Friday 29^th January 2021

Dear parents and carers,

This week, the Prime Minister has announced that it will not be possible to open schools fully again immediately after the February half-term and instead hopes it will be safe to commence the re-opening of schools from Monday 8 March. This is in response to the national public health data and pressure on NHS capacity. This is not a definite date yet, but schools as well as families will be given at least two weeks notice to prepare for a return.

Schools will remain open to vulnerable children and the children of critical workers up until and after February half-term, as they are now. At the moment we currently have 25% of our pupils attending school and are full in terms of numbers that we can manage safely. The advice is that it is still safest to keep your child at home if you can.  All other pupils will continue to receive high quality remote education at home. This is in line with the wider national lockdown measures to help minimise the spread of the virus and respond quickly to the new variant.

Remote and In School Learning.

Thank you to all our children and families who are continuing to share work and photos of activities that are being completed at home via Seesaw or Tapestry. It s great to see and very encouraging to know that you are all still learning and keeping busy.

It is a government requirement that we are providing remote education and and therefore we are chasing up participation and checking whether there are any issues regarding IT access or behaviour that we can support with to make things easier for parents.

Live Lessons

Daily live lessons for Years 2-6 are proving extremely popular and we are delighted that on average over 95% of each class are participating each day. This is incredible and is ensuring that you are not falling behind with your English curriculum. Well done children!

All the staff wanted me to say thank you to the children for their attendance and hard work. We keep a daily register of attendance and I was really impressed to see the huge number of children who are attending each day.

Reminders

• If your child is in school part-time, we do expect them to attend the live lesson or complete remote learning activities on the days they are at home too please.
• Please can children have their camera turned on so that we can check they are engaging and it is also good for us to be able to see every child in terms of safeguarding.
• It would also be much better if each child’s own name was displayed on Zoom rather than a nickname so that we know exactly who we are admitting.
• Please can we also ask parents to help their child log in on time and that there is no background noise so that everyone can listen and concentrate. Thank you so much J

Snowy weather

For those children who are currently attending school, please keep an eye on Twitter or the school website for any messages if we are unable to open due to adverse weather conditions. We always need to risk assess the safety of the site and surrounding roads to check they are safe for travel before making a decision.

Please remember we are always available to support all our families, whether your children are currently attending school or not, with any issues that may arise. Please do keep in touch.

With best wishes to you all. Take care and stay safe.

Mrs N Rynott

Head teacher.