Dear Parents and Carers

Welcome back to the new term. We continue with the year 11 mock examinations and with the year 13 mocks on the horizon, we know this will be an important and busy term for our oldest students – and their teachers! They have begun well and understand, more than ever, the importance of being really well-prepared for their assessments.

Behaviours for learning

Your sons and daughters have returned with the same spirit of positive engagement that allows teachers to teach and learners to learn. Calm and purposeful classrooms are great places for us all to be and allows us all to get better at what we do. 

Additional Social and Dining Spaces

It can be tough during the winter months when outside spaces are limited and can lead to warm, dry and comfortable places to eat and socialise becoming more limited. As you will be aware, years 10 and 11 have their new dining hall. Meanwhile, work is about to begin on a major refurbishment of the main school hall that will therefore benefit students in years 7, 8 and 9 at break and lunchtime.

New Catering Providers

This week we welcomed ‘Edward & Ward’ to CNS as our new catering providers. We are very excited to be working with them and we hope that the initial feedback you have received from your children matches our own.  Our goals include providing additional vegan and vegetarian options, more enticing meal deals and using minimal packaging and plastic. In a few weeks’ time, we shall conduct a parent, carer and student survey and find out how well the first few weeks have gone in terms of value for money and customer satisfaction.

Sixth Form Open Evening – Thursday 11 November

Following on from the very busy open evening for year 7s, we now turn our attention to the next group of students to join our outstanding sixth form. Whilst next Thursday is a normal school day, we are grateful to the current sixth formers who are supporting the evening as guides or in classrooms.

Lateral flow testing and face coverings

Thank you to those families who have uploaded their lateral flow test results. Whilst the proportion of students who regularly test at home is unknown, approximately 25% of students’ results are currently uploaded. If we had a higher proportion of students with uploaded data then this would improve our ability to spot patterns in year groups or be more confident that asymptomatic cases are being identified.

A similar proportion of students are currently wearing face coverings in corridors. Wearing face coverings is strongly recommended at CNS, but it is not mandatory. We may be advised to make them compulsory (minus exemptions), if the number of positive cases rises sharply in the weeks ahead. However, we are hoping to avoid getting to that stage through that combination of measures that include, in addition to face coverings in communal areas and regular lateral flow testing:

• Hand hygiene;
• Social distancing (where possible);
• Good ventilation;
• Tissue hygiene.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that a large proportion of students do not wear face coverings on school buses, or they remove them once the bus has left the coach park. It remains mandatory for all passengers to wear face coverings (minus exemptions).

At this stage, we ask that you simply discuss these issues with your children. We shall review the information we provide to students about these measures in the hope that more students make conscious decisions that are well informed and are known by you. This is a delicate area and I hope the manner in which I have raised it is helpful.

And finally…

Next Thursday there will be a school-wide pause to come together for Remembrance Day, shortly before 11am. We hope that the event will be special and memorable and suggest you ask your children about it on Thursday evening. In the meantime, enjoy whatever Guy Fawkes events you are taking part in and thank you again for the way that my colleagues and I feel a strong partnership with families to do right by your children, even during these eventful times.

Have a great weekend.

Yours faithfully

Barry Doherty

Headteacher