A MESSAGE FOR ALL PARENTS AND CARERS.
Please read the following and share with others. I’ve written this in the hope that this will alleviate some of your concerns, at what is proving to be a testing time for all of us.
Firstly, I want you to be reassured that staff and I have been extremely busy over the recent week preparing for students to come back to school.
Our plan – to support the challenges currently surrounding the coronavirus pandemic – are to maintain calm by carrying on with normal school life and routines (where possible), to help our students develop habits around hand hygiene and to concentrate our efforts into making learning accessible online.
Underpinning the points above are a large number of practicalities and procedures that will support our efforts, and these have already been shared with staff. I should also state at this point that our plans are guided by the Government’s Public Health England agency, and that we are also in regular contact with Doncaster Local Authority’s Public Health department.
My final Google Hangout (online video chat) with 10 members of staff who have leadership and management responsibilities was very constructive this morning. We have common strategies that have already been shared with the wider staff, and which I will outline in a meeting at 8am tomorrow morning.
However, we do need your help.
Firstly, as instructed by the Government, it is imperative that if your child has a new continuous cough and / or a high temperature (37.8 degrees or higher) that you keep your child at home and away from school and make sure they self isolate for the necessary period of 7 days. If this develops at school we will contact parents and carers in order to collect them. Staff will also be sent home should they too develop these symptoms.
Secondly, whilst we do have plenty of soap in our schools (the preferred method for washing hands as suggested by Public Health England) unfortunately we have not been able to secure large amounts of antibacterial agents, or boxes of tissues as I’m sure you will understand (although we are obviously working on this.) Therefore, we would appreciate it if parents could send their children into school with these items in order to support the wider national campaign if you have them and can spare them to help us.
(However, if Doncaster’s shops are anything like the shops near me in Barnsley, I understand that this may not be possible due to the national shortage.)
Overall, we must maintain calm despite the challenges that we face and I’m confident that as always we will pull together as a community to make this happen.
Please don’t hesitate to contact us during this worrying time should you have any questions. Also, please be aware that things may change as the days and weeks go by.
Jamie Portman (Principal of XP and XP East)