FAQs

A: Yes you can.

A: No, all visitors must report to reception and sign in, regardless of what time.

A: If your child forgets an item for the school day, such as but not limited to; cooking ingredients, PE kit, lunch, you may bring them into reception for your child to collect at break or lunchtime.

A: Pupils are permitted to carry an asthma pump and epi pen on them at all times. This should be stored in their inside blazer pocket. All other medical items should be taken to pupil services.

A: Please discuss any ongoing medical conditions with one of our Pupil Services Team. Pupils are able to visit Pupil Services, take medicine or monitor conditions such as diabetes in privacy.

A: Please contact the Pupil Services or Head of Year to discuss. Pupils who are experiencing temporary mobility issues are permitted to use our lift.

A: Any child currently in a cast is permitted to leave class slightly earlier than other pupils in order to minimise the risk of being knocked in the corridors.

A: Yes. Pupils should bring their PE kit with them to PE regardless of whether or not they are able to participate. On occasion, they may be able to join in the lesson without actually participating in the sport, e.g. umpiring,scoring. Failure to bring PE kit may result in a detention. Exceptions would be pupils with casts/slings etc.

A: Where possible, we ask that you arrange for appointments outside of the school day. If this is not possible, please notify the school in advance via email. You will be asked to provide evidence of any medical appointment, for example an appointment confirmation email or letter. Attendance will then make a note of this on the register for the relevant date/time.

A: Providing parents/carers have informed the school in advance, there will be a note on the register which will alert the teacher that the child needs to leave the lesson. Your child will also need to sign out at Pupil Services before leaving the school.

A: Please visit our website to download a Leave of Absence form. Please ensure you have read the information contained within our website page regarding unauthorised absence.

A: Please contact the Attendance Team to advise us of the estimated time of arrival.

A: Please contact the school as soon as possible either by telephoning the school and selecting the attendance option when prompted or emailing woodlands@woodlandsschool.essex.sch.uk.

A: In the unlikely event of school closure, a text message will be sent as well as announced on our social media pages; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Our social media pages can be found in the top right corner of our website. In cases of extreme weather, details are also announced on local radio stations.

A: All meetings with a member of staff must be pre-arranged. In the first instance, we ask that you email your concern or query to us at woodlands@woodlandsschool.essex.sch.uk and include the name of the member of staff. Your message will be forwarded directly to the member of staff, who will arrange a meeting as appropriate. Please do not arrive on site and request a meeting without prior notification.

A: If your message is urgent, we ask that you telephone the main school office on 01268 282146. We will do our very best to get the message to your child. However, in order to minimise disruption to lessons, the timing of this will be done at our discretion. Please do not contact your child directly or allow your child to contact you. All communication must be via reception.

A: No. If you wish to contact your child urgently, we ask that you telephone the main school office. We operate a strict no-phone policy during school hours. Any pupil who is found to be using their phone during school hours in the school building will have the item confiscated. For more information on this policy, please visit our Policy page for our Acceptable Use Policy - Mobile Phones and Other Electronic Devices

A: The majority of our communication with parents and carers is now done via email. If you are not receiving emails form the school, please check your junk/spam folder and complete the following process: Login to your emails on a desktop PC or Mac (not a smart device) and scan your junk or spam folders. Hopefully you will find an email from us there. If you then mark the sender as safe/not spam/not junk, this should solve the problem going forward. It is very important that the process is carried out on a desktop computer as any amendments made on a smart device such as phone or iPad will not save the settings.

A: Please email the school and include your child’s name and date of birth. If you are amending your email address, please be sure to include your previous email address within the correspondence.

A: Certain members of staff email details can be found on our website: https://woodlandsschoolnew.ovw1.devwebsite.co.uk/staffing. However if you cannot find the email of the member of staff you require, please send your email to Woodlands@woodlandsschool.essex.sch.uk

We regularly post updates, particularly urgent messages via our social media channels. Please like and follow our pages:

Facebook: Woodlands School

Instagram: Woodlandsschoolbasildon

Twitter: @woodlands_sch

A: Please go to our Catering page and complete the free school meal application form: https://apply.cloudforedu.org.uk/ofsm/sims

A: Yes, we ask all parents and carers to ensure no nut products are brought in as part of a packed lunch.

A: Please visit our Catering page for updates to our current menu here.

A: We operate a cashless catering facility, supported by IRSI ParentMail. For more information, please visit our ParentMail pager here.

A: Yes. daily spending is limited at £6 by default. If you would like to reduce or increase this amount, please email the school and we can adjust the daily limit.

A: If you have forgotten to credit your pupil’s account, they can go to the finance office where they will be given a lend. The cost will be charged to the pupil’s account. A text message is then sent home to ask for their account to be topped-up that evening, to ensure the overdraft is repaid and sufficient funds are available for the next day.

