Dear Parent

We are now many weeks into the lockdown.  I know that many of you face challenges with health and work as well as supporting your youngster’s education.

This is a bulletin to provide information pertinent to the next week or so.

• The Board of Governors has reviewed the Risk Assessment for welcoming some boys back to school from Monday 15 June.  The document is here if you wish to read it.
• We have prepared a video for students to explain the ‘physical distancing’ process on the school site. This will be shared with parents via email and boys via Teams #physicaldistancing.   
• Your feedback on #LearnAtHome has been positive and constructive.  Key issues appear to be some inconsistencies in approach and a desire for more interactive lessons.  Teachers are responding well to requests to offer that ‘personal touch’.
• There are several assemblies each week, published on Cloudbox (Student Development).  These are designed to keep boys in touch with the RGS community. Please do encourage your son to view them.
• Year 11 parents are asked to ensure that their sons log on to their Form Group Teams at 14:00 tomorrow afternoon (12 June) to mark the end of their school year.
• You will have already received information about your son’s engagement in their learning in recent weeks; whether or not he will required to attend catch-up sessions in School is being communicated by Heads of Year.
• The information for ‘one-to-one’ sessions with Form Tutors (Years 10-12) (a blend of Teams and physical meetings, depending on circumstances) has been sent by Mr Wallace.  Further information for Years 7-9 will follow next week.
• You will be informed of subject focus sessions for Years 10 and 12 #subjectfocus and the Inspiration Week shortly.
• We will be holding a UCAS Day for Year 12, an Academic Day for Year 10, a virtual prizegiving, virtual sports day, a concert and other events during the remainder of the term.  Please keep an eye on communications.
• Boys joining RGS in September have their own ‘Welcome to Year 7’ page on the website, which includes two recorded webinars.  Please do encourage any future RGS families you know to look at this – a password is required.
• We are aware of ‘comms fatigue’ and we will try to streamline what we send out - we will endeavour to keep emails as short as possible, and in bullet point format.
• As with many organisations, RGS has suffered considerable financial losses. For us this has been because of the temporary closure of boarding, the suspension of lettings, the cancellation of the Easter courses and other below the line income.  Many parents have generously continued to support the annual fund, the various ‘Friends of’ Groups and the Parents’ Association.  If you are not currently contributing, please do consider supporting the annual fund and the Friends of groups. A very easy way to support the RGS funds, is to shop with Amazon via the RGS website – this rewards us with 1.5%.

Thank you

With renewed thanks and all good wishes.

Philip Wayne