Dear Parents and Carers,
Thank you for your ongoing support during this difficult time. As our staff continue to supervise the children of key workers and provide remote learning for all our other students, we are now also considering how we can offer some more focused support to our Year 10 students.
To achieve we this we are working together, as a group of secondary Headteachers in conjunction with the Local Authority, to overcome the challenges this presents with our utmost focus being to ensure that we are able to keep all our students and staff safe.
Currently the DfE have produced guidance for our primary colleagues and we anticipate receiving guidance for the secondary sector soon. In advance of this we are all completing a detailed and comprehensive risk analysis to review with our Governing Boards. Key aspects of this include:
· identifying classrooms that we can use whilst adhering to the social distancing requirement to keep our students 2 meters apart
· removing excess furniture from the classrooms we identify for use to minimise the spread of any infection
· enhancing our cleaning routines during the school day to limit transmission of infection
· creating one-way systems to support social distancing on our corridors
· considering what our catering teams can offer when also complying with social distancing measures themselves
· preparing guidance for our staff and students that clarifies and explains how school will function going forward as this will be very different for the foreseeable future
We are currently consulting with our staff and families to review their views and concerns to support our planning. We also need to be confident that we can staff any offer we make as some staff in our schools are classified as extremely clinically vulnerable and/or have underlying health conditions and are required to shield at this time.
At this point in time our primary colleagues are planning to gradually reopen in some way from the 10th June 2020 at the earliest and we will keep you informed of our plans.
In the meantime we will continue to support our families in any way we can. Lessons will not be set over the half term break and will resume remotely on the 1st June.
Take care and stay safe.
Linda Hanson