Students Plant Heritage Fruit Trees on School Grounds

Students at a Ysgol Clywedog have been planting ancient varieties of fruit trees in an area of the school grounds as part of a local heritage growing project.

Staff at the school approached the team at Brymbo Heritage Orchard a year ago to discuss the potential of working together on the school’s Tyfu (Grow) project, which has been developed by the Eco-Action Taskforce Group.

On a visit to the school, the potential of creating a heritage orchard was discussed, along with apple juicing and learning how to care for trees.  After hearing about the plans, the students were excited to get involved and Brymbo Heritage Orchard donated twenty apple and plum trees to kickstart the project.

Last year, in the same field, the Eco-Action Taskforce Group created an allotment and planted two hundred and fifty trees donated by the Woodland Trust.

Nicholas Brown, head of geography, said: “It has been great to start working with the Brymbo Heritage Orchard and we are grateful for their support with this exciting project.

“We should be harvesting fruit in a couple of years’ time so this is a long term partnership and project for students in school, and those who have not joined yet. We did not choose cider varieties as we don’t want to produce alcohol, but we are really looking forward to juicing and baking with the fruit.

“After only one year, we are already seeing a boost in the biodiversity in the area and this will increase further once these new fruit trees begin to establish.  I think it is so important for young people to have an opportunity to get hands on experience through projects such as this, where they can learn about growing food and the benefits this can bring to them and the environment.”

Hana McGreary, a design technology teacher, organised the planting day.  She said: “It was a very productive morning and, with the help of students from key worker families, some of whom are Eco-Taskforce members, we successfully planted eighteen heritage apple trees and two plum trees.  The students worked well as a team to accurately space out the trees, prepare the ground and position the support posts.  It was a really enjoyable day, and I would like to thank everyone for their hard work.”

Daisy Pittaway, year 9, was one of the students who took part.  She said: “Even though it was hard work planting the trees, it was great fun! I loved being able to use the big tools to dig holes and turn over the soil.  When the trees start to grow, I will know that all the hard work that was put into planting them was so worthwhile. Knowing that I am contributing to helping the environment is extremely rewarding for me.  Our Eco Club has been working really hard on different projects and I feel proud to be involved with it.”

The school’s Tyfu (Grow) project has already achieved numerous accolades since it started in September 2019, including: the Woodland Trust Green Tree Gold School Award; Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoots Silver Award; The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) School Bronze Award and the Eco-Schools Bronze Award.

The environmentally astute students also scooped the top International Collaboration prize in the final of the International Collaboration category of the Young Reporter for The Environment (YRE) Competition, in conjunction with their partner school, Colegio Enriquez Soler in Melilla in Spain.  The students’ winning video entitled ‘Plastic Waste – An Intercontinental Problem’, highlighted the damaging and long-term impact of single use plastics on the environment.

Hoping to defend their title, this year the students have once again teamed up with students from Colegio Enriquez Soler as well as two schools in Beirut, Lebanon to produce a video about swapping single use plastic for reusable materials.

Plans are also in place to launch a whole school International Eco-Week later in the year where students will be doing joint activities with the schools in Lebanon in every subject, including joint assemblies, cooking traditional Welsh and Lebanese foods, sharing music and art, measuring air quality, and comparing the two areas.

Welcome to Parent Pay

Online Payments

From 15th March we will be using Parent Pay to take payments for school meals, trips and visits and any other payments to school.

This will mean that payments to schools will be made on-line through ‘ParentPay’ or through the ‘PayPoint’ facilities located in your local shops and post offices.

Parents on the current Civica system will receive a letter from Wrexham School Meals this week explaining how to activate your new ParentPay account. If you need any assistance with setting up your account please contact the school’s meals service via schoolmeals@wrexham.gov.uk

This means that from 15th March cash payments will no longer be accepted by the school. As a parent/guardian you will have the options to make payment for products, extra paid activities or trips supplied by the school and school meals via Parent pay at parentpay.com or using any PayPoint location. You can find PayPoint Locations here.

We will no longer be able to take cash onsite for school meals, so please ensure your child’s account is in credit before they attend school.

Please note – if you are unable to make payment using the ParentPay website you can still make payment at PayPoint shops where you will need to scan the bar code on your letter. You will need a separate barcode for each child and please allow up to 48 hours for your account to be credited via the PayPoint network.

How to guides for parents

How to activate your account

How to pay for items? 

How to top up your account and then pay for items

How to view payment history

How to add a child to your account or merge two accounts together

How to update your username or password

How to make a meal or event booking

How to set up email and text alerts

How to make a withdrawal from your account

Parent Support FAQ

 

NHS Test, Trace, Protect: COVID-19 Rapid Lateral Flow Self-Test for years 10 and 11

Dear Parents of year 10 and year 11,

The Welsh Government has recently announced that a free and voluntary programme of asymptomatic COVID-19 testing will be available in education and childcare settings across Wales. This offer is available to all staff and learners in years 10-13 and all college learners.

