Thank you to all stakeholders; Parents, Partners and Pupils for the supportive stance you have taken and are taking during this challenge.
My Teaching and Support staff have worked extremely hard under tight timelines and conditions to provide the support they can to our pupils. This will continue where possible, as we now go into a phase where our own children are not at School and we join you all in Parent mode.
You will be receiving messages and ‘news’ from a variety of feeds in our social media age. I will try to ensure that what you receive here and our twitter feed is the most up to date and accurate, relevant to Leith.
See updates below;
STATEMENT FOR STAKEHOLDERS AT LEITHACADEMY
This update follows on from previous posts of information you will see on the website. For today March 20th 2020 – Despite several interpretations and versions of Mr Swinney’s statement yesterday, we have received clarity that this decision was taken primarily on health and medical grounds to protect our communities from coronavirus and reduce the spread. With this in mind Andy Gray, Chief Education Officer for Edinburgh has issued this instruction to all Schools;
Colleagues,
For the avoidance of doubt, all school settings including nurseries will be closed next week to all pupils and staff. There will be no exceptions.
We had hoped that some small numbers of pupils would have been able to access schools for SQA activity but this must not happen at present.
During next week we will be refining any arrangements which may be put in place for the following week, commencing 30th, updates to follow.
So to be clear, all schools are closed to all staff and all pupils next week starting from this afternoon.
Regards
Andy
There will be work now ongoing with the Scottish Qualifications Authority and Local Councils around what steps can be taken to ensure young people are not unduly penalised for the unprecedented medical event we find ourselves in. I will keep you updated as this situation develops.
Skills Development Scotland
We are proud of our record on getting young adults into a positive next steps once they leave Leith Academy. This can be college, job, training or uni. We only have such a positive track record because of our partnership with SDS. See message below, especially important to those who are leaving us;
Message for school to issue to pupils and parents:
Due to COVID-19 (Coronavirus) and the closure of schools, Skills Development Scotland cannot deliver career services face to face, but they are still there to help via email and telephone. You can contact Maya Stone, your school Careers Adviser, for career information, advice and guidance at maya.stone@sds.co.uk or visit My World of Work online. Unfortunately, we cannot answer questions at this time on SQA results, Exams or Edinburgh College/University places we are receiving the same updates as you as they become available, use the links above to keep up to date and contact the correct organisation directly with queries. If you would like to use our services yourself, you can speak to a qualified adviser by finding the contact details for your nearest centre at myworldofwork.co.uk/centres or contact the Edinburgh Centre on 0131 7182040.
Online learning
Our Website and Twitter feeds remain updated with the work we have put in place. Though I would encourage a balanced approach to this. It is not possible nor proportionate given these times to ‘replicate’ the school day. There will be activities and tasks that can be looked at alongside other activities that may involve the family or those in the home during the ‘stay at home’ advice from the govt.
I will continue to provide updates when I have them using the website and twitter feeds. As echoed in previous updates, please follow the guidance to allow us as all as a household, a community, a country to take the steps we need to in order to minimise the spread of coronavirus; this is the main focus from now.
Stay well, from all at Leith Academy.