A: Every day, we have food left at the end of each service. There is an ample quantity of food for all pupils and queueing times are short. However, it may be the case that your child wanted a specific option which had run out due to high demand. In addition, many children favour the “hand-held” food options over the sit-down, plated food. We would encourage you to look at the menu rotations available as there is a varied selection of choices available at all times.

A: When you pay money online to your pupil’s cashless catering account, funds are not credited to the account immediately as you may expect. With this in mind, it is always best to check your child’s balance either at the weekend or the night before money is needed, to ensure sufficient funds are available.

A: Yes, if it is water and not in a science laboratory. Pupils should not be leaving lessons to fill up water bottle, this can be done during break or lunch.

A: Food selection is available at break time which is timetabled for all years at 11.05am. Lunchtime starts at 1.30pm during the normal timetable or 12.25pm during the exam timetable and hot and cold food is available in the atrium. Food brought from home can be eaten at both break and lunchtimes.

A: No. Our uniform policy can be found on our website. Any child seen to be wearing trainers without a medical exemption will be expected to change into a pair of lent shoes from Pupil Services.

A: No. We do have stock of ties that can be purchased from reception using cash only at the cost of £7.00. Purchases can only be made by using Red Oak School Wear or Uniform D for second hand uniform. Detail can be found on our Uniform Shop page here.

A: We strongly recommend that all uniform, including PE kit is labelled clearly with the pupil’s name. It is very difficult to return items to pupils if they are not named. Lost property is taken to Pupil Services, the PE department also hold lost property found in the changing rooms. Pupils are advised to check all these areas thoroughly when an item is lost. Due to limited storage, all items that are not collected by the end of term are donated to charity.

A: Details of all after school detentions are sent via SatchelOne. Unless we have arranged differently with parents, we always endeavour to give at least 24 hours’ notice.* The school follows the guidance for behaviour and discipline as set out by the Department for Education, which states that schools are empowered to impose detentions outside of school hours and that parental consent is not required for detentions. Schools are not obliged to give notice or reason for a detention being set, but as a school working in partnership with parents to support the maintenance of good conduct and behaviour, both are provided for after school detentions of more than 20 minutes. This policy is a non-negotiable element of the schools behaviour and discipline policy. *The exception to this rule is the RAW Support/Tassomai session. Pupils/parents will be notified of the session and pupils will need to stay for up to 30 minutes on the same day. Pupils are, however, dismissed once they have made up the missed work and are able to show evidence of this at lunchtime and at the start of the session to negate the need to stay for the 30 minutes afterschool.

A: Yes, pupils at Woodlands School will receive two kind of home learning tasks, these are:

1. RAW (Retrieval At Woodlands) tasks which builds cumulative knowledge and supports memory retrieval. 2. RAPID Progress tasks which encourage pupils to use and apply the knowledge they have learnt.

It is the expectation that all pupils complete home learning tasks and relevant reward/sanctions systems are in place to encourage engagement with home learning.

RAW Knowledge in collaboration with Tassomai All pupils complete homework for all of their subjects via RAW Knowledge (Retrieval at Woodlands) on Tassomai.

This is a quizzing programme designed in collaboration with the people who make Tassomai, to improve pupils long term memory. It can be accessed via a computer/phone app. Pupils will be given their log on details when they start with us in September. Questions are ‘pitched’ to the learner. Questions are assigned a difficulty level based on all students’ performance on the question itself. This allows the programme to direct content of the appropriate level to each learner - they will need to demonstrate mastery of the ‘simpler’ content before ‘unlocking’ the more difficult content within that theme. Learners should therefore find that they are challenged when they have demonstrated understanding, and supported with more scaffolding when they are struggling. 

Pupils will have three daily targets every day, one per bucket (they will receive questions from a range of subjects within each bucket):

▪ Bucket 1- Maths and English

▪ Bucket 2- Science, Humanities, MFL

▪ Bucket 3- Creative Arts, Technology, Athletic Performance

Pupils will need to achieve 50 points in each bucket to successfully achieve their target. If pupils consistently achieve their daily target and achieve their ‘bonus’ goal, the number of points they need to achieve for their daily goal will decrease across the week.

RAPID Progress tasks

RAPID Progress tasks encourage our pupils to use their knowledge increasingly complex ways. Pupils could be asked to Revise or rehearse, Apply, Prepare, Improve or Design. RAPID Progress tasks will be set by the individual subject teacher in class and details will be available on the SatchelOne App to view by pupils and parents. In Year 7, each RAPID Progress task should take no longer than 30 minutes a piece and pupils will be given seven days to complete each activity. They will have ten pieces set per week.