Along with the primary infection control measures we have implemented, such as social distancing and good hand hygiene, testing will allow us to provide some additional reassurance to the wider school/college community.

All the information regarding the LFT test for year 10 and 11 can be found here.

Up to one in three people who have COVID-19 have the virus without symptoms so could be transmitting the virus unknowingly. Part of controlling the spread of the virus requires identifying those infectious individuals who aren’t showing and symptoms and asking them to self-isolate.  Lateral Flow Device (LFD) tests have been widely and successfully used to detect COVID-19 in asymptomatic individuals. The speed and convenience of LFD tests supports detection of the virus in asymptomatic individuals who would not otherwise be tested. They are clinically approved and are crucial in the fight against the virus.

As the tests are more sensitive with higher viral loads, there is a risk of returning a negative result when viral loads are low (e.g. in the early stages of infection). This is why it is recommended that two LFD tests are taken 3 to 4 days apart, on a Wednesday and a Sunday, to enhance detection by picking up any cases which were not detected during the first test and to catch any new infections.

If you test positive using a LFD, it is likely that you are infectious and you must self-isolate immediately and book and take a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within 24 hours of your positive LFD test result. Contact tracing will be triggered following a positive LFD and your close contacts will be required to self-isolate until you receive your PCR test result, if the PCR test result is positive you and your close contacts will have to self-isolate.

A negative LFD result should not be read as a means to relax or ignore social distancing or other virus prevention measures intended to reduce transmission – LFD is an additional tool that contributes to reducing risk.

How the tests work

If you agree to take part, a consent form will need to be completed and returned, you will then arrange with the school/college to collect a pack of LFD test kits which will enable self-testing from home. Tests should be take 3 to 4 days apart and ideally the tests should be taken in the morning, as close to coming into school/college as possible. The LFDs supplied do not require laboratory processing and can provide a quick result in around 30 minutes. Comprehensive guidance on self-testing is contained in the ‘Instructions for Use’ leaflet which comes with the test kit.

Once the test has been conducted each test result must be logged online at www.gov.uk/report-covid19-result and reported to the school at https://sites.google.com/clywedog.org/distancelearning/ks4lft

Purpose of testing

It is important to highlight that the purposes of the testing policy in education and childcare in Wales is to complement the primary control measures (such as social distancing and mask wearing) that have already been put in place to enable face to face learning / care to continue and to:

• Rapidly identify those who are regularly on site during learning/care hours, who are unknowingly carrying the virus and ask them to self-isolate to reduce disruption to face to face education / care.
• Complement symptomatic results data with asymptomatic results data to provide a picture of infection rates as marker for the effectiveness, and implementation of, primary control measures and to assist in the early identification of clusters. In addition to a range of other data and public health advice this information can be used to inform national policy decisions.

The testing policy for education and childcare should not be viewed as a ‘test to enable’ or ‘test to return’ to face to face learning i.e. it is not a condition of coming on to the site or accessing learning/care. Additionally, this testing offer is entirely voluntary.

Consent / Privacy – Please sign the consent form here

All individuals wishing to take part should familiarise themselves with the testing process and privacy notice, if you choose to participate, you are committing to self-administer the test and provide results for all tests (negative or positive).

With our primary protective measures and testing, we will help to reduce the spread of the virus. I am therefore strongly encouraging all staff to take the tests.  However, anyone who chooses not to participate should still attend school/college if they are not displaying symptoms.

People who decline to participate in this testing programme should follow the usual national guidelines on self-isolation and anyone should get tested if they show symptoms.

Yours faithfully,

Matt Vickery

Headteacher

March 2021: Increasing onsite education – 15th March Onwards

https://youtu.be/YBvcLMRkOMQ

The coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to present a great number of challenges to us and the whole education community. As part of national social distancing measures to limit the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), limited numbers of children and young people have attended educational and childcare settings, to ensure that students and staff attending could do so safely. That is why, since 4^th January 2021, education and childcare settings have only been open to priority groups. As well as offering face-to-face provision for those able to attend, the school has provided a significant amount to support the remote education of those who have remained at home via Google Classrooms, MyMaths and paper based work packs.

By March 2021 a lot of students will not have been in school for three months.  In order to ensure that they return to full- time schooling safely, Ysgol Clywedog has carried out a risk assessment. These are the outcomes of the School Risk Assessment which has been compiled in line with Government Guidelines.

