In schools as well as society we have been in an uncertain period since the start of term and the Prime Minister’s announcement on Wednesday of a possible reopening of schools from Monday 8th March -  if the local and national situation facilitates it - was undoubtedly helpful. We do not know what this reopening will look like or the shape it will take but it provides us with the hope that we can begin to get back to some sort of normality soon.

As we continue for the time being with remote learning we want to review our provision and are going to conduct a Parent and Carer Survey next week in order to gather information about what is going well and the areas for development and refinement in the weeks to come. We will circulate further information about the survey through our social media channels next week.

I think we know that there have been some developments over the past year which we will embrace moving forwards and one of those is online Parents’ Evenings. We have several coming up in the next few weeks and they are certainly something which we are planning to continue with in some shape or form in the future. We have this week also had the virtual Year 9 Options Evening and all of the information is still live on the school website.  We will be conducting the options discussions for students with senior staff on Teams over the weeks to come and I very much look forward to catching up with a number of Year 9 students to talk through their potential Key Stage 4 subject choices.

Finally, it has been great to see the range and number of university and college offers which our Year 13 students have been receiving over recent weeks. It’s always fascinating to see the courses that they wish to study and then to see the offers roll in and they have ranged from Oxford and Cambridge to a huge number of competitive courses at Russell Group universities to courses with a year in industry or a year abroad to vocational courses linked to specific fields. It is to the tremendous credit of our students, and the staff who have supported them, that they have managed to navigate the uncertain waters which currently surround us and still plan for such promising futures. Very well done to them all.

As with Year 9, we will shortly begin virtual Sixth Form interviews for next year with our Year 11 students and I very much look forward to hearing about the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the next generation of Wallingford School Sixth Form students.