After consultation with staff and following a review of our school risk assessment we have concluded that due to safety concerns associated with opening school to all pupils, we have taken the decision that school will only be open to the children of key workers and vulnerable children from tomorrow, Tuesday 5th January, with all other pupils remaining at home and moving to remote learning. We hope that this will only be a temporary measure and that all children will be able to return from 18th January however the situation will be under constant review and we will keep you informed.
This has been a difficult step for us to take and we have carefully considered a wide range of factors using all of the information available to us. Due to the enhanced measures required by school to mitigate the new risks associated with the new strain of Coronavirus we do not feel that it is currently safe to open school to all pupils however we can implement enhanced measures to accommodate vulnerable children and those of key workers.
For key worker children we will use the list we had during the first lockdown unless we are informed otherwise. In order to keep children as safe as possible we would ask that key worker children only attend school on the days which parents are required to work. If you have not previously accessed key worker provision and need to access it now, please inform the school office by 12pm today so that we can plan for each year group. Parents of vulnerable children will be contacted directly by us today. We will be maintaining all current class bubble arrangements and will be operating the usual staggered start and end times. Breakfast club and after school club will operate as normal for any vulnerable or key worker children who require it with the same costs and timings.
We fully appreciate that this decision may cause complications for some families and please be assured that we are responding as best as we can to the rapidly changing and challenging circumstances and that safeguarding the health and welfare of pupils, staff and the whole school community is our top priority.
To continue pupils learning during this period, we will be providing paper learning packs for all children for this week and these will be available to collect from school from 10am tomorrow. We will place the packs under the blue canopy outside the main entrance and they will be split by year group, please collect one pack for each child from the appropriate year group and please observe usual social distancing measures when collecting your packs. Pupils will be expected to complete the work at home on a daily basis. Vulnerable and key worker children will receive their packs when they attend school tomorrow and will complete their work in school.
From next week we will be moving to online learning using Google Classrooms and we will be sending out further information about this and how we will support pupils to access this learning platform. We appreciate that parents will have many questions regarding this and we would be grateful if you could please wait for us to provide more detailed information before contacting school.
We are so grateful for your support and understanding during what is a difficult and uncertain time for everyone and we will keep you informed of any updates or changes as and when they happen.
