Letter to Families from Mrs. Tennant re: Possible Reopening Preparations
Mr J Sharp
Dear Parents,
You will be aware from the Prime Minister’s announcement on Sunday that the Government plans for schools across England to potentially open to more children with protective measures in place from Monday 1st June 2020 at the earliest. The Prime Minister said that progress will be monitored every day and If the virus stays on the downward slope with the R remaining below 1 then and only then will it become safe to go further, move to the second step and reopen schools.
Primary Schools have been asked to start preparing in order to welcome back initially children in Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 with other year groups later in the month before the summer break. This will be kept under review and will only happen as planned if we receive confirmation based on scientific advise that it is safe to do so as the Government’s five key tests have been met.
Groups of children including vulnerable children and children of critical workers who have been eligible to attend while school has been closed will continue to be able to do so under the same arrangements as they are currently. We are being asked to continue with this provision as before so will not be able to offer places to any children who do not fall into at least one of these categories before the next phase in a return of more children to school. There is no instruction from the Government to care for children of workers returning from this week in addition to those categorised as critical.
At the moment, as you can probably appreciate there is a lot to read, digest and think about in preparation for a possible reopening of our school to more children as early as next month.
I would imagine that many of you will be concerned about sending your children back to school. You may be wondering if it will be safe to do so regardless of any protective measures that we put into place. The Government will strongly encourage you to take up the offer of a place in our school again when the time is right unless your child or a family member is shielding or your child is particularly vulnerable due to an underlying condition but there will be no penalty for families who do not send their children back to school before the summer break.
Some of the protective measures being thought about at the moment include:
Producing a risk assessment regarding the threat to health posed by the virus in order to establish if and when it is deemed safe to bring back more children into school.
Ensuring that staff, parents and children who have coronavirus symptoms, or who have someone in their household who does, do not attend school which may become problematic if we experience staff shortages due to those shielding and in high risk groups, displaying coronavirus symptoms or caring for others.
Enabling all children eligible to return to school to have access to testing if they display symptoms as well as any symptomatic members of their household as all staff can do now.
Making sure that if a positive test occurs within school the people with whom the individual who tested positive has mixed closely with will be sent home and told to self-isolate for 14 days.
Practising strict social distancing measures including altering the school day such as staggering arrival, break, lunch and home times and reorganising classrooms so that everyone can stay 2 metres apart though how we do this with the youngest children is going to be challenging! Also, after measuring our classrooms, in order for everyone to be socially distanced, we can only accommodate 10 children and a member of staff per classroom which is inevitably going to be a problem more difficult to solve as numbers increase. Only one adult per child to drop off and collect their children.
Removing unnecessary items from classrooms if storage space permits.
Keeping small cohorts of children together at all times each day not mixing different groups during the day or on subsequent days, assigning the same staff members to each group and using the same classroom as much as possible.
Utilising as much as possible outdoor space as weather permits.
Not allowing large gatherings including assemblies and church services.
No unnecessary visitors allowed to enter the school building.
Insisting that everyone to thoroughly wash hands with soap under running water and more often than usual.
Promoting the ‘catch it, bin it, kill it' approach to coughs and sneezes.
Liaising with the Cleaning Company in school to assist with more frequent cleaning of touched surfaces.
Possibly using face masks and other PPE though this is not recommended in schools at the moment.
