Dear parents and guardians, Dr Andy Kemp, Head of Senior School

It seems strange to not be welcoming everyone back through the gates of the school at the start of the summer term, but these are not exactly normal times! We ended last term with our remote schooling programme underway with 4192 Google Meets and 7255 Google Classroom posts taking place over that last week across the Foundation!

It’s been lovely to hear from both parents and students about their experiences over our first trial adventure at the end of last term, and it’s clear from our survey at the end of term that our students are adapting quickly to this new way of working.

We’ll be continuing to adapt and evolve over the coming weeks as we all gain more experience about what works best in different areas, and I look forward to seeing more examples of the creativity of our teachers and pupils in the coming weeks! Please do email me or tweet us (@SPFSeniors) with interesting examples.

I ended last term with an assembly encouraging people to try something new over the Easter break to make it feel more like a break. I’ve really enjoyed reading about what people have been getting up to for their #SPFsomethingnew; whether it was baking, dancing, learning a language, painting, or learning how to do a rubik’s cube! As we settle into the new routine of remote schooling, I encourage people to continue to seek out more opportunities to try new things. I’ve been working on my baking and I’m planning on experimenting with some sourdough this term for my own #SPFsomethingnew!

I started the term by talking to the students in my third e’ssembly about our reasons to be hopeful. The world is a scary place at the moment, but beyond the immediate coronavirus crisis there are reasons to believe that we can create something good from all of this, and that the new world we enter when this ends, and it will, might be just a little bit better than the one we left behind. Click the link if you want to have a listen.

We look forward to the day when we are allowed to reopen the buildings and welcome the students back to the physical site, but until then, as we move into this new and far from normal summer term, let’s all try to find our own reasons to be hopeful!

Best wishes

Dr Andy Kemp

Head of Senior School

Notices

Supporting Young People’s Mental Wellbeing

There are a number of useful resources available online:

-Emerging Minds - Supporting children and young people with worries about COVID-19

-Government Advice - COVID-19: guidance on supporting children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing

Duke of Edinburgh's Award

While the lockdown has meant that the expeditions that were due to take place this term have not gone ahead, the students have continued to work on their Award sections. With the lack of team sports, school activities and the closure of many charity shops and venues it has meant that the students have had to be more creative in how they fulfil their hours.

The national DofE organisation has created a website page to help with participants who are struggling to keep going with their activities and have also announced a number of changes to the program. These include allowing students to change activity and keep the time already accrued and letting them tutor or help family members during this period. Some of our participants have looked at continuing work with their charities by raising awareness or producing resources from home, and a number have signed up to online volunteering activities like Missing Maps where volunteers help process digital maps used in disaster relief.

Meanwhile our own expedition provider The Adventure Element have kept themselves busy by starting to produce a series of videos on expedition training areas and we hope that we will be able to deliver some of our training later this term remotely to give us a head start once we are back out in the wilderness.

Stephen Perse Podcast

Take some time out and listen to one of our Stephen Perse Podcasts. Each episode is a conversation between staff and students discussing everything from current events to education in the modern world.

Listen to all of our episodes on our website or search ‘Stephen Perse Podcast’ on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube and Anchor.

Newsletters

Senior School Newsletter, 24 April