Many of you will have read Graham’s letter this week (available here) explaining the next steps for New Bridge. Our staff team are on hand to support with any questions you may have over the coming weeks. I’d like to assure you that we will continue to ensure that the safety of our young people and staff is the key priority in all our planning. Once again, I’d like to thank all our families for their continued support and understanding, it is this very strength of relationship and partnership, that will ensure that together we’ll find a safe way forward for September.

Over the next three weeks we are looking to provide all we can for year 11 pupils transitioning to the Learning Centre, and for those year 14 students who are moving on. As you can imagine, we are finding new ways of working in so many areas, transition being just one.

Current year 11 staff teams will be contacting families to discuss the Learning Centre Options programme. The Learning Centre curriculum seeks to provide an offer which can broaden our students’ skills and knowledge. Options offer a wide range of subjects based on 3 strands: Leisure, Employability and Academic. We offer vocational options which are based on realistic destinations for our young people.

We will be emailing the Learning Centre Options booklet which seeks to give an understanding of the option choices enabling students and families to make informed decisions.

Due to the current situation around the coronavirus, we are planning the Learning Centre curriculum offer and Options programme as best we can. Therefore, we are asking that students make their options choices as they normally would. As you can appreciate, there may have to be some changes or adaptions in September in line with government guidelines around ‘social distancing’ and ‘bubbles’. We will, however, ensure wherever possible that students can access an option of their choice. If we have to make any changes or additions to the options programme, we will notify you at the earliest opportunity and work through a solution.

Staff teams will be starting to contact students and their families to introduce themselves and talk through the different aspects of Learning Centre life, talking through any anxieties and hopefully allaying any fears. Building these relationships is essential, both with students and their families, and we are all looking forward to getting to know our year 11 students better as they prepare to begin a new journey with us.

We have prepared a virtual tour of the Learning Centre which you can view here. We are also preparing a virtual ‘Welcome booklet’ which will give you a full picture of Learning Centre life.

Throughout this year Learning Centre students have been working with musicians from ‘Live Music Now’.

Young people in the Interactive Bases now have the opportunity to engage with musicians from Live Music Now in their homes. A number of students have been identified and families are completing a survey for Live Music Now around the use of technology in the home. A pilot is running in the hub this week and went well with a number of pupils using different instruments. The next steps are to bring live music into the homes of some of our young people using their iPads as instruments. This sounds really exciting and I hope lots of families get involved. I look forward to sharing.

To finish, here is my sunflower update:

Come on guys, get growing – only 3 weeks left!

Have a nice weekend

Dawn

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can find Gavin’s blog for the school site here

For news on our Key Stage 5 pathway groups at Medtia Square please click here

You can find my previous blog posts here