School Update - 9th July 2020

Year 6 Into Year 7 Transition

The 2020 Induction Evening Presentation is now LIVE on the Transition Page. Click the button above to view.

If you have any individual queries about the September 2020 Year 6 into Year 7 transition that are not answered on our dedicated Year 6 page, please email Transition@hounsdown.hants.sch.uk

Please click here to access HOME SCHOOL WORK resources

Click here to read the Hounsdown School Risk Assessment for school reopening

Year 10 School Provision

Dear Parent/Carer,

I hope that you and your family are well.

I am sure you are aware that we are welcoming all students back in September a detailed newsletter has also been sent outlining some key information relating to this. The last day for school provision for year 10 this term will be Thursday 16^th July. This will give us time on Monday 20^th and Tuesday 21^st July to complete preparations of the school site for September. Therefore, next week will be the last allocated day for year 10.

If your son/daughter has been accessing the Keyworker provision and is scheduled to attend on a Monday and Tuesday then they will still be able to attend on the 20^th and 21^st. The keyworker provision will end at 12:20pm as per the school calendar for Tuesday 21st July.

We will also not be providing any live lessons or curriculum learning on Monday 20th or Tuesday 21st July as I am sure you appreciate the logistical task is huge.

I wish you and your family a safe summer and look forward to welcoming the year group back in September.

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Ellard

4th July 2020: responding to the latest government plans for September 2020 school re-opening

Dear Parents and Carers

The school will be publishing details before the end of this term in response to the government announcement, on Thursday 2nd July, of the new rules for safe opening of schools in September 2020.

These new rules unfortunately mean there will still be significant changes to normal school operation for each year group. We will share our plans with you before the end of this term and in time for you to come back to us with questions before the end of this academic year. The last day of the summer term is Tuesday 21st July for students of key workers and year 10. The first day of the autumn term for students will be Monday 7th September 2020. At present we are planning for a staggered start for students in the first week of the autumn term. Without having had any in school transition days this term it is anticipated that year 7 will be the first year group to return on Monday 7th September, with other year groups welcomed back within that first school week. Please keep monitoring Parent Mail and the school website for details, particularly towards the end of the school summer holiday at the end of August.

For our current year 10 and year 11 students, exam results day is Thursday 20th August. Please note results will be provided to students either electronically or by post this year and details on how to receive results, and how to raise any queries about the results, for those year groups are being sent separately. The school site will not be open on Thursday 20th August 2020.

Kind Regards,

Mr Veal

Online Lessons - Guidance for Parents and Carers

Dear Parents and Carers

We have been developing 'live' lessons and 'ask the expert' sessions via the Hounsdown Teams account for students.

Development and uptake of these has been really successful in the last week as we have responded to the need to provide some kind of real time connections between students and teachers. The most important part of all of these lessons at this stage is to keep the connection between school and students active and not the total number of lessons.

Here are some practical points to make you aware of that are limitations of the current system, both as a result of the system itself as well as the availability of staff to provide this service. I hope this clears up any questions you may have.

What does 'live lesson' mean?

'Live' to us means 'at the time', or in 'real time'. When the student joins at 10am , other students and the teacher will be online at the same time.

The teacher may be on screen, they may be voice only. They may talk over a powerpoint slide or ask students to go an do a task at that time. There is no expectation of teachers to be in video on screen and we ask students respect the professional relationship with teachers in the same way they do in school. The lessons are recorded for safeguarding and for other students to watch back later for learning.

Not all teachers are fully trained for these lessons yet: we're still learning. We ask that students accept that some teachers won't be on live lessons yet.

When are the lessons and how does each student join them?

Each student has been added to a number of Teams, one for each subject available to their year group – for example, Year 7 Art or Year 9 English. When a teacher sets up a live lesson, an email automatically goes to all students in that Year group inviting them to that lesson. If they want to join that lesson, they either keep the email and use the link to join the class at the time or go in to that team at the time of the lesson. Students will get emails from subjects they may not do. If students don't do that particular lesson, they just delete the email. As a school we are not in a position at this time to make Teams more specific (i.e. by class). This is something we'll work on in the future but we won't be for now.

We know this gives students a lot of emails, but their first job of the day then needs to be deleting the ones they don't need and keeping the ones linking to the lessons they want.

Some lessons are on at the same time for the same Year Group?

Lessons are being made available by staff who are also working at home, managing other school work including coming in to school to teach key worker students and their home commitments. At the moment we can't guarantee a timetable that avoids all clashes of lessons. Each lesson is recorded for watching later. Students will need to sometimes decide what their priority is at the time and pick that lesson. There is no expectation that a student must be part of all of the lessons offered.

What is 'Ask the Expert?'

Ask the Expert was planned to help reduce the need for individual emails between teachers and students stuck on work. Teachers won't provide a planned lesson in these sessions, they will be available on line to answer questions about their subject. Some teachers might say a session is only about one topic, others will keep it general. Students can ask a question, and then leave the session at any time.

Are these lessons the only work students do now?

No! Work is still being set in the Home School Work Team they will have been using since lock down started.

Online behaviour

Students who have used the online lessons this week have been fantastic. They have been respectful and engaged. If for any reason in a session they fall below these high standards, they'll be warned and/or asked to leave the session or removed from it. If this persists, we'll let you know and ask for you support.

Help!

HomeSchoolWork@hounsdown.hants.sch.uk for TECHNICAL problems: 'I forgot my login', 'I'm not a member of year 9 Art Team and should be', 'the computer I'm using won't show the video lesson'.
School work questions: 'I don't understand this History question' or 'I need help to explain chemical bonds'. These are best going straight to your teacher by email or join the next available subject 'Ask The Expert' session.
I'm worried about something else I'd normally talk to a teacher about: Contact your tutor: you need to email/speak to them once a fortnight anyway

We expect to continue to refine and improve how we do this style of learning and so the system is evolving. If there are significant changes, we'll let you know.

