OPEN EVENING ANNOUNCEMENT
Canteen Menu
Our current menu for the school canteen can be found below. We are working towards the Healthy Schools Award and as such the menu will be evolving to ensure we can meet the necessary criteria.
GCSE Results Press Release
This year has been very challenging for all pupils, parents and staff across the country as we have been faced with an unprecedented variety of decisions and anxieties in what have been strange times. More than ever, we are very proud of all of our pupils and staff for how they have coped and for always putting our Hastings family first. We are sad that our year 11’s missed out on such key moments of their time at Hastings; their GCSE exams, their prom and ultimately a normal results day. However, it is a testament to their character that they have still achieved some fantastic GCSE’s and have become remarkable young people.
There are lots of individual success stories; some pupils have made amazing progress over their time at Hastings. They include:
Bryony Spink, “I am literally shaking, I’m so proud of myself!”
Bryony and her sister Ellie-Mai who are both celebrating some amazing GCSE results
Megan Upton, “Happy with what I got, thank you for all of the amazing support!”
Alongside pupils who have achieved a full suite of top grades;
Josh Clarke achieved 9 grade 9 GCSE’s, “I’ve worked hard and the results show this, I’m taking an academic route and hoping to go to Oxbridge after my A-Levels”
Head Girl Sophie Kenney who achieved 10 GCSEs at grade 7-9, “I can’t believe it after everything that has happened over the last few months I am very happy with my results”.
Their Head of Year, Mr Spetch, said, “Across the country year 11 students of 2020 will be remembered as the first-year group who never got to take their GCSE exams. They were never given this opportunity to show off all of what they had learned and achieved over the last two years. During this difficult time our students showed great levels of resilience in the wake of what was taken from them. Hastings will forever fondly remember this year group as a fantastic group of students, who we are extremely proud off. We wish you all the best and further success in your future endeavours.”
Claire Bradley and Steve Shipman
Co-Headteachers
The School Day
Dear Parents and Carers,
Last week we emailed an update on our plans for August telling you that we were waiting for the final guidance to be published before sending anything home. At this time, we are still waiting for that final guidance, but feel we need to share our plans with you (the latest guidance can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools). We hope that by doing so you will understand that we are doing everything that we can, to ensure everyone’s safety, when school re-starts. The first few days have been covered in a previous email and the timetable is below;
Year 7 – 8:25 – 3:00 on Wednesday 26th and Thursday 27th of August
Year 8 – 9:15 – 12:15 on Thursday 27th August
Year 9 – 9:15 – 12:15 on Friday 28th August
Year 10 – 12:00 – 15:00 on Thursday 27th August
Year 11 – 12:00 – 15:00 on Friday 28th August
For these days lunch will only be available for year 7, other yeargroups will get either a morning or afternoon break during which time the canteen will be open.
During this time pupils will be with their form tutors and will go through all relevant information for the upcoming academic year and have opportunity to acclimatise to being back in school. Year 7 pupils will also complete their school induction which was condensed in July.
Hastings will fully re-open for all pupils from Tuesday 1st September. In order to prepare for this we have considered numerous models that both comply with government guidance and keep everyone in our Hastings family safe. As a school the vast majority of our classrooms are used in every lesson. This means that if we continue with a normal timetable, with pupils moving every lesson, we will introduce 5 chances of cross contamination between year groups over the course of a school day. It also is not possible to clean each room between groups at every class changeover. This has meant that in order to prevent, as far as possible, further whole school lockdowns and disruption to our pupils’ education, we have had to look at solutions that do not involve pupils moving around the school.
One solution is that pupils remain in the same place each day and teachers move to them. Whilst this counters the cleaning issue, it means that pupils will be in the same group all day, every day. As such setting and options would not be able to happen. On balance, we feel that this would compromise our curriculum offer, especially in later year groups where exams have tiered entry and pupils have selected options. A hybrid system would not work due to the restrictions of both rooming (we have some rooms that will only hold 20 pupils and as such couldn’t be used – this has been a focus of the school seeking additional funding over the past year) and staffing. This means that we have had to devise a system that both limits pupils movement, still allows for setting, enables pupil options to happen and still keeps everyone safe by adhering to current government guidance.
