This update covers:
- Noadswood’s 5 Step Behaviour System
- Our Digital Detox System
- Covid – updates
- Open Events
- Early closure timings: Thursday 30th September for Open Evening
- School Uniform
- Student Leadership
- Fuel Grant Scheme for parents/carers
Noadswood’s 5 Step Behaviour System
We have the highest expectations for our students at Noadswood, we believe that positive behaviour is a key foundation of good education, and we thank your children and young people for the excellent conduct so many of them genuinely so often demonstrate every day. But, of course, there are some young people who struggle with this more, and there are also students who hit a blip. We believe that all of them need to know that, as they grow up, they will take on responsibilities in the community that go hand in hand with their rights. It is the aim of our school to assist students to grow up with a clear and acceptable view of what is right and wrong; appreciating the needs of others and of the society around them.
Our behaviour system is designed to not only hold students to account, but empower them to make positive changes in their behaviour if they make mistakes during their journey with us. At the heart of our system is a restorative approach that allows our staff to demonstrate empathy, teach children how to resolve conflict, and most importantly, allow students to have a voice. It's an opportunity for both the staff member and student to express their feelings about what's going on while setting high expectation of each other. This is something we all need to work on – together – young people and adults alike.
The framework for promoting positive behaviour will include a number of steps that allow staff to address any mistake a child might have made that day. The Restorative Conversation enables students to make a fresh start the following day, gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of other people’s needs, and the effect that they as individuals may have upon the ethos of the school. As the steps progress, our students will be provided with an increasing level of support in order to ensure a positive outcome in the end, and the security of clarity about what they need to do to move forward productively.
To see more about the system we follow, please visit our page (click here)
If you have questions about this, don’t hesitate to contact your son/daughter’s Year Leader/Assistant Year Leader on ePraise or at the email addresses below:
Year7@noadswood.hants.sch.uk – Mr Wilkinson and Mrs Ward
Year8@noadswood.hants.sch.uk – Mr Rowling and Mrs French
Year9@noadswood.hants.sch.uk – Mr Marsh and Mrs French
Year10@noadswood.hants.sch.uk – Miss Rawlinson and Miss Fitzgerald
Year11@noadswood.hants.sch.uk – Mrs Way and Miss Fitzgerald
They will be delighted to discuss the system with you or provide you with an insight into how your child(ren) are doing within it, as well as within our rewards system.
I want to emphasise how keen we are to hear if our students don’t uphold our values online or in the community – we don’t stop our concern about this or commitment to it at the end of the school day. We are grateful to parents/carers and local partners who alert us to the many fab things are students get up to out there, but equally so for information when they get it wrong. We will work through all such behaviour concerns together, according to the same behaviour system of accountability and restorative work as in school.
Digital Detox
As mentioned in our previous letter, we are also reintroducing our Digital Detox that ran successfully here from 2017 until Covid hit. This detox from phones and ear pods operates from when students arrive in their tutor bases to when they leave site at the end of the school day, so phones and ear pods should be out of sight, safely popped away through the day. Of course, should they need to check their phone because they're keen to see a message from you, or they have a reason for why they need to call home, they can approach their year leaders or any member of staff and we will make that happen for them. Equally, should they need just to check their timetable or check ePraise, they only need ask any adult, and this will be permitted.
Sometimes, teachers or support staff colleagues may ask the students to use their phones, if they have them, for a learning activity, but this will always be made clear to the students, and achievement will never depend on having a phone. We know our students will re-commit to a healthy breather from phones and online connection and communication when they're in school - it's a far better way to enjoy our days and the people with us. I, too, am so enjoying being with people again, and spending less time on screens of any kind – it’s an important time for us all to do this as much as we possibly can.
Covid cases in school
As you know, from our midweek updates, the number of positive cases of Covid combined with those awaiting PCR test outcomes have meant we will be offering hybrid lessons to Year 11 only from Monday 20th September until further notice. This means Year 11 students are expected to attend Noadswood as normal, however those who are awaiting a PCR will have access to both FROG work and live broadcast lessons.
