As we are all aware Covid 19 has had a significant impact on the country as a whole.
Families have suffered loss of income, loss of family members and n some cases loss of businesses.
Our children and young people have also suffered enormously.
Mental health services reported an increase of referrals by 68% in March 2021 when compared to March 2019.
Our children have been unable to sit examinations that they have worked over 10 years for.
Those working towards their examinations have been adversely effected by the break in education, many young people reported difficulties in online learning.
Therefore when schools returned to face to face teaching, rather naively I believed that our young people and children would be supported both in terms of their mental health, and academic learning.
Sadly this has not been the experience of many young people attending James Calvert Spence College.
The focus has significantly been on uniform, having gone to the lengths of reprimanding young people for showing ankles, physically measuring skirts, stipulating the width of trouser legs.
I absolutely see the need for a school uniform and fully support this, however our children attend school to be educated, the width of their trouser leg, length of skirt and type of shoe does not impact on their ability to learn,
Young people are receiving punishments for not having the ‘correct uniform’ leading to missing teaching, young people not wanting to attend for fear of getting into trouble.
Parents are doing the best that they can under difficult circumstances, our young people are doing the best that they can given the situation they find themselves in.
All we ask for is some common sense in relation to uniform and actual support for your students, when compared to other schools in local areas the JCSC uniform policy is overly strict and non inclusive, other schools achieve academic results on par with JCSC and therefore we request that the policy is relaxed for our young people.