Dear Parent/Guardian

As you are aware a letter was sent to you on 19^th January re: engaging in distance learning. I understand that some of the content within this letter has been screenshotted and placed on social media and I wished to clarify the position of the Attendance and Wellbeing Service at this time and our expectations as a school.

I am sorry that some of you may have felt that the tone of the letter portrayed unrealistic expectations on distance learning or construed that a referral would be made directly to the Attendance and Wellbeing Service if your child(ren) failed to engage in distance learning. For clarity, referrals from the school to the Attendance and Wellbeing Service will only be made if there has been a failure to engage with distance learning and you have failed to contact the school to discuss or answer any of our messages or calls over a short period. A referral would then be made for a Wellbeing Response Visit to ensure that you are all safe and well and also to determine if there are any barriers you are currently facing to engaging with the distance learning. As the name Wellbeing Response Visit suggests this is primarily to ensure our pupils, and you as their families, are okay.

If needed due to no contact, a referral would be made by the school and as a result of a referral, the Attendance and Wellbeing Service will make a visit to your home but they will adhere to all Public Health Wales guidance. This includes maintaining social distancing and frequent sanitising of hands between visits. These are not visits into the house and they will remain outdoors at all times at a safe distance. The Attendance and Wellbeing Service will then report back to us when the family, including the pupils, have been seen and they will also report to us any needs you have from the school so that we can support you effectively going forward.

As stated above, these referrals would only be made as a last resort when we have been unable to contact you. If you are facing any issues with the learning platforms we use as a school or in understanding and engaging with the work set, please contact us so that we can support you via Class Dojo, telephone or email.  Where there is no engagement with learning, we may try to contact you via Class Dojo, telephone, email or text message and would request that you respond to these as soon as possible so that it is not necessary for a referral to be made for a door-knock. We understand many of you have work, caring, childcare and other commitments during the day but would ask you to communicate with us as soon as you can if you receive a call or message.

As we may need to contact you, if you have updated your phone number recently please let us know so that we can amend our records.

I hope the above has clarified the previous letter and please do not hesitate to contact the school in future if anything is not clear from our letters. I wanted to thank you all for continuing to work with us in these difficult times and supporting your child’s education until such time we are able to resume face-to-face teaching.

Kind regards

Mr Gardner