Dear Parents

Please find attached the final learning newsletters for children.

As we enter our final week of term (last day for children Thursday 16th July), I hope to be able to give you a broad outline of the procedures being put in place for a full return in September.  Please look out for emails during the school holiday as some plans are still being developed and I will continue to communicate key information through parentmail when necessary. 

I would like to thank parents of children currently in school for their amazing support and understanding with all the protocols that have been necessary since June 1^st.  I know that the children have loved being back in school. As we prepare to welcome all the children back in September, there will be many families who chose to keep their children at home and I would like to reassure these parents that the measures school put in place for June 1^st have worked well and been effective. 

The guidance to support schools for a full return has now been published: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak/guidance-for-full-opening-schools

The guidance refers to a ‘system of control’ to ensure the Prevention and correct Response to infection. There are five essential elements in the guidance that schools must risk assess and plan around:

• A requirement that people who are ill stay at home
• Robust hand and respiratory hygiene
• Enhanced cleaning arrangements
• Active engagement with NHS Test and Trace
• Formal consideration of how to reduce contacts and maximise distancing between those in school wherever possible and minimise potential for contamination so far as is reasonably practicable

Levels of infection have decreased, and this means that all children can return to school.  School will be statutory in September and our usual attendance expectations will resume.  If you have any ongoing concerns around the return to school, we are here to listen and support you.  If your child is identified as extremely clinically vulnerable, we will be contacting you to discuss your child’s individual medical advice. 

The school has already implemented many protocols around enhanced cleaning and robust hand and respiratory hygiene. We will be reviewing and updating this in light of more children attending school.

As the number of children attending school will be doubled in September, consideration around minimising contacts is the focus of our current risk assessment planning. The guidance continues to acknowledge that young children are not able to socially distance and the focus is therefore on separating groups. It is also acknowledged that in order to provide a rich and appropriate curriculum, these groups will now need to be larger and there will be times during the day when bubbles will change in order to ensure a full educational offer. 

The staggered start and end to the day has been very positive in terms of both reducing contact between parents and providing a calm start for children. We will continue to take this approach for September, but the size of bubbles will be increased to year groups as opposed to classes.  Teachers will continue to welcome their children on the small playground.  Parents will not be allowed onto the school premises so will need to say goodbye to children at the gate.  This system has been working extremely well for the vast majority of children and even our more anxious children are now coming into school happily. 

Please see below the timings for September:

Year Groups	Start time	Home time
Year 2	8:30 – 8:40	2:10 – 2:20
Year 1	8:40 – 8:50	2:20 – 2:30
Nursery	8:50 – 8:55	2:50
Reception	8:55 – 9:05	2:30 – 2:40
NURSERY: On Wednesdays, morning children will leave between 11.45 and 11.50. Afternoon children should arrive between 11.50 and 11.55.

We will be contacting individual families who have more than one child in the school to let you know the best time to arrive with your family.

BREAKFAST AND AFTER SCHOOL CLUB

Unfortunately, we are not able to run our breakfast or after school club during the Autumn term 2020. The nature of these clubs means that children across many bubbles would be mixing and currently this would undermine the procedures that will be in place to reduce the risk of infection.  We have liaised with other local schools who are also planning to close these facilities for the immediate future. We will review this decision for January 2021.

Holiday Reading Challenge

The West Sussex Library Service will be running their annual reading challenge.  This is a great way to keep the children engaged with their reading.  Please see the link below to find out more:

www.summerreadingchallenge.org.uk

Reports

Any reports that were not collected last week will be sent to you through the post.  We had a small gift for Year Two children to be collected with their reports. We are not able to post these to you, so please pop in if you would like your child to receive this.  These must be collected by Thursday 16th if you would like them.

 

At the end of what has been a difficult and unprecedented school year, I would like to wish all our families a very safe and happy summer holiday.

We look forward to welcoming you back onMonday 7th September.

Kind Regards

Theresa Alford