Head Teacher Blog: Friday 8th January 2021

Date: 8th Jan 2021 @ 1:31pm

Well, what a week this has been! I can’t quite believe we are only one week into the term as it has been the strangest and longest week in my teaching career, which is well over 20 years!

I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone in our school community. We all had very little notice on Monday night to get things organised. Whilst we have more children in school than the first lockdown (32% compared to 6%), everyone here has a rightful place as I know that initially we just asked you to come if you felt you met the criteria. In school, all staff are here working their full and usual days as we believe it is right to prioritise more staff with smaller bubbles than less staff with larger bubbles. Children continue in their classes as they had done before the lockdown with their usual staff. They are following exactly the same work as is being sent home. Throughout the day, groups are supported by the class teaching assistant, with the teacher in the room for support as and when needed as the teacher mans the Home Learning, responding to queries, providing feedback and doing the live contact. For those of you at home, we appreciate all that you are doing to support your children’s learning in difficult circumstances. I understand that some families find restrictions with technology difficult at times. We are looking into ways to help you with this and know that we are due a very small number of laptops from the DfE, but they are prioritising secondary schools at the moment and primary schools won’t be able to order them until at least 15^th January. This also influences our decision with regards to live teaching with the class teacher. We are aware that devices are limited and where families are fortunate to have devices, it’s not enough for each sibling in the family to all access them at the same time and therefore would miss out on live teaching. This is why we have timetabled the live contact throughout the school day so that there are no issues with sharing devices. Also, our connectivity struggles when we do live Collective Worship as a full school – I don’t know how it would cope with all classes doing full days live teaching! We are awaiting a full broadband update. Please know that we continue to review what we are offering and where we feel that we can tweak, we will. Please do keep in contact with your child’s class teacher via the class e mail address (not admin@...) if you have anything you want to ask with regards to Home Learning. Please send your Home Learning back to the class e mail address – do not reply to the e mail sent out in the morning with the work, as this goes somewhere else.

Yesterday, the government published updated guidance around Home Learning. When I wrote to you on Wednesday, the expectation for primary schools was 3 hours per day. This has changed to 3 hours per day for KS1 and 4 hours per day for KS2. However, as we send you out what the children would be doing in a usual school day, this already met the criteria. We have been through the guidance and anything else that had changed, we had already felt it was important to implement from the start, so we do not currently need to change. All schools have to publish their Home Learning offer on their websites by 25^th January 2021, which we will do and you will also therefore be able to compare with other schools.

For those children in school, we need to continue to follow the reporting systems if your child develops any symptoms. Please call us on 01606 592608 or e mail admin@overstjohns.cheshire.sch.uk Everyone in your household should self-isolate (you must not leave the house) until a negative test result is known. If your child receives a positive test result, please e mail positiveresult@overstjohns.cheshire.sch.uk immediately. Everyone in your household must continue to isolate for 10 days from the onset of the first official symptom. If your child feels better after 10 days, they may return to school or continue to stay at home until they feel well enough. If anyone in the household goes on to develop symptoms, the 10 days resets from that point.

If anyone in your household other than your child develops symptoms, your child should remain at home until the person with symptoms has had a test and received a negative result. Likewise if it is positive, they should remain at home until the isolation period is complete. If they go on to develop symptoms, they should reset their isolation from the point that their first official symptom began.

If you are unsure at any point, please do ring the office and we can clarify things for you.

On a personal note, I would like to say a huge thank you for all the kind gestures of support, gorgeous e mails and positive comments on social media that we have received as a school this week. Times are difficult for everyone and it means a great deal to us all here at Over St. John’s that you are thinking of us. Any comments that are sent in are sent round to all staff so that everyone knows what has been sent in.

I will continue to write my blogs on a weekly basis and keep you informed of anything that I feel you need to know or that you may find useful.

As for this weekend, take time to rest after a manic week and enjoy the snow that has been promised!

Our thoughts and prayers are with you all,

 

Mrs E Snowdon