Happy New Year and welcome back to Term 2! After a fantastic end to last term with our Winter Balls, Festive Fayre and Christmas Concert, this term opens with our young people getting their digital devices next week. This should support both their learning and in and out of school and I am sure, given it is their own individual device, they will all look after it exceptionally well!

Staffing  

A warm welcome to Mark O’Neill who joined us as Pupil Support Leader (Inclusion).

Patrick McLaren will start with us on Monday as our new Pupil Support Worker.

Interviews will take place on 15 January for our temporary teacher of English.

Meadowpark is interviewing for 2 ASN auxiliaries today.

An advert will go live today for a temporary Support for Learning teacher – this will close two weeks on Sunday.

An advert for a Senior Business Support Assistant (Guidance) 30 hours per week, 39 weeks per year, permanent.

Digital Devices

All parents/carers should have received the letter about the Chromebooks and the Learner Promise.

We held a series of assemblies, for all year groups, on these digital devices earlier this week  (Tuesday/Wednesday) and spoke to pupils about the Learner Promise they must complete prior to receiving this (this is about using them responsibly). We also introduced them to the various apps/programmes they can access to support their learning at school and home.

All learners will be expected to bring their Chromebooks to school, everyday, charged and ready for use as they will be used in many classrooms to support learning and research. They will be used alongside other learning and teaching strategies and not as a standalone resource.

Rights Respecting Schools (RRSA)

Our Article of focus this week is Article 18 - Responsibility of parents

Parents are the main people responsible for bringing up a child.  When the child does not have any parents, another adult will have this responsibility and they are called a guardian or carer.  Parents and guardians/carers should always consider what is best for that child.  Governments should help them.  Where a child has both parents, both of them should be responsible for bringing up that child.  

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