Dear Year 9 Pupil,
We hope that you are all keeping well during this turbulent time.
As you progress into year 10 in September, you will be required to specialise in either History or Geography as your main Humanity subject if you are in E Band or P Band. Pupils in S Band will continue to study both History and Geography. We are also offering a small cohort of pupils in E Band and P Band the opportunity to continue studying both History and Geography (on a first come, first serve basis and subject to numbers). If you wish to study both subjects, you will need to drop one of your creative options subjects. During the options process, we will collect your preferences about which option you would prefer to drop and make a decision, based on the preferences of the whole year group, as to whether we can offer an option class and which column this will be in.
As a result of the current Covid-19 situation, we are not able to run our options process in the traditional way, where we would invite you into school to discuss your choices and access careers related information. Instead, we are planning to launch our options process using Microsoft Teams so you can review subject information from the History and Geography Curriculum Leaders, careers information from Mr Musgrove and complete a digital options form that we can collate and process despite the school’s closure.
The options process this year will operate as follows:
· The Options ‘Team’ will be available to pupils from Monday 27 April for you to review the information and make an informed decision.
· We will monitor your access to Microsoft Teams over the next week. If you do not login between Monday 20 April and Friday 24 April, we will post paper copies of the information home to you. We will aim for this to reach you by Monday 27 April.
· The options form will be available from Monday 4 May. This is to give you some time to consider the information prior to making your final choice.
· The online options form will be available until Friday 15 May.
· Paper option forms must be posted back to school at your own expense. Option forms returned prior to Monday 4 May will be treated as being received on Monday 4 May so that other pupils are not disadvantaged by completing the process online. Option forms must be received in school by Friday 15 May.
· We will process the options information and aim to confirm subject choices by Friday 5 June.
Should you have any queries about the options process, please don’t hesitate to contact either myself (AMcMillan@penkethhigh.org), or Mr Cordingley, the Exams and Data Manager (PCordingley@penkethhigh.org), and we will respond to your queries as quickly as we can. You will be able to email us from your school email account. You can access Microsoft Outlook in Office 365 in the same way you access Microsoft Teams.
Yours Sincerely,
