Dear Parents/Carers,

I am just writing with a couple of staffing updates….

Firstly, I just wanted to take this opportunity to let parents know that I will be taking some time away from school later this year as my partner, Lewis and I are expecting our first baby at the end of June.

By June, Carcroft will have joined the XP Trust group of schools and the school will be overseen by the Executive Team, however, our four Assistant Headteachers will run the school on a day to day basis and will meet weekly with the Trust in order to ensure that everything is running smoothly. Miss Whitehead, Mrs Fox, Mr Longley and Mr Tucker will have worked together as a team since September under my leadership and I am confident that the school will continue to move forward on its journey of improvement under their leadership alongside the support of the trust. I also plan on keeping in touch throughout my maternity leave in order to ensure that I am up to speed for when I return. We are currently working on the staffing structure and will ensure that parents are informed as soon as we finalise our leadership structure for September. I just wanted to let parents know now, as it might be a bit of a shock for some parents/children when they return later in the term and I have suddenly grown in size….

Finally, on another note, I would like to say farewell to Ms Thorpe in Year 1 as she embarks on a new venture after 9 years at Carcroft. Thank you for your dedication to the school and good luck for the future Ms Thorpe.

Regards,

Miss Laing

Headteacher

Dear Parents/Carers,

As you are aware, from this Friday, our school site will only be open to pupils eligible for a critical worker place (until all pupils return later in the term).

If you applied for a critical worker place via the Google Form and HAVE NOT heard from us, this means that you are eligible and your child has a place.

Mrs Lythe or Mr Tucker may have contacted you if you applied for a place but did not meet the criteria for a place to discuss the reason why your application was not successful.

Therefore, if you have applied and have not heard anything, children are to arrive outside the main reception area at 8.30am.

However, when we first sent the letter, there was an error regarding finish time, Friday FINISH TIME WILL BE 1pm and NOT 1.30pm as originally stated. However, if this causes a problem, please do not hesitate to contact the school office and we will do our best to help.

To summarise:

Friday start time for critical worker pupils is: 8.30am

Friday finish time for critical worker pupils is: 1:00pm

We have put together a letter which outlines the rationale behind us limiting our numbers on a Friday and what the learning offer will look like for both critical worker pupils and those working remotely as this will look slightly different to our Monday to Thursday offer.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11O7y6DB92mZgqp7R6_E2LpjC2Z8a77tDzCn8A9Xm8SE/edit?usp=sharing

Thank you for your continued support,

Miss Laing

We plan to be open for those pupils who have been attending school tomorrow and will be continuing as normal with remote learning for pupils at home.

Thank you for your patience today. We’ve loved seeing your photos. See you tomorrow either in school or on Google Classroom.

Dear Parents/Carers,

I just wanted to write a quick post briefly explaining the process in which schools are asked to go through with regards to C-19 symptoms and testing.

When a member of staff/pupil demonstrates symptoms for C-19, they are asked to go for a C-19 test, however, at that point the bubble does not have to close.

When a member of staff/pupils is confirmed as being positive for C-19, based on Public Health England Guidance, we are asked to identify who the individual has had close contact with and this includes answering the following questions:

Anyone who has had any of the following types of contact with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19:

• face-to-face contact including being coughed on or having a face-to-face conversation within one metre
• been within one metre for one minute or longer without face-to-face contact
• been within 2 metres of someone for more than 15 minutes (either as a one-off contact, or added up together over one day)

In school, we have asked the adults in each bubble to restrict the contact in which they have with pupils so that they are having close contact with only a few pupils, in particular for support staff, whereby they tend to sit with 1 or 2 pupils or a table of pupils, however, this does prove more difficult for the Teacher. This is to help us to minimise disruption for pupils and parents, as we can better identify those who have had close contact with the positive case.

Public Health England do not class close contact as the whole of the bubble but only those that are outlined as being a close contact based on the guidance above.

Therefore, when we closed our first bubble this term, we only asked a few children within that bubble to isolate as the member of staff shared they had only had close contact with a table of pupils. However, once a further member of staff tested positive within the same bubble, we asked the same questions and that member of staff shared that they believed that they had close contact with the whole bubble at some point in the previous 48 hours, therefore, we then extended the isolation to the whole bubble. This bubble has now returned to school, the only confirmed cases were the three adults working within this bubble and no further confirmed cases reported.

Regarding the closing of bubbles and isolation, it has to be done on a case by case basis, for example, when we had our first confirmed cases week commencing 18th January, we did as the PHE guidance states as outlined above, which meant only a few pupils/staff were asked to isolate and not the whole bubble initially. However, last week, when we had a confirmed case in Year 2, in light of having a cluster of cases within school, to ensure we were doing everything in which we could to prevent further cases arising, we decided to take the precautionary measure of closing the two Year 2 classes.

Now that we have introduced lateral flow testing for staff, we have an additional layer to consider. If a member of staff tests positive on their LFT on a Sunday or Wednesday, they are asked to isolate and book for a ‘real’ test (PCR) test as soon as they can. We will inform you of this result on that day and ask the children to isolate until we have a confirmed result.

If the member of staff’s ‘real’ test comes back as positive they isolate as does the rest of the bubble for 10 days and if it comes back negative, the bubble can return to school

I would like to assure parents that we are ensuring that we follow guidance provided from Public Health England and although I know at times, parents may be confused by the guidance, it’s the guidance we are asked to follow at this time.

It’s such a difficult time for everyone and together we are doing a great job.

Thank you for your continued support and understanding,

Miss Laing

We’ve had lots of parents sharing they don’t have access to a device or unsure what to do with G Classroom.

Please don’t worry about this…

….Today we will provide something a bit different for all pupils as part of a ‘no screen day’ day.

We will share your child’s activities for today later this morning. Activities will be shared by 10am this morning.

Due to a number of staff unable to get into school this morning. School will be closed and remote learning accessible for all pupils.

Dear Parent/Carers,

Dear Parent/Carer,

Just to let you know that Ofsted will be visiting (remotely via Teams) our school this week on Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th January to undertake a 2 day Monitoring Inspection of CPS.

The team will be speaking with Leaders/Staff from the school regarding the progress made by the school since the last monitoring inspection in January last year. However, they will also be looking in detail at the education on offer to pupils during the last 9 months since the pandemic began, including the effectiveness of the education offer in which we are providing during the current lockdown which commenced as we returned from the Christmas break.

As part of this process, it is likely that they will have a little look at some of our sessions, such as the pre-recorded sessions provided to pupils and some of the RWI lessons being delivered in KS1 too.

In addition to gathering evidence from staff within school, they shared that they would also like to capture any views form parents as part of their evidence gathering exercise, however, these views must be submitted via Parent View via the Ofsted Website.

I have attached the link to Parent View below. You do have to log in using a username and password, but this should not take too long to do and it would be great to capture parent voice in addition to our voices here on site.

https://parentview.ofsted.gov.uk/

I am looking forward to sharing with the Ofsted Team, how the CPS Crew has come together to achieve some wonderful things despite the pandemic and have looked after each other every step of the way. It has been such an incredible journey and I am extremely proud of what we have achieved.

Thank you,