Greetings from St Bede’s College.

Hope all of you and your families are well. One blessing for this month is that we have been provided with good weather, and it is great that we have had the opportunity to get out every day and enjoy the sunshine!!

The landscape has changed since our last newsletter with the move towards Alert Level 3, and we are planning for a number of boys to come in to the day school and another group of international students to return to the boarding school, where they will be in two different bubbles.

We have received a lot of feedback from staff, students and parents as to how the online learning has progressed, and we appreciate the challenges associated with this new learning environment. The glitches in accessing Microsoft platforms nationwide and the challenges in coming to grips with the various platforms in use, has caused some angst. Our message continues to be that the welfare of the students is the first priority and while there are challenges, as we go along we will take the time to identify them and then do our best to remedy. To that end please read the following article from Mr McDowall that we will also email parents. What we are advocating to our learning community is to draw breath, or over this long weekend have a reprieve from all learning, so we can re-calibrate. We think that there has been a tremendous effort from both the students and the staff to learn in a totally different manner, but it has been stressful for all concerned, so to draw breath over these next few days is best for all.

Over the weekend Mr McDowall will also survey the community about our online learning, to identify how we can do this better. We would appreciate your feedback very much and adjust accordingly.

We are also aware that many students have learning materials locked in classrooms at school. If this is the case and you need these for classes, please email Mrs Pitcaithly at rpitcaithly@stbedes.school.nz, to arrange for a time on Tuesday to pick up this material. Be aware that we will have to observe all the guidelines of the Ministry of Health including social distancing so hence the importance of booking in a time, and once here signing in at the main reception desk. One of the senior team will then ‘escort” you to pick up the material.

Have a relaxing long weekend.

J.G. Boyle