Good morning everyone,

Having watched the Downing Street Briefing last night, the situation for school appears clear: We are still closed till next month at the earliest. Our current plans and arrangements will continue until further notice. 

There is no official guidance on how schools should act or adapt in this next phase yet so we are unable to alter our position at this time. All school places remain prioritised for vulnerable children and children of key workers. 

As more guidance becomes available, we will respond accordingly. We will be liaising with XP Trust and the Local Authority on plans moving forwards as we have done to date.

Wishing you all the very best in these difficult times, stay safe and protect the NHS!

Complications with School Gmail Accounts

Good morning, apologies but getting tech support during lockdown is not easy. We need to make some changes to our domain to enable staff to reply to children’s new email accounts. This is an unexpected complication and I’m working on a solution but its not been straight forward. Until this is rectified, staff are unable to respond to your emails sent from school Gmail accounts. They are however able to read and respond to email sent to the year group addresses eg: [email protected] as long as its from your independent emails accounts not your child’s school Gmail.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. Please don’t think we are ignoring all your lovely home learning emails, we just can’t access them yet.

A change to our Home Learning Website

NB: This will replace our previous Home Learning Menu from weeks 1 to 5 and the additional activities…

Hello everyone, just thought I would take the time to explain our updated approach to home learning and the changes made to the website.

In previous weeks, you would have accessed a tab on our Home Learning Site saying for example,Week 5 however, now you will find the home learning tasks within your Year Groups Expedition Page:

Year 5 & 6

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/what-makes-njs-great/home

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/what-makes-njs-great/home-learning

Year 3 & 4

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/what-makes-doncaster-great/home

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/what-makes-doncaster-great/home-learning/week-1-immersion

A little More About Expeditions can be found on our Home Learning Site too by following the link below:

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/njshomelearning/expeditionary-learning

If you do wish to access any of the previous home learning set in weeks 1 to 5, these can be fund in our archive of activities:

https://sites.google.com/njsch.uk/njshomelearning/learning-archive

Afternoon, on this beautiful sunny day, what could be more relaxing than fighting with google?

First of all, if you have lost the email school sent out, just to remind you, here is a link to the help guide we provided. Its also available on the letters section and also on the home learning site itself:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ypzO5-ZDWGbgFtZczKvpvERGtjMssGT5/view

Don’t fear, if it’s not working, most of your problems will be because you have previously created a google account for something and its trying to re-connect you with another account as I explained in my email. If you are just not sure if you have an old account or if you are properly logged out… or if you just keep having problems, open a new Incognito or Private Browser Window and try repeating all the steps from within there. Make sure all other browser windows are closed and only run from within the Incognito or Private Browser Session so you don’t get confused.

Once you have successfully logged in to Google, you should be able to do it within your normal browser window although you might need to select your school account from a dropdown menu…. You will also be able to sign in from google on any web enabled device.

Good luck and hang on in there.

Hello everyone,

As we enter the Easter Weekend, I thought rather than providing a monologue, I would simply wish you all Happy Easter on behalf of the whole school family. Perhaps the video below will provide you with a little light entertainment at our expense – I’m sure we could all do with a giggle right now. Look after each other and stay safe!

Mr Hayes

Just flagging up some essential advice and also some things that Doncaster can do to support you. Please follow the guidance below.

This first week of closure has been strange in different ways for everyone and it is difficult for us all to adapt let alone for our children. Like yourselves, we have muddled through it all and made it to Friday last week running a skeleton staff and accepting the children of essential key workers. I thank those of you who managed to make alternate arrangements for your children and likewise applaud all of you attempting to support your children with home learning. The internet is full of very amusing videos of parents having fun trying to keep their little ones entertained while everyone goes stir crazy and also those less pleased at having such expansive amounts of work available to them.

I remind you that our home learning is there to support you, not to be a burden and I have deliberately not set timetables for you to follow at home as I’m sure you can organise your own lives well enough on your own, after all, you do it every weekend and holiday. You should by now be aware of our methods of home school communication as outlined on our Home Learning Website.

You will also be aware from reading the content on the site that we will be trying to contact you once a week just to check in and see if there is anything we can do to support you as parents. In addition to this, we want to touch base with the children and help give them just a little normality in these difficult times. This is intended to be supportive and positive and is not questioning your parenting skills or checking up on you. You might well see a “caller ID withheld” appear on your screen and while I understand you might well be ignoring calls like this, it might be a call from school. Many of us are having to work remotely and making these calls from private lines hence why the ID needs to be hidden for obvious reasons. Please pick up if you can as  one teacher made their way through the entire class list and only had a couple of people answer last Friday.

