Dear Parents/Carers
Church Service
On Tuesday 5th April it is our Easter service at St. Cuthbert’s Church. The service starts at 1:30pm. The service is being performed by our EYFS and primary departments. We are open to having a limited number of parents attend the service. Therefore, if you have a child in the EYFS or Primary phase and would like to attend you are more than welcome to. Unfortunately, we will not be offering refreshments after the service due to the inability to socially distance within our FE building. We would also ask that children go home as per a normal school day after the service has finished. With having building work going on at the front entrance of school and as we do not want people to congregate in the entrance foyer due to increased covid numbers it would make most sense for the children to come home on their usual transport. Could I ask all parents who are wanting to attend that they park round at the walled gardens, this is because we have been informed by the council to not park within the village itself.
School Dinners
After Easter, our school dinner hall will be closed to all students. This is due to the next phase of the building work taking place which will require this area to be locked to students at all times. We are therefore taking the unprecedented step of students eating their school dinners within their classrooms. As a result, where students will eat a packed lunch then this is what will be provided. Students who require softer food or those who are likely to refuse to eat a packed lunch will still be offered a hot option. We will be monitoring the children to ensure that all students are still getting an adequate meal at dinner time and if we have to offer more hot dinners going forward we will attempt to do this. If your child is on Free School Meals the cost of the packed lunch is still subsidised through this. If you would prefer to make your own packed lunch rather than receive a school packed lunch then please inform school ASAP so that food does not go to waste. If your child already has a packed lunch from home then there is no need to do anything differently.
Covid
New government guidance came out today stipulating that testing is no longer available. This is for PCR tests but also we can no longer receive or supply lateral flow tests. We are now in a position where we will be unable to diagnose new cases of Co-vid. This simplifies the situation in that, similar to any other disease or infection, if a child appears to be unwell we will send them home from school. Once they appear to be well enough and their symptoms have disappeared they are free to return to school.
This will also be true of staff. It is worth noting that this may in the initial instances cause a spike in the number of cases as people will inevitably be in school who are Covid positive. However on a plus note, the virus appears to be much less harmful than it was before and the amount of time people will be required to be absent from school will decrease. I would ask all parents that when their child is unwell that they do not send them into school.
Yours sincerely
Paul McLean
Paul McLean
Head Teacher