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At Home Provision
Virtual Valley Park
Since 22 October 2020, schools have had a duty to provide remote education for state-funded, school-age children who are unable to attend school as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
We are able to deploy a virtual school arrangement instantly, in the following circumstances:
- A student is required to self-isolate, having been identified as a proximity contact to a positive case of Covid-19;
- A student is required to shield, owing to their being clinically extremely vulnerable, in line with national definitions (click here for further information);
- Valley Park School is directed to close by the local authority, Public Health England (PHE) or the Department for Education (DfE).
Our online provision follows the curriculum as is laid out in the documentation provided here and lessons are delivered via Microsoft Teams. Students follow their usual school timetable, which includes Tutor Periods, Assemblies and lessons as usual. Lessons are delivered live, in real-time, and work is submitted by students via Teams, or a platform that has been linked to Teams by the class teacher. The teacher will assess students’ work via Teams, or their own subject-specific platform, and Teams as a platform is well-designed to enable teacher-student dialogue.
Valley Park School is committed to improving the standards of assessment and dialogue throughout the lifetime of Virtual Valley Park, and will use virtual quality assurance processes to drive improvement, where we are unable to monitor physical classrooms.
Students who are at home, and well enough to attend their lessons, can join their in-school class via Teams and they will be able to access the same high-quality lesson materials as their peers (account will be taken, however, of the fact that students who are at home will not have access to the specialist equipment required for some practical subjects).
Where students are unfortunately sent home to self-isolate, we check the status of their online presence, providing additional IT support where it is required. In the event of Valley Park School being directed to close, provision will be made for vulnerable students and children of critical workers. Our pastoral team checks in with families whose children are working from home on a regular basis, and students who are not effectively engaging with at-home provision will be expected back in school as soon as their isolation period has ended. SEND support via our Foundation Learning Department and our SENCOs continues whether students are learning from home or from school, and is ready to adapt to the specific needs of each child.
Any parent/carer who has questions should contact their child’s Head of Year in the first instance.
A number of online training videos, incorporating e-safety principles, produced by our Computer Science Department, can also be found here. If there is a topic that you would like to see us add, get in touch and let us know!