This page is designed to let you know how we will be organising our school so that we can begin to welcome children back safely. We are really looking forward to seeing you all again soon and want to keep you up to date on our current situation and any future plans for further reopening, when it is safe to do so and in line with Government guidance. We hope you find the information in this page useful, and if you have any other questions, please just ask us.
Following guidance from the Government and the local authority we have now reopened to wider year groups on Monday 15th June. We carried out the necessary risk assessments and staff have all worked tirelessly to ensure it was safe for greater numbers of children to return. We asked parents of Nursery, Reception, Year 1, Year 6, and key workers to respond to us to confirm if they wanted their child to return and we are pleased to say that we have been able to take in all the children who requested a place. We carried out our room and staffing plans based on the number of pupils who responded requesting a place and are unfortunately no longer able to accept any further children for the remainder of the summer term.
As you will be aware by following the government guidelines, in order to safeguard our pupils and staff, school is no longer like it was before. We now need to be regimented, clinical and strictly disciplined in an effort to enforce any level of social distancing, which is so crucially important at this time. We asked parents to prepare their children that they will be returning to a completely different environment with different rules and expectations. Our new way of working has been developed in line with our risk assessment to ensure the health and safety of our children and staff, which is always our highest priority, and we are grateful for parental support in communicating to children the reason why things have to be so different than normal.
As we now have a greater number of children in school, they have been split into groups/‘bubbles’ and allocated a classroom of the school in which they are based full time. Children eat their lunch in their classroom and are required to adhere to strict social distancing measures of 2 metres between all staff and pupils. Members of staff are assigned to each ‘bubble’ and children will not be able to move between or socialise with any other ‘bubbles’. This is to help reduce the spread of the virus and to ensure effective tracking and tracing, as if any person within a bubble was to test positive for the virus then everyone within that ‘bubble’ would have to self-isolate for 14 days.
We have staggered the timings of the day so that we can maintain social distancing. All children have to be brought to school and collected by an adult and all adults are asked to wait at the main gate, where children will be met by staff and then walked around to their classroom whilst observing social distancing. In line with Government guidance, adults are not permitted to enter the school premises or the school building at any time, unless by prior appointment and we kindly request that adults observe social distancing on the journey to school and whilst waiting at the gate.
As an extra safety measure, body temperature checks are required by all staff and children when they enter school. Staff use a no-touch forehead thermometer to take children’s temperature as they arrive at the school gate. If they have a high temperature, parents are asked to take their child home and seek medical advice.
Disciplined handwashing is integrated throughout the day to ensure the highest level of hygiene, with staff working tirelessly to clean surfaces during the day as required and to carry out deep cleaning at the end of every day. In order to further safeguard against the spread of infection, classroom windows and doors will be kept open during the day to provide good ventilation. Playtimes and lunchtimes are now staggered to enable all ‘bubbles’ to remain isolated and children have plenty of outdoor play opportunities, however, access to play equipment will be restricted/controlled in line with government guidance. School are providing all the necessary resources for children and they are not allowed to bring any items/bags/toys in from home, apart from a named water bottle and/or a packed lunch if they are not having a school meal.
We greatly appreciate your support in these challenging times and although school is currently very different for us all, we will continue to provide a safe and nurturing environment for all the children in our care.
We do not yet know what the Government advice will be for Primary schools in September however we will continue to keep parents updated as things develop over the coming weeks.
