4th January 2021

Dear Parents/Carers

As promised, I would like to give you some more information regarding the decision to move to remote learning for most of our children with just key worker children and those who have a specific need attending school until 18 January. The advice given by the Unions states that they feel schools are currently unsafe places for the following reasons:

The most recent advice from SAGE is that schools should not open in January other than for children of key workers and vulnerable children. This is because the scientific advice is that it is not safe for schools to open. There are new variants of Covid-19 that are highly infectious and infection rates have increased significantly since schools closed. Measures have been in place since September to allow the school to open but according to SAGE those measures may no longer be sufficient. They state in their most recent report: - The introduction of Tier 4 measures in England combined with the school holidays will be informative of the strength of measures required to control the new variant but analysis of this will not be possible until mid January.

• They state that there is a risk of contracting coronavirus and or spreading coronavirus to others.

• They believe that this danger is serious because coronavirus infection is potentially fatal and has already resulted in more than 73,512 deaths in the UK with a significant up surge in recent weeks.

• They believe that, the danger would be imminent because before Christmas the highest infection rates were in children of school age, and the new variant may be 75% more transmissible amongst students than previously.

I would like to make it clear that we would all prefer for all our children to be attending school but we balance that with the need to keep everyone safe and do all we can to protect our children, families and staff. As I said in my email yesterday, we are sorry for the lateness of the decision but the advice from unions only came out over the weekend.

We are totally committed to our children and we will do all that we can to ensure that they get the best possible education whether they are learning from home or school. All staff are working really hard today planning the learning.

Those children who are working from home will need to attend an online Zoom lesson 3 times a day. They will receive teaching during this lesson and will be set work to do between the online lessons. An invitation will be sent each day for these Zoom lessons with a link to click on to join the lesson. We will provide an exercise book, pen and pencil for each child working from home. These can be picked up from outside the school office from 2pm this afternoon. Children in EYFS and KS1 will also have a home learning pack to pick up which will be ready from 3.30 pm.

Please keep an eye out for emails from school as they will contain all the information you will need in order to access the home learning and also the home/school agreement for remote learning. Please ensure that you read the home learning agreement as, by accessing the Zoom lessons, you are agreeing to follow it.

If this is going to be a problem for anyone please let us know. If you require any further information, please feel free to get in touch via the school office.

Stay safe everyone.

With best wishes

Kathryn Bolton

Head Teacher