It is recognised that a return to the physical school site, will be difficult for some students and staff who will have experienced a range of challenges during the last few months. These challenges may have presented themselves as a result of ‘lockdown’; social distancing; illness; and, in some cases, bereavement.

The approach is underpinned by the latest understanding of the science available to Welsh Government, which indicates the need for a phased approach to limit the risk of increasing the rate of transmission (often referred to as the R ‘reproduction’ value) above 1. The increased operation of the school is based on a stabilisation of the R-value. Therefore, should this worsen then the school will adapt accordingly, in line with local authority and Welsh Government advice.

The school has ensured that the latest guidance from Public Health Wales is at the core of any plans. This includes:

• a requirement that people who are unwell with symptoms of COVID-19 stay at home
• robust hand and respiratory hygiene including ventilation
• increased use of face coverings
• continue increased cleaning arrangements
• use of lateral flow testing with year 10 and year 11
• active engagement with Test, Trace, Protect strategy
• formal consideration of how to reduce contacts and maximise social and physical distancing between those in school wherever possible and minimise potential for contamination so far as is reasonably practicable.

How contact between learners, learners and staff, and between staff are reduced will depend on the school’s circumstances and should include:

• grouping learners together
• avoiding contact between separate groups as much as possible
• arranging classrooms with forward facing desks, recognising this may not be possible or appropriate in all schools/settings
• staff maintaining distance from learners and other staff as much as possible.

It is anticipated that students, parents/carers and staff may feel apprehensive about the risks. However, the provision can be made far safer through adherence to the published government guidelines. These include social distancing, hygiene and self-isolation of those showing symptoms, or living with someone showing symptoms. This will minimise the risk of transmission of infection.

As in the Autumn term, the decisions we have taken at school are based on what we feel is safe, practicable and directly linked to the existing scientific and medical information available. We will be working with our students and staff to reinforce the key messages of frequent handwashing and good personal hygiene; maintaining social distancing and ‘bubbles’, as far as is reasonable, as approaches to reducing the risk of infection. Following an analysis of the school site, we have established the class size capacity. To reduce social mixing, each year group will form a ‘bubble’. These ‘bubbles’ will continue to be situated in a designated form zones of the school. In other words, each year group will only use their own specified zone. We will also stagger key stage 3 and key stage 4 breaks and, regrettably, there will be limited use of specialist areas of the school, e.g. design technology workshops, to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.

The purpose of the guide below is to explain how school will operate during March in the first instance, and hopefully into the summer term. It may not address every question but it is designed to provide clarity on how and why school will operate in the way it will from March 15^th onwards. We will continue to review this as the term progresses and we will continue to reflect changes as Welsh Government assessments are made.

These changes are designed for the safety of all. Naturally, I trust families will appreciate that where a student is unable to follow these safety measures then the school will have to assess suitability of provision. I cannot emphasise enough how important it is that everyone follows the guidelines at school.

w/c 15^th March – Week 2

Thank you again for your support and cooperation to date, and for the coming weeks and months.

Matt Vickery

Head teacher

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School Operations 15th March Onwards

The plan below will be reviewed on a daily basis and any changes will be communicated as soon as possible.

Date	Start dates	Students in school
Monday 15th March	Year 11 Start	Year 11
Tuesday 16th March		Year 11
Wednesday 17th March	Year 10 Start for 6 days	Year 10, Year 11
Thursday 18th March		Year 10, Year 11
Friday 19th March		Year 10, Year 11

w/c 22^nd March – Week 1

Date	Start dates	Students in school
Monday 22nd March	Year 9 Start for 2 days	Year 9, Year 10, Year 11
Tuesday 23rd March		Year 9, Year 10, Year 11
Wednesday 24th March	Year 8 Start for 2 days	Year 8, Year 10, Year 11
Thursday 25th March	Year 7 Start for 2 days	Year 7, Year 8, Year 11
Friday 26th March		Year 7, Year 11

School Day (onsite and online) 15th-26th March

Years 7, 8 and 9	Years 10 and 11
Form time: 8:50 – 9:15	Form time: 8:50 – 9:15
Lesson 1: 9:15 – 10:05	Lesson 1: 9:15 – 10:05
Lesson 2: 10:05 – 10:50	Lesson 2: 10:05 – 10:55
Break: 10:50 – 11:20	Break: 10:55 – 11:25
Lesson 3: 11:20 – 12:10	Lesson 3: 11:25 – 12:15
Lunch: 12:10 – 12:55	Lunch: 12:15 – 1:00
Lesson 4: 12:55 – 2:00	Lesson 4: 1:00 – 2:00
Lesson 5: 2:00 – 2:55	Lesson 5: 2:00 – 3:00