DARLEY AND SUMMERBRIDGE FEDERATION

Friday 12th February 2021

Well Done Ava! Ava has been very busy learning about Asia over the last few days and has created a fabulous ‘Wall of China’ - well done - we all think it’s brilliant!

Media Coverage As you will be aware, media coverage on the state of children’s mental health and well-being and the concerns regarding children ‘missing out and falling behind with their education’ feature heavily in daily news. This inexorably adds to the tensions and anxieties of parents and teachers alike, never mind the children. Of course, we are concerned about their mental health, yet the media and politicians piling on the pressure saying that they are not going to get to the expected standard this year and that a ‘whole generation will suffer’ is simply piling on extra pressure in my view. The issue I foresee is that children are being measured against the standards that they would be expected to achieve if everything was normal; but we are not in normal times. In our federation we will measure our children’s performance, the standards they achieve and the curriculum they cover and judge them on what they have managed to do during lockdown, not measure them against what they haven’t done. There are many things that we cannot change regarding this pandemic, but the one thing we could change is to reduce the national expectation of what children should be able to do at the end of it all. Our focus should be on getting our children back to school so they can be happy again, not so they can get back to school only to work twice as hard as ever before. Comments about ‘extending the school day and shortening holidays’ so children can ‘catch up’ adds to the very thing we are trying to reduce in them. Anxiety. We should all stop worrying about what we haven’t done and look forward to what we can.

Break up We break up today and lessons will resume for our children on Monday 22nd February for both home based lessons and school based lessons. It has for all of us been a challenging half term made even more so with the snowy and cold weather. However, in true Yorkshire fashion, we have just got on with it. I know that the teaching staff have tried their best to help your children throughout this lockdown and other staff members; support staff, admin staff, the catering and cleaning staff as well as the pre-school staff have all worked tirelessly to keep our federation moving in the right direction. The governing body, despite not being able to actually visit either school, are still working hard for us behind the scenes, proactively supporting the federation as we look forward to better days. I really hope that you all have a welcome break from ‘home schooling’ next week - please take time (if you can) to relax and not worry about school work. Look after yourselves and stay safe!

CBBC on Youtube CBBC are uploading videos to Youtube daily that are suitable for 5-11 year olds. They have all the top CBBC brands on here, with a wide range of genres from factual shows, news, dramas, comedy to entertainment. Programmes like Horrible Histories, Blue Peter, Newsround, The Next Step, Saturday Mash-Up, Operation Ouch, the Playlist, , Heirs of the Night and Jamie Johnson. We are also welcoming back in the brilliant new programme My Mum .

If you think your children would be interested in this, please subscribe to www.youtube.com/cbbc - (it’s obviously completely free to subscribe!) and don’t forget to watch the CBBC live daily and on the BBC iPlayer.

And finally…Please click on the link for this week’s assembly: https://youtu.be/ 8QrvwWgQnio