Following the Government announcement to reopen schools to children in nursery, reception, year 1 and year 6, we have been reviewing guidance and making plans to increase school numbers.
All of the decisions that we have made are to keep our children safe, their families safe, staff safe and their families safe. We will not risk anyone’s safety in our community.
As a result, we will extend our provision when we feel it is safe to do so for-
- Key worker children
- Those children who are deemed ‘vulnerable’.
- Year 6 children.
New Beginnings will also be back open only for Key worker and vulnerable children initially (please contact Helen to check if you are eligible for a place on concerns@southwickprimary.co.uk or phone 0191 5009554 on Friday)
The Government have suggested a date of June 1st for phased return but we feel this may be too soon with a start date of June 8th more realistic. We will let you know on Tuesday 26th May.
We will review this after one week and if our measures ensure safety, we will look to see if we have capacity for any other year groups to return safely before the summer holidays.
The Government guidance sets out a hierarchy of measures that should be put in place before schools can open.
- Avoid contact with anyone with symptoms
- Frequent handwashing and hygiene practices
- Regular cleaning of settings.
- Minimising contact and mixing of groups within the setting.
We feel that this is not enough to make our children and staff safe. As well as stringently following the guidance we will also be adhering to social distancing measures and reducing our class sizes to ensure social distancing happens in all areas of school. We are also staggering school start and end times to prevent mass gatherings outside of the school gates.
As you can see we are faced with many challenges in order to maintain safety for all of our children, staff and families, and school will look very different during this period.
It is still particularly important that if your child, or family member is clinically vulnerable or clinically extremely vulnerable that you are aware of the guidance and consider how you move forward.
This information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-shielding-and-protecting-extremely-vulnerable-persons-from-covid-19
We will be sending a questionnaire for year 6 children, key worker children and vulnerable children to complete so we can plan groups and activities as best we can so please complete these and return them promptly.
Rest assured there is nothing we want more than all our children back in school, safe and healthy and enjoying their learning. However, during these times especially, it is the safety of the children, our families and staff that matter more than anything else.
For those of you concerned about lost learning time, we will be continuing to produce work to be completed at home, and teachers have detailed plans and rigorous support prepared to boost children’s learning when we return in full.
I want to reassure you that we’re not going to be pressuring anyone to send their children to school and no low attendance action will be taken against any families.
Thank you all for your words of support, they are very much appreciated.
If you have any queries to any part of this letter then please contact school on 0191 5009554 or email concerns@southwickprimary.co.uk
Please stay safe and take care.
Mr Robson
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