Dear Parents and Carers,

I thought I would write to you again today, giving you a further update on plans to re-introduce children into our school. This will hopefully help parents in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6, in your own planning for the forthcoming weeks.

We are planning really carefully for the proposed phased re-opening of schools, ensuring that everybody in school is as safe as possible. We are risk assessing our school buildings and environments; checking available staff numbers; planning the curriculum for both in school and remote learning; restructuring our teaching spaces to meet the social distancing requirements; ensuring that we have the correct PPE and safety equipment to protect pupils, staff and parents; and developing our daily structures to ensure that we are a safe environment for everyone.

Please accept my reassurance that we will not be expanding the reopening of our school until we are absolutely sure that it is safe to do so, and confident in how we will reopen.

The Government guidance has been that schools should start to prepare for a phased re-opening for specific groups of pupils from 1st June 2020, but not necessarily on 1st June. Schools have been told that we will hear on 28th May whether all of the key requirements have been met sufficiently to enable schools to start the process of reopening the following week. This announcement will give our school one working day (during the half-term break) to respond and plan for any last minute guidance or changes to policy. Because of this, we will not be open to any children, other than those in the identified keyworker and vulnerable pupil categories, until later in that week, and only if it is possible to do so.

It is our intention, once we have taken account of all available guidance, to share with you next week our broad plans for how our school will seek to meet the requirements that the Government has set out for us, including provisional start dates for each year group. We will also be able to give you a little more information about what ‘school’ might look like over the forthcoming weeks and how we will operate to ensure everybody is as safe as possible. It is likely that our plans will include:

• A start date with the week beginning 1st June - but not on Monday 1st June (except those in the identified keyworker and vulnerable pupil categories)
• A phased return over one to two weeks - with one class returning to school at a time.
• A staggered start and end of the day for different classes.
• Children will be in smaller groups and may not be taught by their class teacher. Children will remain in these ‘bubbles’ for the entire school day to minimise contact with others. This will include all playtimes and lunchtime.
• We may not open to classes for the full week, due to the need to deep clean classes and other spaces.
• There will be no Breakfast Club or Chill Time Klub.

Whilst I haven’t been able to share much definite information with you all,  I hope that I have been able to offer some indication of what our plan might look like. We also want to offer reassurance that we are working hard to be able to start the process of a phased reopening of our schools, and that we will only do so when we are sure that it is safe and practical to do so.

 

The safety of our children, staff and all in our community is absolutely paramount. Thank you so much for your continued support for our school and community.

Stay safe and take good care.

Matt Condon

Headteacher