Life @ EA

Monday 23 March

Coronavirus update

Dear Edinburgh Academy parents,

Many thanks indeed to all of you for your continued support of the Academy in some very unusual circumstances indeed. This will be Day 1 of ‘home schooling’ and I know that we have had some technical issues with Firefly this morning, most probably caused by every student in the UK who belongs to a ‘Firefly School’ attempting to access it for the first class of the day! Please do bear with us while the providers seek to manage the upswing in demand – I hope that ‘normal service’ will soon be resumed. If you cannot access materials, please do take a break, maybe spend some time doing a little reading or helping on household chores (the students will not like me for that suggestion) and come back to Firefly a little later.

For parents and students in S4-S6 (5ths-7ths) please do not be too concerned. The rapid change in approach as described by the First Minister yesterday has meant that schools are not allowed to host any students in S4-6 to complete assignments and assessments and we now have to set this up where possible in a remote fashion. The Heads of all Departments are currently responding to these new directions and will be contacting some students directly should they need to complete any further work / coursework etc. There is only so much evidence for the SQA Exceptional Circumstances Process that we can collect in this manner but we will do our best. Please understand that every student in Scotland in these year groups are also in this situation and they all have very different access to ‘remote learning’ and the ability to collect data in this manner. Our teachers know your sons and daughters, know what they are capable of achieving, know what their predicted grades are, know what they could have managed in an exam setting at the end of the school year – all this knowledge goes into the predicted grade and we have years of experience at providing this evidence and making accurate predictions. At times like these the safety and security of our children should be paramount and this takes the priority. We will do what we can to secure any final evidence or assessment/coursework material in these very difficult circumstances. Please bear with us, trust our professional opinion and guidance and know that we will work hard to ensure none of our students are disadvantaged by these utterly unique circumstances. SQA updates can be found at: https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/93637.html

As I explained in my previous communications, the School is now only open to care for our more vulnerable students and the children of Key Workers. Many thanks to those parents who have written to rectorsoffice@edinburghacademy.org.uk for the Senior School and enquiriesjs@edinburghacademy.org.uk for the Junior School to get details on these arrangements. Of course we will aim to be as flexible as we possibly can be in these very difficult circumstances.

With very best wishes indeed,

Barry Welsh
Rector