By Gail Wickens
School work has finally recommenced at schools across the UK and we at Downlands were delighted to welcome our new Year 7 cohort and existing students earlier in September.
Since March much has happened here at Downlands. While our students were all being home schooled, our SLT, teaching staff, support staff, IT, maintenance and cleaning teams have worked tirelessly to ensure that students received the work they needed, were supported pastorally, and enjoyed as much of their home schooling as possible.
Our students embraced learning from home with a positivity that we as a school are hugely proud of. Our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages are full of the work produced by our students. They remained focussed and on task and produced some spectacular pieces of work. We kept in regular contact with our parents and received many emails thanking the staff for all they did.
We said a swift goodbye to our Year 11 students on Friday 19th March, we were lucky that with the dedication and speed of our staff that we could put together a fun farewell for them all and they went home with their Year Books and Leavers Hoodies in hand. Since then we are proud to say that our wonderful youngsters have again excelled themselves and performed brilliantly in their examinations. Well done Class of 2020!
Remaining open for our keyworker students and keeping them busy with a variety of tasks that were also offered to our home learners was our main challenge. Our staff are hugely creative and came up with many interesting, fun and very challenging challenges, including a Cook Off, art competition reading challenge, writing competition and our PE department continually set fitness challenges to keep our students in tip top condition.
On 15th June we welcomed back many of our Year 10 students. This year group was probably one of the most affected by lockdown and they did their best to keep up with their GCSE studies at home. Having them back in school was a great boost to the students and the teachers alike.
Over the summer break much work has taken place to ensure that the school is as safe as it can be for our staff and students alike. This piece of work has been a moving feast with changes being communicated daily from the Department of Education. Many risk assessments, policies and meetings have taken place, resulting in a full and robust action plan to safeguard both our students and staff.
So here we are in September and we are grateful to say that the school is back in full swing. And how does our school feel? The answer as wonderful as always! We might have sanitiser, masks, year group bubbles, social distancing and an introduction of virtual events but we still have our school community, our support for our students and our commitment to learning.