Some pupils who were issued with School Chromebooks to take home are likely to have found it necessary to keep reconnecting them to their network after use. A change has been made to the Chromebook management setting today by East Lothian Council IT to allow them to automatically connect to home networks. 

That change may not affect wireless network connections set up before today. You may need to use the "Forget" option in the network settings screen and connect it again.

If you are still seeing a problem with connections dropping:

• click the settings area, bottom right of the screen, to open the settings menu
• click the cog, top right of that, to open the full Settings page
• click Network menu option on left
• where you can see your network listed under Network, click it
• on the next screen, click the right-arrow beside it
• check that "Automatically connect to this network" is switched on (showing as blue).

Feedback on this would be appreciated, as it will have been affecting any learners with loan devices.

On Thursday afternoon, pupils were issued with the BGE Home Learning Tasks Booklet. It is our intention to have a balance of work available for students online (through the GoogleClassroom platform) and written work. This booklet is not designed to start and finish, but more for student to pick individual questions or topics to work on for a time, then move to another area when completed.  They can of course share their learning with you as parents, or with their peers for a little encouragement, support and advice on how to improve.  

We would encourage students to follow a routine as much as possible for their own development.  

It will be our aim to update GoogleClassroom as often as is practically possible and a Parental Guide to GoogleClassroom is also available.

As suggested in the document, there are a lot of educational programmes both on the television and as podcasts so please use these to support learning and prompt family discussions.  A balance between computer, reading/writing and exercise will be vital in helping your child’s mental health over the coming weeks.

We will be in touch with more work in the future, and please be patient with us as we as staff get used to the new way of teaching and learning in the current climate.

A Clubb
Depute Headteacher

Please check your Google classroom. Thanks.

As you may be aware, the First Minister announced yesterday that the children of key workers should have continuing access to appropriate learning and childcare, potentially beyond the normal school day, that allows their parents/carers to participate in the national response to Covid-19. 

In response to this, East Lothian Council will be providing learning and childcare for the children of keyworkers who are registered in local authority schools and early learning and childcare centres. This provision is for key workers who do not have a trusted adult at home to care for their child/ren whilst they are at work.  This provision will be delivered through a Children’s Hub located in each of our six largest communities in East Lothian.  Where possible, parents/carers will be expected to transport their child/ren to their Hub.   

Scottish Government have identified key workers in three categories:

• Category 1 – Health and Care workers directly supporting COVID-19 response, and associated staff, Health and Care workers supporting life threatening emergency work, as well as critical primary and community care provision; Energy suppliers (small numbers identified as top priority already); staff providing childcare/learning for other category 1 staff.
• Category 2 – All other Health and Care workers, and wider public sector workers providing emergency/critical welfare services (e.g. Fire, Police, Prisons, Social Workers etc.) as well as those supporting our Critical National Infrastructure, without whom serious damage to the welfare of the people of Scotland could be caused.
• Category 3 – All workers without whom there could be a significant impact on Scotland (but where the response to COVID-19, or the ability to perform essential tasks to keep the country running, would not be severely compromised). 

If you are a Keyworker and require support with childcare please could you complete the Key Worker Childcare Form (this is an editable PDF which you can enter text and then save) and email this information back to admin@knox.elcschool.org.uk no later than 5pm Monday 23 March, 2020 with the subject heading ‘KEY WORKER SUPPORT’. Once this information has been collated by East Lothian Council we will contact you regarding the learning and childcare support we can provide for your child/ren.