Exciting news for Year 5! Back to school on Monday!!
Dear parents and carers,
I am over the moon to say that reopening our school site to Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 has gone extremely smoothly. It has been wonderful to see so many of our children back in school.
As it has gone so smoothly, I am writing to offer Year 5 children the chance to return to our school site from Monday! It will not be possible to invite other groups as Year 5 returning will use all of our remaining classrooms and available staff. I have prioritised your children as they are coming towards the end of their time in our school. They are also older and more able to socially distance themselves while we still need this level of caution in school.
I appreciate that this may be unexpected, but we are blessed with the opportunity of a large building and a big staff team. So as we have capacity to invite Year 5 children back, then I feel we absolutely should.
Organisation of the groups
They will be with their usual class teachers, Miss Forbes and Miss Dove. Both teachers will have 2 groups/bubbles of children.
I am inviting your children back into school for two days per week, for these 2 hours sessions. The sessions are the same length as the other year groups that have returned. This would be as follows.
Bubble 1 – Monday and Tuesday
Clean the classrooms
Bubble 2 – Thursday and Friday
The reason for two days per week is that I hope many children will choose to return. If they do, then in order to make space for them all, with two members of staff and two rooms, it will need to be for two days per bubble. This would mean group 1 with each teacher for two days, the room cleaned on a Wednesday, then group 2 in for two days with each teacher.
Remote learning
Remote learning will continue to be set. Children in school will be expected to do their remote learning in the afternoon when they are not onsite.
Alongside health and safety reasons, one significant part of my decision to bring children onsite part time, rather than full time, is to maintain remote learning for all year groups. Put simply, if most staff are going to be onsite all day, looking after small bubble groups of children, then remote learning would have to radically change or even stop. That would be wrong. We have not stopped working hard and we absolutely have not stopped thinking about the children who will not be coming onsite. We will not sacrifice what they need. Full days for the children we are bringing onsite would result in that. This was one of the vast number of difficult decisions I have needed to make. I thank all of our parents for their understanding and support as well as your kind words. They mean a GREAT deal.
Key worker childcare
Key worker children are the one exception, as they will continue to be onsite all day. This enables a critical group of COVID 19 key worker parents to do their jobs.
Next steps
The children who indicate they would like to return onsite will get the details and information they need on Friday. This will include start and finish times and other information. But one group each day will start at 9am and finish at 11am. The second group each day will start at 9.15am and finish at 11.15am.
Parents MUST make a decision by 12pm on Thursday. This is so we can plan and do risk assessments.
NO exceptions will be made to this.
Whilst I appreciate this is not a great deal of time to make this decision, it is so that no time is wasted bringing Year 5 children who wish to return to the site.
Next year
I am doing my best to work on plans for September, despite knowing no more than you about what that will look for for schools and families. I know no more than is announced each day. All announcements I hear are at the same time as you all. I then need to digest the announcements and then start making plans.
We are all very excited to be moving forward. We all miss you and your children very much. Thank you for your many kind words for our staff team over these last few weeks. They mean a great deal to us all.
Best wishes,
Kate Byrne
Head teacher