Yours sincerely

Mr Veal and the Hounsdown Staff

DECISION ON YEAR 10 GCSE EXAMS FOR SUMMER 2020

Dear Parent/Carer and Year 10 Student,

I hope that this letter finds you and your families well in the current circumstances.

As you will be aware we were waiting on OFQUAL decisions as to what was going to happen to Year 10 Early entry GCSE exams due to be sat this summer, 2020. I am now able to inform you that you will not have to sit these GCSE exams and will be awarded a GCSE grade based on prior attainment evidence. These results will be subject to scrutiny by the exam boards and OFQUAL. Teachers will be applying the same process for year 10 Summer 2020 GCSE exams as they have been for year 11 GCSE exams. The linked video from Ofqual explains how grades will be awarded:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXuDOrtJY1Q

Grading in 2020 - information for students

Information for students expecting GCSE, AS or A level results in summer 2020. A BSL signed version of this video is available at https://youtu.be/AjhzvVOai8w For more information visit https://www.gov.uk/ofqual

www.youtube.com

Please be aware that Ofqual have instructed all schools not to share the information submitted about your grades with you. There will be standardisation of the submitted grades by the exam boards BEFORE they are awarded to you, so grades awarded may be different from the information sent in by schools. This is to ensure no school is too harsh, or too generous in the assessment of each student.

The actual Ofqual wording is as follows:

"Calculated grades for students in year 10 and below

In line with our consultation proposal, we have decided that students entered for exams in year 10 and below will be eligible to receive calculated grades this summer. This follows the majority of responses received, which indicate that the progression of some students would be disrupted if they were not awarded a grade this summer, and to exclude them would have an unfair impact. Amongst the responses we received were concerns about the potential impact of excluding early entrants on disabled students or those with special educational needs, who might wish to spread their GCSE exams over different years."

This means that students will no longer need to be working through resources specifically in preparation for these early entry exams. However, we advise they continue their studies in these subjects if they are considering taking them at College.

Further OFQUAL guidance can be found on our school website: https://hounsdown.greenschoolsonline.co.uk/docs/letters/April_3rd_Ofqual____Letter_to_students_-_Summer_2020_grading.pdf

I look forward to seeing you back in school hopefully not too far the distant future. If you have not already seen the video on the school website please take a look https://www.hounsdown.hants.sch.uk/ we are missing you all. Remember to also stay in touch on the Year 10 Teams page.

Kind regards,

Miss Ellard

Parent and Carer Guide to Home Learning

Tuesday 21st April - The Hounsdown Curriculum Summer Term

Dear Parents and Carers

Please see attached details of evolving changes we are making to the work provided for home learning. Thank you for your patience and understanding. Having focused before Easter on providing resources and asking students to try school work and build, with you, some kind of home learning routine, we are now trying to focus on developing good feedback for students and not to overload them with resources.

With that in mind, and taking in to account recent national advice on emerging best practice for supporting home learning, we are now saying that students should be aiming for a minimum of 12-15 hours study at home a week. This is detailed in the attached. This is a minimum and students can do more. However, there is a balance to be found for all for a healthy and reasonable home learning routine. Within the work set this term we as a school are now also trying to focus on feedback and assessment to help learning for students. This will vary from subject to subject and there are examples of what might be done by teachers in the attached, but we want students to feel that their work from home is valued and they get a sense from teachers about how to improve.

Students can email class teachers and their tutor, indeed the tutors are asking that students check-in via email at least every two weeks. If students are having trouble emailing, then they can also contact the Subject Leader or their Year Leader and ask to be re-directed to the teacher. However, they should not feel worried about asking, there are no silly questions, and it may be something really simple that needs checking or re-explaining that will help 'unstick' a student!

Remember, for IT problems or log in issues of any kind, please use the homeschoolwork@hounsdown.hants.sch.uk email for support.

Finally, we've been asked if we are using the newly launched Oak National Academy resources published yesterday. This will be down to individual teachers and departments. However, students at home can use these, or any other resources (like BBC bitesize) they find useful and can ask for support on these from subject teachers if they need it, by email. GCSE Pod is also available for Hounsdown students. Just search GCSE Pod and then click on "New here, get started.

The most important points for us all are that students still feel connected to and valued by the school (because they are), and that they are trying around 3 hours a day minimum academic work across the range of subjects they are taught. As part of this work teachers will be trying their best to communicate feedback, guidance and support.

We will continue to try to develop the school curriculum and remote learning systems for the duration we are working in this way, so will keep you posted on updates and further changes.

Kind regards,

Mr Veal and all Hounsdown School staff

Dear Parents and Carers,

School Trips, cancellations and refunds

This is just a follow up to our previous correspondence on the 31^st March 2020 regarding school trips. Over the last couple of weeks, we have received enquiries from parents and carers regarding individual trips that we had planned prior to the coronavirus pandemic. As previously stated, due to the current uncertainty regarding the Coronavirus, we have had to make the disappointing decision to cancel all school trips for the rest of this academic year. We will be looking into the possibility of rescheduling these trips once the school resumes normal operations. The school is therefore pursuing, through travel companies and insurers, refunds for trips that have been cancelled. As soon as we have information to share with parents and carers, our school finance team will contact those families affected to confirm details. However, please be aware, that due to reliance on travel companies and insurers this is taking time, as the third party companies are inundated with claims at this highly unusual and demanding time.

In addition to school trips, the same procedure is taking place for all other school services that may have invoked parental costs in advance (for example Music lessons). As soon as we have information we will share this with parents and carers affected.

Your patience and support throughout this troubling time continues to be very much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,

Mr R Blackman

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