Dear Parents and Carers
We find ourselves in a period of time waiting for the Government to announce how lockdown will be eased, how the economy will restart and how children will return to school. We know nothing more about schools returning than is in the public domain at present, but we have started planning anyway. We will be back sooner or later.
What the return to school looks like is yet to be seen. Year groups, days and dates are all to be announced. However, there does seem to be a theme running through all the speculation, and that is social distancing. As you can imagine, we have been discussing this at length, and we have several shadow timetables ready to go which limit the number of students in the room and on site at any one time. We don’t know whether we have guessed the right year groups but we have done some work to prepare anyway.
We are also looking at the whole school site, breaks, lunchtimes, lesson changes, etc and trying to imagine what that may look like for the next few weeks and months. We have several scenarios planned for transition arrangements with our new intake, ranging from ‘business as usual’ to an entirely remote process and every scenario in between. Our first day back with students is mostly planned with time given for them to get to grips with new arrangements and school processes and several layers of more in-depth intervention depending on how vulnerable the child is and what may have occurred through this pandemic. In short, we feel we are ready to do as instructed by the Government when they feel the time is right and provided we get sufficient notice.
No matter which scenario we run or which eventuality we look at, they all rely on one key thing: a sense of personal responsibility running through everybody who comes on site. We can divide up classes, paint 2-metre stripes on the floor, stagger lessons and breaks, etc but ultimately it will be down to the students and staff to follow the new social norms when they return. For this reason, I’m asking you to start the conversations now. Whenever we return to school and whichever year groups we start with, the success of all students’ learning relies on a shared set of values and the new social distancing rules being applied by everybody. As you may have heard, we are all in this together and never more so than when we invite students back into school with our staff. Let’s make sure we all keep each other as safe as we can.
Best wishes and keep safe.
Andy Perry – Head Teacher
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