We have been in contact with Public Health England in Hampshire and with the DfE who are entirely content with the measures we are taking, and by ‘we’ I mean all of you as well as us – we’re grateful to you for the clear information we receive to health@noadswood.hants.sch.uk and the sensible decisions we come to about when your child(ren) need to self-isolate. Numbers, though still existent, are no longer rising at the pace they did in this year group when this cluster of cases began; we will provide updates in line with guidance each week as we need to.
Case numbers in the other year groups do not trigger the need for hybrid lessons at the present time – we will keep this under constant review – and so if your child is self-isolating, work will be made available on Frog; you and your child can also reach out for more detail about this to the year leader email addresses as above, or on ePraise.
We know all this of course continues to be a source of queries and worry for us all, so please don’t hesitate to put a question or thought to us at health@ at any time.
Vaccination of Children aged 12-15
Many of you will have heard or read news reports in the early part of last week that the former Vaccines Minister, Nadhim Zahawi (now the Secretary of State for Education), announced children aged 12-15 will shortly be offered one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccination. This process will be organised, administered and delivered by NHS’s School Age Immunisation Service who we are led to understand will contact parents and carers in due course, and to whom any enquires should be directed.
Schools do not have any agency or involvement in the management of this programme; the Immunisation Service will roll out the programme on the school site, via a schedule that will be communicated to us in the way all other immunisation programmes are conveyed, and about which we do not make the decisions.
We currently have no additional information beyond this on the roll out of the vaccination programme to school aged children, but updates will be published on the school website via these letters, our social media platforms and via ePraise when we hear more.
Open Events
We are so excited to be opening our doors for our Open Mornings this week, to our Open Evening on Thursday 30th September and to a further Open Morning on October 7th, which we are operating via a bookable system this year in order to be in line with our Covid contingency planning.
If you would like to hear more about these events, just click on our events page (click here)
In order to have our LRC and school hall available to accommodate our visitors safely on these dates, the school will move to one breaktime at 11am for these dates only, whilst lunchtimes will remain staggered as usual. Tutors and teachers will make this little tweak clear to the children, but we wanted you to know it’s just a temporary tweak to free up these spaces for visitors.
Early closure: Thursday 30th September
To enable our colleagues and students to be ready for the Open Evening, the school will close after lesson 3 for all students on Thursday 30th September. This means that at 12.20pm all students will leave the site (and any FSM students will be able to get a hot dinner at 12.20pm before leaving).
Should this early closure place you in real difficulty in terms of your child(ren) getting home safe, please drop their Year Leader/Assistant Year Leader an email (as above) or an ePraise.
School Uniform
Just another reminder of the link to our school uniform requirements (click here)
This year, our Deputy Head Girl in Year 11 is taking student soundings on our uniform, following Mrs Loveday and me doing so with some outgoing Year 11s last year – we’ve already made one or two tweaks to our PE kit expectations following this, and I will be listening to this year’s student voice, sharing their ideas with my team, with trustees and with you all soon.
Student Leadership
Alongside the work on uniform, our Head Boy, Head Girl, and the deputies are keen to lead on other crucial strands of school life that they described to us in their interviews and have embarked on already:
Positive inclusion and diversity, including in our curriculum;
Noadswood’s commitment to sustainability and climate rescue;
Ensuring student voice, from Y7-11, is heard about the values we believe in, and that there are clear and easy ways for student ideas and feelings always to be heard.
They are a fantastic quartet, along with the House Captains and the rest of the Prefect team and I look forward to them sharing their work in these letters soon.
Fuel Grant Scheme: Possible help with utility bills
I have been asked to publicise the following information regarding a Fuel Grant Scheme made available via the Citizens Advice Bureau:
If you are having difficulties with the cost of energy bills, you may be eligible for a FREE fuel voucher from Citizens Advice to help pay for your utilities.
For more details and to find local branch contact details visit the Citizens Advice website: https://citahants.org
Looking forward to a new week ahead – the students have been so good to talk to in my assemblies, around the site, in meetings with me and in our Hot Choc Fridays… I am so proud of them all and of the whole staff team.
Should you have any questions, queries, worries or ideas, do drop me a message at headteacher@noadswood.hants.sch.uk
All our best,
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team