Today in school we will be celebrating National Teaching Assistant Day, we have approximately 75 support staff who are a crucial part of the Hope Wood family, let’s give them all a cheer today as we say thank you for all they do 🎉
If you want to post a message to your child’s TA then please do in the comments below

**COVID 19 Advice to parents update**
With an increase in prevalence of positive COVID 19 cases in the North East over the last week and questions from families, we have taken the opportunity to simplify our COVID checker for families, if your child is unwell then please use this simple checker to understand what action you should take in order to keep your family and our whole school community as safe as possible. If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact school during school hours or out of hours email hopewood@ascenttrust.org

We are all super excited to be starting to welcome some of our pupils back today, we will be welcoming the majority of Secondary pupils back today as part of our staggered start to the term in order to support all pupils in their return. You will notice the building looks a bit different in our new COVID secure way.

We understand that everyone will be feeling different emotions about returning to school and we will be working this week especially to support our Secondary young people to explore the feelings they have and how they can respond to them.

We know some parents have had queries around transport and I have been following this up with the Transport Manager at Durham Local Authority, Faye is working hard to get any issues resolved ASAP.

Our office team will be working in a slightly different way in order to keep COVID secure so if you ring school and your call doesn't get answered straight away please do leave a message and someone will get back to you as soon as they can.

Further to last week's post people have been asking for clarification of dates of return, please see below the extract from the letter emailed to all parents and posted on the website and Facebook at the end of term.
Other information to support pupils coming back to school can be found on our website using the following link;
http://www.hopewood.org.uk/parentscarers/september-reopening-2020/

All Secondary pupils (excluding Lumley) 2nd September return
All Early Years & Primary pupils (including Lumley class in Primary bubble and all pupils in Green & Silver classes) 7th September return
Sixth Form pupils transition visits from w/c 7th Sept

If you require any further individual information please email hopewood@ascenttrust.org

Durham County Council have asked for this information about school transport to be circulated to parents