17 December 2020 Green School Church St, Theale Reading, RG7 5DA T: 0118 930 2741 E: [email protected] W: www.thealegreen.w-berks.sch.uk Dear Parents/Carers

Well, we’ve done it!

Congratulations to all the staff and students who have worked together since the summer to ensure we have maximised every day this term.

I know that you will want to join me especially in thanking the staff for their tremendous commitment and determination since we returned in September. We have not only managed the COVID context with very few road bumps, but we have continued to move the school forward, focusing on the quality of teaching and learning, carrying out student and parent surveys, we have published a book (Lockdown), run first class professional development for staff, continued with our careers programme, developed important new pages for our website (including a new Year 11 revision page), run intervention sessions for Years 11 and 13, introduced the Sixth Form Crew (an amazing group of Sixth Form students), produced a pantomime for students, carried out all of our assessments, virtual parents’ evenings and a virtual Sixth Form Open Evening and along the way………..we’ve had fun! The enthusiasm of our students has been a huge motivator for staff, and we were so pleased to be able to manage to serve a Christmas lunch this week, as well as celebrating with a terrific end to term with the Wizard of Oz this afternoon! The students thoroughly deserved this. Our relationships with students feel stronger than ever, and whilst life is certainly not perfect, we finish the term feeling part of a very special school.

COVID

Should your son/daughter receive a positive CV-19 test between now and the end of the day on Wednesday 23rd December please follow the specific instructions below:

1. Send an email with the words : Headteacher / COVID in the subject header to [email protected] berks.sch.uk 2. Please give specific and clear detail and the best contact numbers 3. This address will be checked at least twice a day and we will contact you directly by phone, before contacting Public Health (PHE) 4. Following the call to PHE, we will then contact all relevant families with clear instruction about self-isolation as advised by PHE 5. This contact will be made to families by email, not phone.

Schools  The Bicester School

 Bicester Technology Studio  Theale Green School  UTC Heathrow Registered company number: 7652565  UTC Oxfordshire Registered address: Activate Learning Education Trust,  UTC Reading Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1SA, United Kingdom  UTC Swindon

If your son/daughter receives a positive CV-19 test from December 24th onwards, through to the end of the holiday, or, someone in your bubble / contact receives a positive test and your child needs to self-isolate, then follow the specific instructions below:

1. Send an email with the words : Headteacher / COVID in the subject header to [email protected] berks.sch.uk 2. Please give specific and clear detail and the best contact numbers 3. This address will be checked once a day 4. We will endeavour to reply by email and answer any questions you may have

School returns on Tuesday 5th January. If you are in any doubt about your child’s fitness for school due to any concerns about potential CV-19 symptoms, please do not send your child to school and arrange for a test to be administered. Following the tier 3 announcement, Headteachers in some Reading schools have reported social media postings about older students meeting for parties. We would ask for your full support over the New Year period, with students returning only five days later, in terms of ensuring that our older students respect the need to reduce all social contact over this time. We have stressed throughout this term the importance of everyone’s responsibility to the community, and as numbers in West rise, and the Christmas / New Year period awaits around the corner, we ask that we all continue to step up to this responsibility.

Lastly, on behalf of all the staff at Theale Green School, we wish you and your family a safe and happy Christmas period, and we look forward to working closely with you in 2021, when we hope that life will slowly improve for everyone as the days become longer and we see the signs of Spring arriving.

Happy Christmas to you all

Kind regards

Jo Halliday Headteacher