UPDATE - School Reopening Plans

Dear Parents and Carers,

Reopening of Drapers Mills Primary Academy

I hope you and your families remain safe and well.

Please be aware, below is our plan for the reopening of our school and this may change at short notice, due to updated Government advice.  However, I felt important to share with you what we intend to do.

Arrangements for reopening of school.

Following advice from the Government, we are planning to partially reopen, for Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 starting on Monday 8^th June.

In order to ensure the safety of your child and social distancing, we have decided to have a phased reopening.  This means that we have divided our Nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 classes into 2 groups - a group A and a group B. Your child will be allocated a place in either group A or group B and a 2 - week cycle will operate as follows, with group A starting on Monday 8^th June.

The arrangements for vulnerable pupils and the children of Key workers will remain the same. They will form part of an additional group and will be able to access the school every day.

Each group will work in a set classroom and will not move to other rooms at any time. This includes adults.

When your child will be in school:

You will shortly be informed which cycle (Group A or Group B) you child will be in and when their starting date will be.

The classes will be split alphabetically into Group A or Group B. Please note that whilst your child will be in the same group as their siblings, unfortunately, as I am sure you can understand, we cannot make changes based on friendship groups or parental preference. You will be sent a message to confirm which group your child is in, but if you are unclear or do not receive an email, please email office@dmpa-tkat.org before school reopens.

Timings:

To avoid a congregation of parents, the window for dropping your children off each day has been extended from 8.30 until 9.15 and the collecting window will now be anytime between 2.30pm and 3.15pm. We ask that only one adult brings the children into school each day.

Anyone who does not arrive on time will need to drop off via the main office. We respectfully ask that everyone makes every effort to arrive during these time-slots. If you are late, please do not use the signing in systems – we will sign them in.

If you arrive after 3:15pm the children will wait on the playground with an adult from their group until a parent arrives. They can no longer be collected from the office.

Entry and Exit from the School Premises

We need parents to support us to ensure the safety of all children and staff, we, therefore, insist that you adhere to the following instructions for the start and end of the school day.

Routes:

To reduce congestion and to allow us to enforce social distancing at the start and end of each day, all five gates into the school will be used.

1. The double gates onto the field from College Road
2. The normal gates by the pedestrian crossing.
3. The gate by the school office.
4. The gates outside the Key Stage 2 hall.
5. The gates by the allotments by the KS2 playground.

Members of the staff will be at points on the routes to marshal parents and carers and avoid gatherings or bottlenecks. If you are not making every effort to remain 2 metres apart, you will be reminded by staff.

We are very conscious of the impact the current situation may have had on your child. The social isolation and anxiety related to COVID 19 is extremely significant and therefore we are ensuring that the staff team are equipped with supporting the children with their anxieties when they return.

On top of this, the school will be very different to the one they left in March. We will shortly be sending you a Guide that outlines our social distancing measures, this will mean that the children will not be able to freely socialise or even communicate with their classmates; they will not be able to interact in the same way with staff and generally will need to act in a way that is strange to them.

Please therefore use the CHILDREN'S GUIDE TO DRAPERS MILLS REOPENING document that we will also be shortly sending you, which explains to them what school will be like when they return. We would suggest that you go through a few things each day so as not to overwhelm them with all the changes.

I fully understand the anxiety that you may be feeling about sending your child back at this time. To support this, we are happy to receive phone calls on the first few days of returning if you want to check in regarding how your child is doing.

In order to reduce presence on the premises during the school day when we return, we ask that any communication is done via phone call or admin email.

Thank you for your continued support, it is much appreciated.  I hope you understand that a great deal of effort has gone into planning for your child’s welcome return, but we always use the latest advice so things may need to change at short notice.

If you have any questions please contact the school via the email or phone number above.

Yours sincerely

Joe Manclark

Headteacher