Parent meeting with Golder Associates

Notes provided by Jodie Terry from the meeting with Golders on 12th May. 

These are not minutes and so have not been agreed by participants - they are personal notes and may therefore be subject to misinterpretation or inaccuracy. They are intended to give a general summary of what was discussed. More detailed information will be available when the presentations including answers to specific questions are loaded to the website.

The meeting was attended by about 25 parents as well as representatives from Golder Associates, Soilfix, ECHarris, RBKC and Fox.

Works will commence the week starting 18^th May.

During the first week the wall along side the school, on Kensington place will be removed and replaced with temporary hoarding. A portable building will be installed providing children’s toilets and school office. These toilets are not ‘portaloos’ but proper plumbed in toilets. These will be in place for the entire project. The contractor compound will be established for the enabling works contractor, cordoned off from the rest of school with high hoarding. During the week of the 18^th May the north playground will not be open to children.

During half term the cottage will be removed. First, all items containing lead will be removed by hand and contained in covered skips. Following this the rest of the cottage will be demolished carefully using controlled demolition methods and removed from site. Also during this week the most of the elements within the toilet block which have evidence of contamination will be removed by hand and contained in covered skips.

In the first week after half term (week commencing 1^st June) the toilet block connecting the school building to the embankment will be removed. This building has fewer items containing high levels of lead. The remaining contaminated elements that it was not possible to remove during the half term will be removed by hand under controlled conditions and contained.

These works will be done behind high hoarding with stringent dust containment methods in place.

Also during the week starting 1st June, the sanitary connections will be made to the temporary toilets and utilities will be connected to the temporary office.

Access to the eastern end (about 50%) of the north playground will be restored in the week starting 8^th June and the toilets and temporary office will be in use.

Dependent on the type of work being done there will be regular air monitoring to check that dust levels are maintained below safe limits. At higher risk times this will be done daily. These readings will be shared with the school as soon as possible.

Prior to any demolition there will be swabs done of the school environment to establish a baseline reading. During and after the demolition these swabs will be repeated and compared to the baseline, to ensure that dust containment is working and therefore contaminants are not being released.

Golder have requested an estimated turnaround time from the lab analysing these swabs and hopes that they will be able to do them within 24 hours but cannot yet confirm that. The results of analysis will be made available on the school website. 

The Health and Safety Executive has approved the methodology being used for these works.

Weekly updates on building progress will be provided by the school in the Newsletter. 

Governor oversight of SATS procedures

On Monday 11 May 2015 at approximately 8.45 am, Ben Ward (Parent Governor) visited the office of the Fox School Bursar, Gloria Double, to observe the secure storage and handling of Year 6 SATs examination paper. He was shown the locked storage cupboard where the tests are kept. Gloria confirmed that teachers do not have access to the key, which is held in the school safe overnight. He observed Gloria remove a box containing today's tests and examined the tests inside the box which were in sealed packets. There was no sign of any tampering with the packets.

This check of SATs procedures was then followed up by Sema Aydin (Parent Governor) who also checked the secure storage. Sema went on to check the exam conditions and environment. She noted that the time allowed for the test was clearly indicated on the white boards in the classrooms. The children were working on their tests in very quiet classrooms supervised by two members of staff. All children had the correct equipment for the test. In the classrooms all displays or materials that could help children were covered. The seating arrangements allowed the children to work independently.

The Fox Governing Body congratulates all the children and teachers in year six on the enormous amount of hard work they have put into preparation for the tests and wishes them the very best of luck!

Ashburnham visit by Fox Class reps - Sema Aydin

Last Tuesday (4th May) the Class Reps from Fox School were kindly invited to visit Ashburnham Community School. 

The journey was very smooth and quick, we travelled by 328 bus.

On our arrival we were welcomed by The Executive Headteacher Paul Cotter and Associate Headteacher Bella Street. They gave us a full visit of the school and invited us to observe all the classrooms at work. We all were very impressed by the hard work, excellent standards and dedicated teachers. 

Ashburnham was rated Outstanding by Ofsted a few weeks ago. A very well deserved result! And congratulations again to the whole team.

Sema Aydin (Parent Governor at Fox School)

Several class reps also communicated how impressed they were by the school and in particular how the school was incredibly neat, clean and well organised, that children were very focussed on their learning and that everyone was very proud of the excellent results they had received. JT