Mayor Joe Anderson has agreed that Liverpool City Council will fund a £10 FSM voucher for those pupils eligible through the financial benefits FSM (not universal FSM in KS1).  

These will be physical vouchers distributed through the Children’s Centre from Wednesday week (parents may want to check the children’s centre website for updates.  

This is the same arrangement as in the early March closure period.

Year 7 student Alicia has engaged with authorities to spearhead an awareness campaign of the safe and responsible disposal of masks.

The irresponsible disposal of single use face masks is a source of environmental concern, particularly due to the plastic content of the material. Alicia designed a poster, and contacted her local MP and Liverpool City Council to ask for their help in promoting awareness. The Council have picked up the poster which has now been distributed around shops and local public spaces.

Congratulations Alicia!

While all of our students who have had to self isolate are doing their best, Isobel in 7 Therese has earned a certificate for going the extra mile!

She has worked really hard across all subjects, and her scones for DT look delicious!

We are looking forward to welcoming back many of our isolating Year 7 students into school tomorrow.

After half term there may be a number of families returning to Liverpool from holidaying overseas with children planning to start school. 

As you know there are restrictions in place regarding travel from some foreign countries and some people returning to the UK may need to isolate for 14 days as soon as they arrive, depending on where they have travelled from.

Any pupils returning from countries that are subject to restrictions should not return to school for 14 days and should isolate at home. This is a vitally important measure to help control and contain COVID-19.

The list of countries requiring isolation for 14 days is constantly changing so please regularly check the latest version here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-travel-corridors

 

Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service know better than anyone that young people may be feeling unfairly cooped up, but the right choices on Bonfire Night are vital.

The service have sent us three videos that they would like us to share with parents and students.

This animated video is suitable for all age groups, whilst this video is harder hitting for older students.

Finally, the service have provided a video looking at issues such as attacks on fire crews and deliberate fire setting.

Have a happy and safe bonfire period!

The University of Winchester is offering online masterclasses designed to support students’ decision making as they consider university.

These Masterclasses will take place every Tuesday & Thursday evening between 13th October and 19th November.

All are offered at either 5pm or 7pm on the date a student chooses to attend, and students can join at whichever time is most convenient for them. 

The topics included within the 1-hour live session are:

• Applying to start your degree in 2021          
• Personal statement support
• Employability and thinking about where your degree might take you.

Student will also have access to a selection of pre-recorded advice, depending on their application journey, including support for those from a Compact school or college, applying from the Channel Islands or Northern Ireland.

Sessions can be booked by individual students and their supporters at home via:

https://www.winchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/open-days-and-campus-tours/application-masterclasses/

On Saturday 24th October we will be setting the clocks back an hour and 'summer time' officially ends. 

Road traffic collisions increase by 20% in the fortnight after the time change. 

Sadly, some of those collisions will involve child pedestrians and cyclists. Children under-16 are one of the most vulnerable groups of road users.

The latest available government statistics (2015)* show that 58% of children who die or are seriously injured in a road collision are involved in incidents between 3 and 7pm. From next Sunday, much of those will happen in darkness.

Whilst younger children are at risk, the data shows that 11 - 15 year olds are actually at more at risk from accidents that kill or result in serious injury.

Please refer to the resources linked below to help remind your children about road safety and safe cycling.

Teaching Road Safety: A Guide for Parents https://www.rospa.com/media/documents/road-safety/teaching-road-safety-a-guide-for-parents.pdf

Safety First – Cycling at Night https://www.cycletraining.co.uk/cycle-training-and-cycle-safety/safety-first-cycling-at-night/

Road safety teaching resources for children https://www.think.gov.uk/education-resources/

Keeping children safe during lockdown and beyond - Parents’ pack https://www.capt.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=44e36e43-bd5e-4dd0-acae-e040f37fe2ef

Since January 2020, a group of Year 10 (now Year 11) students were selected to take part in The Girls' Network. This prestigious programme enables students to engage with professional women from a range of employment sectors across the UK.

Even during lockdown our students continued to attend virtual mentoring sessions as well as other workshop opportunities to develop key skills such as, leadership, resilience and critical thinking.

On Friday 16 October, students took part in a re-engagement programme via Microsoft Teams. This programme will continue with a new cohort during the spring term. More details will follow soon.

We’d like to offer our thanks to the Schools’ Immunisation Team from NHS Mersey Care who have administered flu vaccines to our Year 7 students.

The nurses were very impressed with the outstanding conduct of our students as they received their vaccines with great maturity and no fuss.

We hope this preventative measure will help to reduce the burden on our NHS services this Winter.

This week we celebrated the graduation of our students who have successfully completed their Brilliant Club Scholars' Programme with outstanding results.

Within the programme students explore research based learning techniques that most students will only meet at University level, and along the way they have developed valuable skills in resilience, independent research, critical thinking, verbal communication and essay writing - all fundamental to success in higher education.

For their projects the students have worked with world class researchers, and our students were lucky enough to enjoy a personal message of congratulation from Matthew Agwae at the University of Liverpool, who worked with the students studying haematological based projects.

Our other strand of research was exploring "gender passing and the body in the nineteenth century" under Billie-Gina Thomason, which explored concepts that many people believe to be solely contemporary and how they were presented and perceived in the nineteenth century.

The Scholars' Programme is very demanding at the best of times, but graduates from this cohort faced the additional challenges presented by remote working, as much of their work was carried out throughout the period of national lockdown.

We are hugely proud of their achievements and look forward to seeing their new skills being applied in their studies!