Letter from Beth McPhail, Headteacher

Dear Parents and Carers,

Well we’ve reached the end of our first full week of the new academic year and it has been an absolute joy to see all of our students in the building. It has been a pleasure going into classrooms to start to get to know our new students. They all seem to be settling into their new classes, routines and building positive relationships with staff. It is fantastic to see how our established students have helped our new students to feel welcome and a part of Hazelbeck community and it’s lovely to catch up on how their summer has been. We are extremely proud of how all of our students have worked to settle into our school routine.

For the first four weeks of term we spend a lot of time assessing all of our students to see what they remember and where they are at academically to make sure they are in the correct class and what their strengths and barriers are. Equally important during this time is the focus we have on observing young people and really getting to know them. Through this we build positive and trusting relationships with each individual so that we know how to best communicate with them and support them to remain regulated. We know this can take a long time however we hope this real focus in the first weeks will help each young person to feel safe, secure and enjoy being in school. With this foundation, we hope that they, and you, will learn to trust us and our vision to empower each young person to overcome barriers and flourish.

I would like to thank you for your patience and support this week with drop off and pick up times. It is definitely becoming smoother and more slick. It has been nice to be able to see some parents and put faces to names. We know it has been a difficult week for some of our parents in terms of transport and we hope that these issues will have resolved by the beginning of next week. We can only apologise for the frustration and distress this has caused and assure you we have been in daily contact with transport to support you.

• 10am on Thursday 22 for parents/carers who have a child in Pink, Silver, Lilac, Bronze Bases
• 10am on Friday 23 for Blue, Amber, Green, Purple, Olive Bases
• 1.15pm Friday 23  for Orange, Red, Teal, Yellow, Indigo Bases 

Take care, Beth.

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