Dear Parents / Carers
Year 9 Online Parents / Carers Consultation Evening – Wednesday 2nd March 2022
I am writing to inform you that the forthcoming Year 9 Parents / Carers Consultation Evening will take place virtually on Wednesday 2nd March 2022. This evening presents an excellent opportunity to engage with your child’s teachers and receive key information regarding their progress so far this year. In addition, this evening supports the ongoing options process and the important decisions regarding potential GCSE & BTEC courses for Year 10 for your child.
We continue to use the online School Cloud platform very successfully across all year groups in the school and faced with the ongoing numbers of COVID 19 cases within our local community, this format will help keep you, our students and our staff as safe as possible.
To enable as many parents/carers to access appointments, the initial release on Saturday 5th February 2022 at 9am will allow parents/carers to make a maximum of 5 subject appointments in the first instance; we will release a further series of appointments on Saturday 12th February 2022, again at 9am. Please be assured that if you can’t get all the appointments you want (for example because a number of staff teach two or more full classes) you will be able to email the specific members of staff to request a call-back. We strongly encourage and expect students to be part of the call and play an active part in the discussion regarding their progress, achievements and future pathway.
To further support parents/carers and students making decisions regarding options subjects, you are able to make an additional appointment with an ‘Options Advisor’ alongside your subject specific appointments. These appointments will be hosted by myself (Deputy Headteacher), Mr Woodcock (Head of School) and Mrs Allison (Deputy Headteacher) to discuss any particular questions you may have about the process. Mrs Blight our SENCo will also be available for specific SEND related questions. You will also be able to make an appointment with Mr Henry who leads our Careers Team to discuss possible career options and pathways.
Key School Cloud information for parents
- On Saturday 5th February 2022, we will open the booking system at 9am for parents and carers to begin making appointments. It will remain open until 12pm Tuesday 1st March 2022.
- Parents / carers should use their child’s christian name and surname and date of birth to login to the following website to book appointments.
- The link to the website is here
- Each appointment will start exactly at the allocated time and will be 5 minutes long, ending promptly at the end of the 5 minute session. There is a countdown timer on screen to alert you to the remaining time; teachers do not have control over this/can’t extend or pause the timer. There is a short break between appointments to allow teachers to prepare for the next consultation.
- There is a function to allow parents to raise any particular points with staff, they can be shared in advance of the appointment with the teacher to maximise the available time for discussion.
- Parents and carers are able to access the same appointments from separate locations using seperate devices if needed.
- You can find a guide on how to make appointments using SchoolCloud here.
- If you experience any issues accessing the SchoolCloud website or require additional guidance booking a parents evening appointment, please contact the schools IT support team on support@itservices.dmat.education.
This event forms a crucial part of the support for our Year 9’s and forms part of the GCSE Options process so the feedback that they receive from staff will be vitally important to them moving forward. We sincerely hope that all parents and students will be able to make themselves available to attend the event and we look forward to seeing you all online on Wednesday 2nd March 2022.
Yours sincerely
Mr J Fuller
Deputy Headteacher