As such, for at least the first 50 days of the term, we will be adopting a timetable where each lesson on a pupil’s timetable becomes a whole day of teaching.
This system means that pupils will be based in the same room for a whole day with the same member of staff. We know that this will be challenging for both pupils and teachers and we will be investing a significant amount of time during our staff training days preparing for this. To help with pupil engagement, each day will be broken up into a series of different activities, including an assembly. Mrs Woodward and the SEN department will be working closely with our SEN pupils to ensure that individual needs can still be met. This will run for 50 days which allows the whole timetable to run through once. It also means that, at the end of this time, we should have much more information from the government about appropriate Covid-19 precautions required in school.
In classrooms, as per the guidance, there will be no social distancing between pupils. All rooms have been set up so that all pupils are facing forwards. Staff will remain at least 2m from all pupils. We have been told that should there be cases of Covid-19 in school that Public Health England will guide us to appropriate action through contact tracing. It is essential that anyone who has been contacted by the track and trace service, has been asked to self-isolate or has returned from a country with quarantine regulations in effect not only lets the school know but also follows the full advice given. We feel it is important to say that all of these eventualities are covered in the schools risk assessment that has been signed off by the governing body. In cases where individual pupils have to isolate, the brief outline of the work covered that day in class will be posted on google classroom. In the event that there are cases where a whole class has to self-isolate we have bought in the appropriate technology to enable us to deliver some form of live lessons using google classroom and google meet. We will be in a position to share these remote learning plans with parents and carers by the end of September, once all the technology has been tested and staff trained. It is for these reasons that pupils and staff must always remain 2m apart as this means that they will not impact on each other in terms of contact tracing.
We know that there may be individual questions, we would ask at this time that you please email [email protected] and once we have collated questions and answers we will send a subsequent ParentMail out with further information at the start of next week.
We will soon be in touch with staggered start and finish times (these will not run outside of our usual times of 8:25 – 15:00) including break and lunch times, guidance around face coverings, amendments to the Behaviour Policy, extra-curricular activities, arrangements for parents on site and hygiene.
We would like to remind all parents, carers and pupils that our uniform policy and equipment requirements that have been sent our previously are still in place. It is essential that pupils have all of the equipment that they need as we will be unable to lend any items to students during the day. Both documents are included in this Parentmail.
We are very much looking forwards to welcoming all of our pupils back next week and can assure you that we have taken every possible precaution to ensure that any further disruptions to your child’s education can be avoided.
Best wishes,
Miss C Bradley and Mr S Shipman
School re-opening plan
Dear Parents / Carers,
We thought it was important to give an update on school re-opening plans as we get closer to the start of the new school year. Throughout the lockdown period we have been formulating and refining plans for a full school re-opening whenever this was deemed possible. We have considered the implications of all of the government guidance, seeking advice from numerous sources including the local education authority, other schools and unions. We know that some compromises will have to be made due to the size and compactness of our school site and are working hard to make the school as safe as possible for both students and staff. This, as always, is our priority.
We would also like to make you aware that the government guidance is being updated regularly, there was a large update in the last few days of July, a further update on August 7th and we are expecting a final update later this week or early next week. Once we have the final update we will ensure that our plans still fit in with that guidance and at that point we will send out full details to all parents. Again everything we do has the safety of all of our Hastings family at its heart. When we send out the re-opening plan this will include;
- Plans for how the timetable will be amended to minimise movement around the school
- Staggered start and finish times (and subsequently details of break and lunch times for each year group)
- Amendments to the behaviour policy
- Guidance around facemasks
- Any other relevant information
We thank you for your patience at this time, we are conscious that we do not want to send out a plan that may then change several times as updated guidance is released,
We hope you are managing to enjoy your summer holidays,
Miss Bradley and Mr Shipman