Dear parents,

Happy New Year to you all!  I hope you’ve been able to enjoy the festive period with your family and enjoyed time together.  It’s been a lovely break away from school but we’ve also been really busy of course, keeping up with all the updates and national changes!

We’ve been successful over the past couple of school terms in keeping illnesses at bay, and there are things about our procedures, as well as all the preventative actions from our parents and community, that are keeping everyone safe here too.  Thank you very much for everything you’ve done, following the rules (Hands – Face – Space) and being so careful and considerate in your actions.

Teacher Unions have raised the issue of school staff being unable to be socially distanced amongst all of this, particularly in Primary Schools in tier 4 and tier 3 areas, but our staff, although understandably anxious during these times, are happy with the controls we have in place.

Today has been an inset day for our teaching staff and we’ve gone through the school’s risk assessment with a fine tooth comb.  It’ll be reviewed again tomorrow and we anticipate that most of the safety measures that we had in the last week of school in December, will remain.  Thank you in advance for your continued support in following these.

Some of the specific controls we’d like to highlight here, are:

  • Single parent only dropping and picking up, (walk or cycle, if you can).
  • Face coverings (masks) to be worn on the school property.
  • Parents not in the building or doorway – could you phone or email please?
  • School uniform, or PE kit, for the whole school day, depending on timetable of course!
  • And, as ventilation is needed in school and it’s going to be a little cold, wearing vests under your uniform is a good idea!

December’s Risk Assessment is on our website if you need to refer to the full document.

From what Boris Johnson said on the weekend, it sounds like it’s going to be a very bumpy ride and that we’ll have some more changes and directives coming our way.  Please note, schools receive news of these at the same time as they are released to the general public, but we’ll do our best to adapt where we can and keep all our parents updated.

We look forward to welcoming your children back to school tomorrow.

Best regards,

Julian Thomas