Update Statement From Martyn Oliver, CEO
Martyn Oliver, CEO of the Outwood Family:
“Hello, I appreciate things are moving very quickly so I just wanted to provide a quick update.
“Let’s start with what have we done. Well, for those at home, we have produced online learning packs of resources all the way from Reception to Year 13 – almost 70 subject directors and thousands of staff have worked round the clock to create these ready for Monday. We have also provided these to other schools outside our trust and have uploaded these on a free-to-use website for anyone’s use.
“All our academies are due to be open from Monday for those students that need to come in. This includes children who may be vulnerable as well as those children whose parents work in critical sectors.
“We also have two children who attend private school and whose parents are doctors, so they have asked if they can come to school from Monday, which of course they can. We are all trying to support the national effort to defeat this disease.
“In terms of teaching, staff who are able to are coming in and we will be running activities and caring for the children whilst their parents are at work.
“We are supporting all to maintain healthy lifestyles and with extra levels of hygiene without increasing anxiety: we will be careful to support good mental health in this period of stress for many of us.
“We have worked hard to be able to provide all those children on free school meals with vouchers they can redeem at Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco: these should be issued at the start of next week.
“As we move forward we will adapt the model to ensure staff can balance their workload, not to mention protect their health with regard to the virus, and we will operate rotas.
“We are proud to make this critical contribution towards the national effort through this crisis and to support our children, their families and our communities.”
The website address for the learning resources is here: https://teaching.homelearning.outwood.com
The home learning strategy that the trust has applied can be view below:
1. OGAT Home Learning Summary - this is a summary of our approach broken down into four steps, within this document are links to other materials, communication and training resources.
2. gsuite-training.outwood.com - this is a website created with training videos on how to use the key elements of G Suite for staff to access to upskill themselves quickly, including best practices for setting home learning for students.
3. homelearning.outwood.com - this is a simple single page website that will be provided to parents in the event of a closure, where all information will be updated in one single place. It also provides parents with information and videos on how to support their child in home learning.