Dear parents

The highlight of this week has undoubtedly been simply seeing the students settling so well into the routines and learning of the new school year. The quiet sense of purpose and engagement around the school is wonderful, and it is clear how much the students are enjoying being back at school. Thank you so much for your continued support and assistance with this, whether they are learning with us in person or remotely.

Health & Safety

Please see below in this week's newsletter some important Health & Safety Reminders relating primarily to masks and social distancing. We have been so proud of how well the students are adapting to the new arrangements around school this year. They are coping so sensibly and calmly with the need to wear masks and I also take this opportunity to remind you to continue to check that your child has a suitable and well-fitting mask for school each day.

The RUVNA daily screen is working well, apart from the very unhelpful crash on Monday morning, and we really appreciate your prompt and timely responses each day which are critical to having a smooth and safe arrivals process for everyone in the school. We are making a minor adjustment to issue the first notification each morning at 6am for our early riser families and there will then be reminders at 7am. The deadline for replies each morning remains 7:45am.

Hopefully we won't have other incidents like the Ruvna crash on Monday, but in case we do please see here our back-up system for this. These guidelines will also be added to the Welcome Site for ease of future reference, and you may wish to either print a copy for the fridge or copy and paste one to your desktop.

Communications

We have been giving a lot of thought to our ongoing approach to communications with parents this year and want to mention a few important dates for the coming months. As always, the first point of contact if you have any questions or queries is your child's class teacher or mentor and you do not need to wait for one of the more formal contact points below to reach out, as open and timely communication between home and school is so important for each student. Please see the parent handbook as well for others you can contact at school if you have specific questions or concerns.

Curriculum Evening- this is an important opportunity to learn more about the curriculum and pastoral program for your child(ren) this year. This will take place virtually on the evening of Tuesday 22nd September at 5:30pm. We will send out the zoom invitations for this for each year level next week.

Parent-teacher settling in call- this is a new point of contact for this year to give everyone an opportunity to speak with their child's class teacher or mentor toward the start of the school year. The focus of these calls will be pastoral and on how each child is settling into the new school year. These calls will be scheduled for the teacher inset day on Tuesday 13th October.

Interim Report- these brief reports on how each student has started the year academically will be released in the week beginning 16th November.

Parent-teacher conferences- these individual parent-teacher conferences are the main opportunity to learn more about your child's work and progress this term. They will take place on Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th November, and we will share more details on the arrangements for booking appointments shortly. The conferences will take place using zoom this year and in order to give teachers sufficient time to speak with all families across the school, there will be no school on these two days. We apologize for any inconvenience this adjustment causes, but think it is crucial to allow more time for the conferences this term.

Full reports- we provide two full reports for students each year, and these will be issued in December for Year 9 (to coincide with High School application deadlines), January for Years 7, 8 & 10 and February for the PYP and Year 11. The second full reports are issued in June.

It is so good to be back and I also want to take this opportunity to acknowledge the brilliant team of teachers and staff who are making this possible and working so hard to ensure the students continue to have an inspiring and broad education even in these challenging times.

Have a great weekend and a reminder too that school will be closed next Friday 18th September.

Take care

Jason Morrow