Dear Parents, I can hardly believe that we have now just arrived in May! I wanted to give you a very brief update to end the week so that you have the latest details on all our progress at Forrester.
Staffing Update
We are pleased to announce the arrival of Miss Watson’s baby boy a couple of weeks ago. Miss Watson (Maths) will now be off on Maternity leave with a replacement requested from August.
Mr Brown started back with us in the Social Subjects department after a period of parental leave.
We welcome back Mrs Collins, CL, to the English department as of Tuesday of next week and she will continue to work alongside Ms Jarvis for a hand-over period. We are very thankful to Ms Jarvis for all the work she has undertaken to keep things ticking over so smoothly in Mrs Collins’ absence.
We welcome Mrs Forbes back to the post of Pupil Support Leader of Telford House and thank Ms McLaren for covering her absence. Ms McLaren will continue to look after Telford House on a Monday and Redpath House on a Friday!
Digital Access
We are aware that we have a very small number of students who are struggling to access a digital device to complete work at home. Thank you to those who completed the survey. We will make some progress towards resolving those issues as of next week.
Support videos for accessing Microsoft Teams and Show My Homework
I am incredibly grateful to members of our staff Digital Technology group who have made various support videos for students to access regarding workflow on both Microsoft Teams and Show My Homework. I would strongly urge parents and students to watch these videos which you can find here, by clicking on this link. The students will need to view them from their school accounts as this is the best way for us to keep the videos secure. Please watch them with your young person.
Timetable
As I mentioned previously, we are now starting our new timetable as of Tuesday of next week (Monday is a staff in-service day). Staff have been very busy preparing for this in the background. Staff will set up new classes on Show My Homework and Microsoft Teams so please ask your young people to look out for those. I would imagine notifications will come to student’s school email accounts. The email address is the one they use at school and have already been using to sign into these platforms. If you are needing any assistance with that, please email the admin mailbox and someone will help you: admin@forrester.edin.sch.uk
Food Parcels
We are grateful to Edinburgh Council who have worked very hard to get food parcels to families that are in most need. We are also grateful to Broomhouse One Stop Shop who have assisted us in this, hosting the parcels for pickup. We are also grateful to Sarah Ross for continuing to support families with breakfast supplies. Our plan is to look at supporting families with stationary and sanitary products over the next few weeks, with details on that coming soon.
Contacting Students
As I mentioned in previous updates, we have a very high percentage of engagement with our students using the various online platforms. However, some are still to access work or are a bit sluggish at getting online to get some work completed. While we realise, as always, that family circumstances are all different under these times we are in, we just want to make sure that all our students are engaging to some degree. Therefore, if we haven’t heard from students via our platforms, I will ask our Pupil Support Leaders and Admin teams to contact families to make sure everything is ok.
Parent Council
I am looking forward to meeting with the Parental Council online next week. I will give them an update too as to where things are at behind the scenes.
In the meantime, have a good weekend everyone.
Kind regards
Martin Ennis
Acting Head Teacher