The guidance has finally been published. There are a raft of things we already have in place, but the detail has meant we are now adapting our plans for September.
The guidance runs to 38 pages and we are diligently going through everything. Risk assessments and Behaviour policies will be rewritten to reflect the new ‘normal’. The school day will look very different in September.
I will release more detail over the next 2 weeks, but I would stress at this point that you need to start getting your children ready to think about what September will be like and emphasise the need for an entirely new outlook to behaviour in and around school.
It is assumed at this point that school buses will run as they did before lockdown.
There is a great deal of work to be done over the next 2 months . All I can say is we guessed right and we are already well into the planning, so nothing has come as a surprise.
Please hold on to your questions for now, as when I can reveal more detail, they might well be answered. However, I have set up yet another Google Form for you to ask questions, this makes it more manageable at this end and will guarantee your question won’t get lost or overlooked.
https://forms.gle/
Thank you again for your support.
Stay safe this weekend!!
Kind regards
Julia Polley
These are the key messages for parents, taken from the full DfE publication : https://www.gov.uk/
- All children and young people, in all year groups and setting types, will return to education settings full time from the beginning of the autumn term.
- In welcoming all children and young people back this autumn, settings will be asked to minimise the number of contacts that a pupil or student has during the day
- How contacts are reduced may include:
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- grouping children together
- avoiding contact between groups
- arranging classrooms with forward facing desks
- staff maintaining distance from pupils and other staff
- Building these routines into school culture, supported by behaviour expectations , including maintaining distance and not touching staff and their peers
- The usual rules on attendance will apply, including:
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- parents’ duty to secure that their child attends regularly at their education setting where the child is a registered pupil at school and they are of compulsory school age
- settings’ responsibilities to record attendance and follow up absence
- the availability to issue sanctions, including fixed penalty notices in line with local authorities’ codes of conduct Advise against domestic (UK) overnight and overseas educational visits at this stage.
- Aim to return to the setting’s normal curriculum in all subjects by summer term 2021
- Substantial modification to the curriculum may be needed at the start of the year, so teaching time should be prioritised to address significant gaps in pupils’ knowledge with the aim of returning to the setting’s full normal curriculum content by summer term 2021.
