4 September

News

4th September 2020

Dear St Wilfrid’s,

We are looking forward to welcoming you all back on Friday and we are writing to remind you of our arrangements we have in place to lessen the risk to everyone.

When all children return, will it be safe?

Many parents, staff and children across the country continue to quite rightly express concern about whether the return of all children to school will be ‘safe’ in September. As we have said before, we believe ‘safe’ means to work hard to lessen the risk for everyone involved. No school can guarantee a child or staff member will not become ill if they return to school, but we have worked to reduce the risk, following the government guidance and learning from our experience so far. The guidance released by the government outlines the two key areas to focus on as a school – Prevention and Response to Infection.

For ‘Prevention’, firstly we will ask anyone with symptoms to not enter the school site, self isolate and to contact NHS Test and Trace. Alongside this, we will be continuing to wash hands regularly, emphasise the ‘Catch it! Bin it! Kill it!’ message and organise our school to ensure we minimise contact between groups within our school. This minimising of contact has influenced how we will organise our classrooms and the structure of our school days and this has been set out in the government guidance. The school will continue to be cleaned thoroughly every day to also reduce the risk of infection.

For ‘Response to Infection’, we will follow the procedures set out in the guidance for if we have any confirmed cases amongst our school population, following the direction of Public Health England.

How will the children be organised?

Each class will be in their classroom as a ‘bubble’.

The classrooms in Years 2 to 6 will be set up with children sat side by side at tables facing the front of class. The guidance recognises this will not be possible in Reception and Year 1 and these classroom environments will be set up differently.

For most of the time, children will have the same adults with them throughout the week, but there will be times during the week when other adults may take the class or work with groups of children from the same year group. The government guidance allows for this and will help us to support our SEN children and give teachers the time they are required to have to plan and prepare.

How will the day be organised?

The guidance instructs us to limit the number of adults on site at any one time and to avoid if we can having large groups gathering. Therefore, we will continue to have staggered starts and ends to the day to avoid large groups of adults on our site. For the start of the day,

Year 1 and Year 4 arrive between 8.30am and 8.40am

Years 2 and 5 arrive between 8.45am and 8.55am

Years 3 and 6 arrive between 9am and 9.10am.

Information about timings for Reception has already been sent out.

We will welcome you in through the main gate on the junior playground and ask you to exit through the infant gate as we have done this term. To maintain social distancing, we are asking families to encourage their children into school quickly and a staff member will be on the doors to greet them.

We recognise the challenge some families might face with different drop off times for siblings and to help we ask families to drop off at the later time. For example, if you have a child in year 1 and year 5, you can drop them both off at 8.45am.

At the end of the day, we will continue to exit from the field, while the weather allows,

Years 1 and 4 leave at 3pm

Years 2 and 5 leave at 3.15pm

Years 3 and 6 leave at 3.30pm

This reflects their different start times so no child has a shortened school day. Once again, families with siblings in different year groups are asked to collect at the later time. In this way, children have the same length school day.

For those families who wish to access wraparound care then this will be possible even with these different start and finish times as we will be responsible for them and take them up to Treetops at the correct time. Treetops have now opened bookings for September.

However, we will not be continuing to close earlier on Fridays so these timings apply for the whole week.

Should my child wear their school uniform every day?

Yes, unless it is a PE day. On PE days children should come into school wearing their PE kit, this avoids bringing unnecessary bags into school. Also, we hope to spend more time using the outdoor space, especially Forest School and so children may need to come in their ‘Forest School’ clothes. We will let you know the days your children need to come in PE kit/Forest school clothes.

How do I communicate with my child’s class teacher?

As we maintain social distancing, we will no longer be using home school diaries for communication. Therefore, the best way to communicate with the class teacher will be via the year group emails.

Reception@stwilfrids-hh.school

year1@stwilfrids-hh.school

year2@stwilfrids-hh.school

year3@stwilfrids-hh.school

year4@stwilfrids-hh.school

year5@stwilfrids-hh.school

year6@stwilfrids-hh.school

These will be checked between 8am and 8.30am and between 4pm and 4.30pm, Monday to Friday and staff will aim to respond within 24 hours. If it is urgent then please contact the school office.

What do we do about inhalers and other medicine?

We will be using the class boxes as usual to store medicines and your child will need to please bring them in labelled.

Thank you for your support and patience in these challenging times.

Kind regards,

Simon Hateley