Dear Parent / Carer, 

Now that we have had a bit more time to organise everything since closing the school, I have a bit more information for you. 

As you probably saw last night, nearly all schools in England have now closed to due to the country being put into a national lockdown and are only able to open to children whose parents are key workers or that fall into a vulnerable group. This means that most children will be educated from home. We have been working hard to identify which parents we can offer school places to and parents have been contacted accordingly. Currently, we are unable to offer as many places as we would like to due to staffing issues linked to Covid, however we are going to review this regularly and will offer more place when staff are well enough to return to work. In order to address the limited number of places, we have had to initially offer key worker places to single parent key workers or those families where both adults are key workers. Although this is not how we wish to run things, the safety and wellbeing of children, parents and staff has to be my top priority. 

I understand that some parents are concerned that those children who are attending school, will be receiving some direct teaching and are at an advantage to those learning remotely at home. Please rest assured that this is not the case. When planning out how to address virtual learning and key worker/vulnerable care, we wanted to ensure it was fair for all children so the children in school will be completing the same activities as those who are at home. The only difference is that they will be supported by a member of staff where necessary, rather than an adult at home. We are also in the process of making some changes to some of the virtual learning. Please bear with us whilst we address this; I will be in touch when I have further information. 

For those parents who will be dropping off and collecting their children from tomorrow onwards, there have been some slight changes made due to the numbers of children we have in school. If your child is in Years 1 or 2, please drop and collect them from the Key Stage One entrance door and those who are in Nursery or Reception will still be dropped off and collected at Bridges. All of the other arrangements set out in my previous email will still stay the same. 

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me and I will get back to you as soon as I can. 

Kind regards, 

Mrs J Wells