Welcome to Term 4!

Welcome to Term 4 – our last leg of 2020. I hope you enjoyed some time with your families over the break and that your teens are refreshed and ready to embark on their last term of learning. We look forward to welcoming all our students back to school.

Below are some reminders for the upcoming term:

COVID update

This term sees some of the restrictions lifted and school slowly returning what we know. The main changes for us involve excursions and orientation days. Year 6 Orientation and Year 10 transition to Jesmond activities will be modified but will now be able to go ahead which is very pleasing news.

We will also now be able to conduct some excursions that we had to cancel throughout the year.

Our Year 10 formal unfortunately has been cancelled in its current form, however we are working with Year 10 students to devise a new format that meets COVID-19 regulations.

Our face to face Monday assemblies will continue to be conducted in year groups in large spaces. These assemblies are important to reward and recognise our students’ achievements. They will be shortened to 15 minutes as per department guidelines and there will be no external guests in attendance.

External visitors to the school are still not recommended unless it is considered essential. If the school requires a meeting with you a staff member will make contact to arrange an appointment. If you have an urgent matter that you need to discuss face to face please call the school to make an appointment with the relevant staff member.

Please read the updated guidelines on the DOE website if you wish to seek further information regarding COVID-19 guidelines.

Reports

• Our Semester Two Reports will return to their usual format which includes reporting against stage outcomes and the awarding of grades.
• Attendance will also be reported on again in the Semester Two reports.

Student Attendance

The department has again issued very clear guidelines for attendance for students.

Students should be at school unless:

• they have a medical certificate which states that they are unable to return to school due to an ongoing medical condition.
• they are currently unwell, even if they have mild symptoms.

We will make appropriate arrangements to return students home if they become unwell at school.

Uniform

During the winter months the uniform was not as well supported by our students as we expect. Please support our commitment to high expectations at Waratah Campus by making the necessary arrangements to have your child in uniform for Day 1 Term 4.

Uniform is an important part of school life and we thank our families for their ongoing support in this area.

We have uniform vouchers to support families experiencing financial challenges. Please contact our Head Teacher Wellbeing, Louise Payne for more information.

Presentation Days

We are currently discussing a format that allows us to celebrate our students’ achievements safely at the end of the year and as soon as we have more information on this we will be in touch. At this stage we are considering formal Year Assemblies that are filmed and provided to families.

Tell Them From Me Parent Surveys

Thank you to all the families who have completed the TTFM parent survey. Your results will help us build a better school, improve the family experience and allocate resources to better support our students. The closing date for surveys is Friday 17 October. We emailed each family access instructions late last term.

Once again, we look forward to working with your children in classrooms and we wish all families a productive and happy Term 4.

Kind regards,

Hayley