Headteacher’s message

Earlier this week I received this from a parent: “Please can I just say you are doing a wonderful job. This weekend must have been a SLT nightmare. As the parent of a Y7 I cannot tell you how brilliantly you’ve done in communicating effectively and for the teachers setting work and marking it almost instantaneously. Thank you so much. We totally, totally chose the right school.”

As usual parents/carers have been supportive and understanding. But at the risk of opening up myself to criticism it really doesn’t feel like I am doing a wonderful job this week. It really was a punch in the guts to lose two year groups. After all the time and money we put into new washing facilities, one way systems, year bases, face masks, socially distanced classrooms etc it just felt so disappointing when Public Health England advised us for safety to put so many students out. The problem is that every time we look at tightening risk assessment controls further, we end up compromising the quality of education to such an extent that it negates the risk of bringing children into school in the first place. Added to that is the constraint of our split site which means that any attempt at the staggered timetables which allow bubbles of 30 to be established fail because we need at some point a common period of time for staff to travel between sites. If your child is self-isolating I imagine that it is as frustrating for you as it is for me. I can only empathise with your feelings and reassure you that both Public Health England and the Local Authority have acknowledged that we are doing all we can to balance infection control against children’s right to a broad and balanced curriculum.

And just when I thought I was at a low point this week, not one but two seagulls relieved themselves on my head when I was on lunch duty. Or it may have been the same seagull twice. Either way it was demoralising. I suppose one of the only benefits to having a significant number of staff isolating currently is that they can look after the remote learning needs of our exiled students. I definitely had a really good chat with an MFL teacher this week who, by Monday evening, had received enough work back from her Y8 class to keep her busy for a couple of hours marking. Elsewhere a maths teacher told me had had established a Zoom lesson record by getting 32 Y8 maths all signed on at the same time. In an effort to ensure that everyone is working safely I visit all lessons twice a day at the moment. In PE I noticed that we have learnt as we go and we are now subdividing students completing the ‘Couch to 5K’ challenge into smaller bubbles of 4 and 5. This should further reduce the number of students who have close contact during PE lessons. Oh, and in A level maths they were looking at statistics using the numbers surrounding global infection rates as a starting point. Meanwhile in engineering sixth former Josh was presenting his design project, a steering wheel for a racing car (see image…very, very sleek). And finally Zack introduced me to the work of Tom Hunter who mimics the work of Vermeer but with people living in squats in Hackney. ‘Why?’ I hear you say…? Because it looks really cool. That’s why. I hope and pray that we have no more cases in the next few days at least. I am so grateful for the support of Highfields families and I and staff will continue to do everything we can to protect the education and wellbeing of our wonderful students.

We are Highfields.