Dear Parents
We have enjoyed having some of our pupils back in nursery and school this week, albeit fewer in number. The nursery, Pre-R, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 pupils who are back (along with our regular key worker children) have had a really positive and happy week in their carefully controlled zones around the sites. If your child is in one of these year groups and you are considering sending them back to school, please email me at headmaster@holmwood.house (or nurserymanager@holmwood.house if at the nursery) by the Thursday lunchtime of the week preceding the proposed return date to enable us to ascertain availability and to plan accordingly.
As we go forward, we will await the next tranche of government guidance regarding other year groups. We are planning the end of term, assuming a range of possibilities, but none of these look likely to include a hugely increased number of pupils on site. That said, we will be finding ways to celebrate the pupils’ year and to say goodbye to leavers, in particular our Year 8s. I will send more information about this in due course.
The children remain resilient and it is great to see the level of independence our older children are able to demonstrate as a result of several years of this approach. We have been incredibly impressed by their good spirits and their focused application to study. In many cases, staff feel they have been able to keep on track with the planned schemes of work and learning journeys for each year group and much of the work being produced is quite superb. As we plan ahead, we are looking to ensure we capture some of the unforeseen, unplanned positives that are coming out of our online experiences to see if we can incorporate them in our ‘normal’ school, whatever and whenever that may be!
Thank you again for all your support in helping your children and us to maintain such a high standard of learning experience for our children.
Wishing you all a really good weekend.
With best wishes
Alexander Mitchell
Headmaster
