Dear Parent/Carer,
Firstly thank you so much for your positivity and kind words during the last few days. We have had a really positive first day back with 80% engagement from pupils both at school and online- this is absolutely fantastic!
We have decided to further stagger the end of the school day timings for children in order to reduce the number of adults on the school site at any one time in order to ensure that we play our part in keeping the community as safe as we can.
A parent has mentioned today that there are more children on site during this lockdown in comparison to the first lock down which has resulted in more adults at pick up time.
I just wanted to briefly explain the rationale behind this and why it feels different on our school site in comparison to lockdown 1.
We currently have more pupils onsite this time due to a number of factors. The first factor is that the the critical worker list is much longer than it was during the first lockdown, the list for pupils who may be deemed to come under the vulnerable category for the DFE has also been extended this time as a result of lockdown 1; we believe this may be due to the fact that the Government has seen the impact that lockdown has had on a large proportion of pupils across the country in terms of education, heath and wellbeing and therefore have added further criteria this time. In addition, consideration must also to be given to those struggling to access online provision for one reason or another. Finally, it has been requested that schools provide provision for their nursery pupils if they can safely do so and because we are built to be a 2 form entry school we have plentiful space to be able to safely house nursery pupils during this lockdown. So, in summary, this has meant that this time, we do have a larger number of pupils in attendance but we do believe that we can house all pupils on site as safely as we did during lockdown 1, I would even argue even more safely than we did during Lockdown 1 as we have been able to learn a lot during the last 10 months.
This time, the Government has not put in a ratio in terms of bubble sizes unlike last time, whereby they stated that bubbles should have no more than 15 pupils per bubble. However, we are still continuing to adhere to this guidance and are keeping the children in groups of no more than 15 with the exception of Foundation Stage due to the age of the children and the way that they access their provision areas, however, F1 and F2 are kept as separate bubbles and will not mix despite being in the same big space.
In addition pupils are not mixing with any other pupils across school and will remain in their class bubble all of the time with the same two adults both at lunchtime and breaktime. I have also asked adults to limit the number of pupils they come into contact within their bubbles, for example, the Teacher to check the work of 8 pupils and the Support Staff to check the work of the other 7, again, this is much tighter than we had it set up last March. We will continue to consider ways to be even safer in order to keep our community as safe as we possibly can as we move throughout the next 6 weeks.
However, on reflection, one of the areas in which I do feel we could really tighten up on is our end of the day arrangements. With this in mind, I am going to trial the following from Thursday 7th January.
Monday to Thursday: F1 (Nicholson) collected at 2.30
F2 (Godley) collected at 2.45
However, pupils in other year groups can be collected at anytime between 2.30 and 3.15pm. For those collecting F1 and F2, please collect these pupils first and then make your way round to collect siblings.
On a Friday pick up times as follows:
F1 (Nicholson) collected at 12.45pm
F2 (Godley) collected at 1.00pm
Other year groups can be collected anytime between 12.45 and 1.30pm. Like above, please collect F1 and F2 pupils first and then make your way round to collect siblings after that.
Another school is using this same system as it ensures that parents do not have a long waiting time, however, we do need to ensure that it’s staggered. This will take a couple of days to get absolutely right, but I am confident that this can work for us too.
Please can I also ask that parents do not gather outside of the school gates (on the path) or on our site as this is not deemed to be safe in terms of Covid-19. We do ask that parents drop off/pick up on their own during the lockdown period. During the lockdown period, families are not supposed to be mixing with other families, therefore, it is important that we adhere to this guidance during drop off and pick up times too. Thank you for your understanding.
I hope that by making these changes, it might ease the volume of adults on site/on the street at pick up time whilst not asking parents to stand in the cold by setting fixed finishing times for every year group.
Morning drop off times remain as they were this morning as we feel this worked well.
Apologies for the late message, however, the leadership team has only just been able to confirm this change but we wanted to make this change ahead of tomorrow, so we can keep us all as safe as possible whilst continuing to provide in-house education to those who qualify for it.
Thank you for your continued support and understanding,
Miss Laing