I hope that by the end of the Easter holiday we will be in a better position to predict when more normal service might resume but of course there are no guarantees. During the holiday period we will be staffing school as we have this last week to allow those essential workers to keep doing their amazing work to keep us all safe. This will be again on a rota basis and will be for the same children we are currently providing for.

Schools stocks of food are depleting as we move forward and we might not be in a position to offer a school meal for much longer but we will continue until supplies are exhausted. For the small minority that have been collecting a free school meal from the office last week, our provision in future is moving over to a voucher system. Contact school if you require a voucher and we will get this out to you.

Finally, I’d just like to take a moment to reflect on last week… It was amazing to hear so many people out clapping for the NHS on Thursday night and I’m sure you will all join me in giving out heartfelt thanks not only to those NHS workers but also to everyone who is putting themselves at risk to keep our society functioning in these difficult times. It has also been lovely to hear stories of kindness and compassion within communities where the Elderly and most vulnerable are being cared for by those around them.

Wishing you all the very best of health and happiness this week,

Kind regards

Hello, just a little note to tell parents that our home learning resource is now live and available. Over the next week, we will be developing and expanding this site, giving updates and communicating with our pupils at home.

Simply follow the link to access the resource and all the best…

These are challenging times for us all but together, with patience and understanding, we will get through it.

A Hayes

Headteacher

Good Evening and many thanks for bearing with us at this difficult time. I just wanted to take a moment to share some information with you and also ask for you to give careful consideration to what I am going to tell you tonight.

As you know, we do not have any confirmed cases of COVID19 within our school community although advice is just to self isolate. In the significant majority of these cases, testing has not been carried out. We know that not everyone who carries the virus will display all or sometimes any symptoms, so we can’t be clear how widespread within our community things are.

While many are attacking for the government for a lack of clarity, and indeed not providing full guidance is frustrating, it is important to remember we are in an unprecedented situation and this is an international crisis. It’s not just the virus itself that is causing issues and I would ask for everyone to do their bit so we return to some level normality with our shops and supermarkets.

Tonight I saw a family on the news talking about how hard it’s going to be for them keeping the children at home, how cross they were with the government and schools and how bored they will be… I’m sure many of you will fear this too but I plead with you to consider the big picture here and why we are being asked to take such measures. This is about sustaining life, protecting the most vulnerable and if we can’t look beyond ourselves, it’s a sad reflection of what society has become.

I am now faced with an issue that I would welcome your support on. The government advice is to keep the school population to and absolute maximum of 20% or the measures we take won’t be effective. Based on our initial data collection today, we will exceed this number and I suspect we will have more returns tomorrow. This will mean I have to make some very difficult decisions and I would ask you to be understanding as it will be impossible to please everyone. I would ask you to consider if there are other options in terms of childcare for you to explore even though this could lead to some non-essential working parents being forced to take time off work while their partners attended essential roles.

To get through this crisis we will all need to do our bit and for obvious reasons, I will try to prioritise NHS staff first. Please bear with us here as none of us wanted this, nor could we have foreseen it this time last year… We will attempt to make all arrangements tomorrow so that by the end of the day, everybody is clear if the school is open to them on Monday. If you hear nothing, then assume that for you, the school is closed.

We will be as flexible and supportive as we can during the coming weeks but I ask you to remember that there is no statutory obligation for the school to open at all. We are being asked to support our community by enabling key workers to get into work and we are very happy to provide this service for as long as we are able.

Once again, if you believe you are an essential service worker, please fill in this form – click here.

The School will close at 3:15pm on Friday 20th March 2020 until further notice.

Dear All,

We are currently in a period of information overload so I will keep things to a minimum and attempt to present the key facts below. If you wish to read a more detailed account, this is the most current one I can find – click here.

On Friday, for the significant majority of pupils, the School will close. From 23rd March 2020, we will be:

• Keeping our schools open for the children / students whose parents work as ‘key workers’, defined by the government as NHS staff, Police and Delivery Drivers, more details to follow on this.
• Opening the schools for children / students who have a Social Worker and/or Education, Health and Care Plans.

For children / students who have been asked to stay at home by the UK government, we can confirm that:

• Work is available online for all children / students to access at home.
• Details of how to access this work will be clearly available on the school website by the end of the week.
• Through the website and other appropriate communication methods, we will touch base with our children throughout the closure period.

For those parents whose children will continue to come to school on Monday 23rd March, please could you support the schools by ensuring:

• Your children wash their hands before they come to school and when then get home.
• You keep the communication between home and schools open via email and/or phone.
• Follow the government guidance on household self isolation without exception.

Schools will continue to send out updates where the situation changes and for your reassurance and information.

As always the usual lines of communication to schools will be open if you have any specific concerns related to your child or circumstances.

Thank you for your support at this time,

A Hayes

Headteacher