Good Evening and many thanks for bearing with us at this difficult time. I just wanted to take a moment to share some information with you and also ask for you to give careful consideration to what I am going to tell you tonight.
As you know, we do not have any confirmed cases of COVID19 within our school community although advice is just to self isolate. In the significant majority of these cases, testing has not been carried out. We know that not everyone who carries the virus will display all or sometimes any symptoms, so we can’t be clear how widespread within our community things are.
While many are attacking for the government for a lack of clarity, and indeed not providing full guidance is frustrating, it is important to remember we are in an unprecedented situation and this is an international crisis. It’s not just the virus itself that is causing issues and I would ask for everyone to do their bit so we return to some level normality with our shops and supermarkets.
Tonight I saw a family on the news talking about how hard it’s going to be for them keeping the children at home, how cross they were with the government and schools and how bored they will be… I’m sure many of you will fear this too but I plead with you to consider the big picture here and why we are being asked to take such measures. This is about sustaining life, protecting the most vulnerable and if we can’t look beyond ourselves, it’s a sad reflection of what society has become.
I am now faced with an issue that I would welcome your support on. The government advice is to keep the school population to and absolute maximum of 20% or the measures we take won’t be effective. Based on our initial data collection today, we will exceed this number and I suspect we will have more returns tomorrow. This will mean I have to make some very difficult decisions and I would ask you to be understanding as it will be impossible to please everyone. I would ask you to consider if there are other options in terms of childcare for you to explore even though this could lead to some non-essential working parents being forced to take time off work while their partners attended essential roles.
To get through this crisis we will all need to do our bit and for obvious reasons, I will try to prioritise NHS staff first. Please bear with us here as none of us wanted this, nor could we have foreseen it this time last year… We will attempt to make all arrangements tomorrow so that by the end of the day, everybody is clear if the school is open to them on Monday. If you hear nothing, then assume that for you, the school is closed.
We will be as flexible and supportive as we can during the coming weeks but I ask you to remember that there is no statutory obligation for the school to open at all. We are being asked to support our community by enabling key workers to get into work and we are very happy to provide this service for as long as we are able.
Once again, if you believe you are an essential service worker, please fill in this form – click here.