Governor Newsletter - May 2021
St Andrew’s Church of England Junior School
Head Teacher: Mrs A Cornwall, Chair of Governors: Mr B Levitan
Vice Chair: Mr T Woods, Clerk to Governors: Mrs L Powell
A Most Extraordinary Year!
This year of 2020/21 has been a hugely disruptive and upsetting year for everyone, and I hope and pray that as we come out of the pandemic we will get back to better and more stable times. The positive news in this respect is of course the vaccines and the fact that we are seeing the steadily falling infection and death rates.
The Governors wish to express their heartfelt thanks to the parents for their patience and massive support for the school during these unsettled times with all the emotional difficulties and many personal hardships people have had to endure, and also, of course, taking on an at least partial teaching role whilst children have been schooled from home with online materials – a huge round of applause to you all! And of course we also thank the children for their acceptance and positive attitude during the various lockdowns – we are immensely proud of all you have achieved.
The dedication of the Staff during this period has been nothing short of miraculous.
The school has never truly closed as throughout there has been on premises schooling for frontline and care workers’ children and for vulnerable children, requiring extraordinary special measures to ensure everyone’s safety. This has involved the cleaners, catering staff, midday supervisors and office staff as well as teachers and teaching assistants, all of whom have performed above and beyond. And of course there has been the switch to online teaching and learning for the children at home. The swiftness and professionalism with which this change has been accomplished is truly incredible, and I’m sure you would want to join the Governors in giving them a huge vote of thanks.
As a newly appointed Chair of Governors I am tremendously privileged to be able to serve such a wonderful school. A school in which we can see the joint commitment of everyone involved: children, parents and staff – and we Governors are proud to be part of that community.
So on behalf of the Governors, my thanks and best wishes to you all,
Bruce Levitan, Chair of Governors
What next?
Mrs Cornwall posts regular newsletters to let you know what is happening at school, so please keep your eye on the web site for those announcements.
Our school has a very strong theme around global values and sustainable development, and the children are encouraged to develop their own voice in these areas. Hence we have recently seen Year 5 join the Roughfields campaign in a respectful and well thought through manner, attracting an article in the Glossop Chronicle. The Chronicle also came to record the burying of a school time capsule which will be opened at the next national census. It will be interesting to see how times have changed between now and then! The school has recently invested in a new online application called Lyfta. This is a rich environment that allows teachers and children to explore global communities and develop a clearer and deeper appreciation of cultures, and the problems they face, from all around the world.
We are very proud of our MACAWS provision in school, and recently we were visited by Councillor Ed Kelly who was so impressed by what we are doing, that Mrs Cornwall has been invited to join a steering group for a community project led by the Bureau in Glossop. They have been given some funding to start a befriending support network involving children and centring on children and young people’s mental health.
After the summer break we are anticipating that we will be receiving an Ofsted inspection as our last one was in 2016 and five years is the maximum period that’s
allowed between inspections. We were judged to be good back then, and with the
improvements that have been made under Mrs Cornwall’s headship since then, we are confident that we will retain this rating.