Headlines By James Saunders 22nd January 2021
23 Remote learning feedback Firstly, thank you for letting me know about the growing number of vaccinations in the community. Please keep doing so. This week I have heard of another 23 vaccines that have been delivered to residents. Thank you to those of you that took the time to provide us feedback on our remote learning over the last week. We have collated the results and will be feeding your comments into our evaluations. In the spirit of our commitment through this pandemic of being open, honest and transparent I am going to share the data with you. Feel free to take a look at how you all feel about various aspects of our provision. Hopefully it will be clear to you that as we strive to meet high standards, the often polarised nuances of everyone's individual situation, make achieving those standards across the board almost impossible. One person’s desire for more can often be another's desire for less. I would like to reassure you that we will be working through the feedback as best as we can and are constantly working to achieve our very best - but you can never please everyone all the time. It comes back to my messages from the first lockdown we are all running our own race and experiencing covid through our own eyes in our own circumstances. These circumstances will be personal and unique to every one of you and will, to some extent, have informed how you have responded to the survey and how your children have been able to access learning. It is no different for our staff at Honywood. In the ideal world everything would be perfect and exactly as we have set out. This is what we are continually striving for - we set a benchmark but understand that some situations won’t suit it. However, even at the best of times things are never perfect. Things happen and best laid plans have to be adapted - life does its own thing and we have to respond. This applies in the same way for parents, for learners and for staff.
My message at the start of term came with a realisation that things won’t be perfect. We need to approach things with a sense of common sense - for staff I suggested that they use their professional judgement. The feedback you have provided will be very encouraging to our staff. It recognises the hard work they have put into supporting your children whilst they remain at home in your care. Our staff are just like you. Their routines have been turned upside down. They are balancing working at home. They are experiencing the effects of covid. A significant number have tested positive and developed symptoms. Some have been quite unwell. Some have had their children sent home to isolate and are juggling teaching your children with supporting the home learning of their own. Some have experienced and are still experiencing the range of emotions connected to losing someone to covid. However, throughout all of this I am proud to say they have remained committed to doing their best for your children. In last week’s survey we asked you to rate us on a number of things using a four point scale of excellent, good, fair and poor. I am pleased that the overwhelming response was either excellent or good. In fact across all measures we average above 90% excellent or good. I have included a series of pie charts to illustrate the responses. We also asked you to comment on what we are doing well; to suggest what we could do to improve our approach, and provide any general feedback. On the next page are a series of links to this feedback should you wish to see how our community is feeling. Of course we can always improve and do things better and I will be working with the leadership team over the coming weeks to further refine our offer and maintain the strong positive momentum we have achieved since returning this term. I thank you for your continued support. Have a safe weekend. James Saunders Headteacher