Good afternoon

I would firstly like to thank our whole Netherlee school community for everyone’s efforts and partnership working, over the last couple of weeks, as we have continued to work together to follow Scottish Government’s guidance, through what has been quite a tricky, demanding and ever changing period in school.  Once again, my staff have risen to this challenging period with teachers, PSAs and all staff having to deal with Covid in their own personal lives, whilst also being determined to be able to provide work for their isolating pupils via both the school website and the children’s usual Google Classroom (GC) as well as of course also having children in front of them in class.  It is to their credit that staff are also managing to continue to have “live check ins” with our children too as we all understand the importance of this ongoing contact for our children at home.  What a staff team we have in Netherlee!

Their efforts, coupled with your own vigilance in carrying out regular twice weekly lateral flow tests at home has, quite rightly, picked up both positive (and negative) cases in your household which is in line with the high prevalence of Covid in society.  Therefore, if your child has to isolate for any reason, please remember that your child’s teacher will have placed the current class homework on GC for them to complete and they have also placed work suggestions on the school website for them, if they are well and able to work at home. Once your child’s teacher knows how long a child is going to be off for and their expected return date, they will then be able to plan and prepare the specific work for the isolation period which your child can access via their usual class Google Classroom (they don’t need a different GC code). Again, if they are well, this will enable them to continue to learn at home, in line with their class.   Office staff will of course continue to explain all of this in more detail in their emails which they send out to you when/ if you indicate to us that your child is having to isolate. However, on a very “positive” note, throughout the course of this week, we have seen a steady increase in the incidence of negative test results and I am therefore hopeful, and keeping everything crossed, that this trend will continue and things will steadily settle down.

Meet the Teacher
I hope you enjoy seeing your child’s teacher at your Meet the Teacher session.  If you are able to join the session, a wee reminder to please try to join for the prompt start time so that you don’t miss anything.  Teachers, and the appropriate stage leader from the Leadership Team, are very much looking forward to seeing you then.

Parent Council (PC)
On Wednesday evening, myself, Mrs Sweeney and Mrs Kerr joined the PC for a very productive first meeting, for this session.  Minutes of all PC meetings are available on the school website for your interest.  At the meeting, I requested some input from the PC members on 4 aspects of our School and Nursery Improvement Plan (SNIP- available on the school website) priorities.  These areas are:

• Formation of a Welcome Booklet for new families and children to Netherlee
• Conversion of our SNIP and Standards and Quality Report into child/ parent friendly formats
• Homework Review
• P7 Residential Trip

Members from the PC are very interested in helping and working with myself and the school on these 4 areas and I am sure they will be in touch soon with the wider parent forum to seek your involvement too.

That’s all from me this week, stay well, please keep safe and have a good weekend everyone.

Mrs Yvonne Donaldson
Head Teacher