possible grades.

Mental Health Family Hour: Sam and Dave from "Change Talks" and "Mindset with Dave" are streaming another Mental Health Family Hour webinar on Thursday at 10am. The focus this week is young people’s mental health, where they will be addressing concerns such as: lack of motivation to do work, anxiety and the fear of losing someone to COVID-19.  The link for Thursday - https://www.twitch.tv/mindsetbydave. The video will be uploaded to YouTube after the webinar you'll find it at Mental Health Family Hour.

Key worker & vulnerable student provision over half-term:  We have had no guidance on provision for key workers and vulnerable students over the half-term break (week beginning 15th February).  The assumption therefore has to be that we will not be open for any students at all during that week.  I thought that it was best to keep you informed, in my usual fashion.  Should this change in any way I will let you know.

Digital Healthy Schools:  Here's a link to our digitally healthy schools platform. It gives a huge selection of apps that have been reviewed by Orcha and given a rating.  Most apps in app stores are generally unregulated, Orcha quality check 1000's of apps, so students, staff and parents can access reliable and safe apps to help them with all aspects of health.  The link is https://waltonledalehighschool-lancs.digitalhealthyschools.co.uk/
 

Best wishes

James Harris

Headteacher