Hello Everyone,
As you know, the new national restrictions came into place on Thursday 5 November and remain in place until Wednesday 2nd December. Our schools will remain open during this time unless we are advised to close by the government.
Our main priority it to provide on-site education for as many pupils as possible. We are trying to ensure that the Covid-19 pandemic has as little impact on our children’s futures as possible. In order to protect the majority of the children in the event of a positive case in school we have:
- Organised the school into ‘bubbles’. The children do not mix with any adults or children from other bubbles. This means that if there is a positive case in school, we can quickly trace the contacts and ask them to self-isolate. This means that the minimum amount of people are exposed and allows the maximum number of children to continue to attend school every day.
- Cancelled school club provision until further notice. This is because it is impossible to arrange club provision without allowing contact between children and staff in different ‘bubbles’. If we allowed clubs to go ahead, any positive case reported by a person attending a club would have an impact on a wide group of children and adults, leaving children in adults in a wider number of bubbles open to infection. This in turn would mean self-isolating more than one ‘bubble’ at a time which would mean fewer children being able to attend school every day.
We believe we are doing all that we can to ensure the safety of our pupils and staff but we have noticed that some aspects have been slipping a little. With this in mind we would like to remind everyone about the following:
- Children and parents should arrive at school during their pick up and drop off ‘window’. Please see the timetable below for a reminder of these times. The times have been the same since the beginning of term, so everyone is now aware of these.
- Please do not arrive early and wait outside the gate. You have ten minutes at either end of the school day to collect your child(ten) from school. If you arrive during this ten minute ‘window’ you reduce the congestion in and around the school and therefore ensure that our children and families stay safe.
- Everyone should keep a 2-metre distance from others whilst on our school site.
- Everyone should make sure that their face covering covers both their mouth and their nose at all times.
- Staff have been asked to not have any face-to-face interactions with parents during this time. This is to protect their safety. If you do have anything you want to ask the teacher, or member of staff on duty at the doors, please send an email to the school office and it will be passed on to the relevant member of staff immediately.
- Children should not bring anything from home to school. If your child has a packed lunch, or they need to use sanitary products during the day, they can bring these to school in a small bag. Other than this, nothing else should be brought in to school.
One of the biggest challenges we face is staffing. In common with most schools up and down the country, we face problems with increasing numbers of staff needing to self-isolate. We have a system in place to mitigate this risk, but from time to time we may not have enough staff to teach a particular bubble and the children’s work will have to be moved online with little notice. We understand the pressure this puts on families, who are balancing so much at the moment. Therefore, we will only do this as an absolute last resort.
You can find details of Covid plans and risk assessments on our Covid Guidance page.
Our aim is to keep as many children learning in school as possible and to keep our schools Covid-19 free as possible. I thank you all for your ongoing support in these most difficult of times.
With best wishes,
Susan Papas
