Corona virus update Wednesday 18th March

Good evening parents and carers,

The government has just announced that all schools will close for the foreseeable future from 5pm on Friday.  The government isn’t able to state how long this closure will be for, but is expected to be a long shut down: months rather than weeks I believe.

We expect to be fully open tomorrow and Friday 20th March.  We will be closed to almost all children from the end of Friday.

Today our attendance was about 75% and we had 15 members of staff off. I expect the school to be able to limp to the end of the week. Today, Y4 had a very successful trip to Murton Park and tomorrow’s Y2 trip to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park is ON.  I taught 6J for the day and had a fantastic time – what a lovely class!

We are awaiting further guidance from the government as regards their expectation that the school will remain open for some groups of children/families:

• Children of key workers such as health care workers, emergency services, food delivery drivers
• Children with an Education, Health and Care Plan
• Children on Child Protection Plans

Once I get a bit of guidance from the government, I will be emailing a survey to families to gauge the need and demand for places at any emergency schooling provision that we may be able to put on.  The vast majority of families will not be eligible to attend. It is possible that the key worker schooling will not be available at every school – just one of the three Farsley schools being a hub, for example – but it is far too early to be able to make that decision.  Having said that, we are expected to provide something by Monday…  The inclusion of children with EHCPs in the list is something that is understandable but was not expected.

We are committed to providing some alternative educational activities for all our children, particularly Y1-6, using the blogs and Google Classroom (Y3-6). If they haven’t been sent already, children will be given a ‘Home Working’ exercise book to complete work in whilst the school is closed. It has been difficult to provide much home working this week as we have struggled to remain open and provide conventional education at school. I would expect our provision for online/off-site learning to be significantly enhanced next week. Our offer of a ‘lend’ of a school Chromebook remains open and we will distribute these on Friday afternoon. Please email rachel.hawkhead@farsleyfarfield.org.uk if you wish to be considered for this.

We will try to get the mid year reports out before Friday, but we clearly won’t be having a parents’ evening.

My best wishes go to all our community at this unprecedented time, especially all those that are ill or suffering from the economic effects of this shutdown.

If you have any suggestions as regards how school can reasonably help, please let me know.

Regards,

Peter Harris