PUBLISHED 24 March 2020
In testing times, the spirit of our community shines bright. #WeAreAKS
Staying at home
On 23rd March, Boris Johnston took the unprecedented step to announce a partial UK lockdown in his evening press conference, limiting all but essential activity outside the home. He urged people to stay at home, protect our NHS and save lives, telling the country, "Each and every one of us is obliged to join together to halt the spread of this disease... We will beat Coronavirus and we will beat it together. The responsibility lies with all of us to stay at home."
Learning from home
As we embark on our first week of remote-learning, Mr Harrow's letter to parents on Friday spoke of our desire to sustain our community and support each other in these challenging times:
"Whilst we will be operating rather differently for the foreseeable future, our aim to is to continue offering an invigorating education, and the varied and vital support that will be needed. I know we will all wish to sustain and treasure the precious sense of community that runs through the school, from Nursery to the Sixth Form, and which will be of great value to us all in the days and weeks ahead."
We would like to thank all our staff for the tremendous effort, teamwork, dedication and resilience they have shown during these unsettling times. Mr Harrow spoke of his pride in both staff and students and we feel it even more keenly this week as we opened our doors to children of key workers and remote-learning began for all our other students.
Tremendous fortitude and team spirit has also been shown by our support and administrative staff - flexing their roles, offering to help other departments and colleagues. These challenging times have shown the best in everyone.
Keeping connected
We will, of course, continue to keep parents and students updated directly and our wider community through frequent updates on our social media channels. We also invite you to send contributions to our community by emailing news@akslytham.com.
We're keen to share ideas that students have devised to keep spirits high during their time away from their friends. Contributions could be a photo of a project done at home, creative ideas for young children to enjoy at weekends, or blogs from our students themselves. We would love to hear from you!
Keeping spirits high
Aside from our staff continuing to deliver their work on a remote basis, staff and students are supporting each other in lots of ways, including The Vent Team, our student-led support group.
Our sports department will be setting challenges via their instagram account, so keep in touch and let us know how you’re getting on!
Over the coming weeks, we will be announcing competitions, sharing photo galleries and fun challenges our students can do at home. Please follow our Facebook Page and Twitter account to keep up to date.