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Regents Park Community Primary School
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Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
Dear Parents/ Carers,
The DfE has published some information for parents regarding school closures:
Closure of educational settings: information for parents and carers
Also, Dr Tim O'Neill, Director for Education and Skills at Birmingham City Council has issued the following letter for parents regarding school closure:
Dear Parents and Carers,
You will all be aware of the announcement made by government earlier this week that schools are to close from today to all but certain groups of pupils.
The government has updated its guidance today about school closures and this is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/closure-of-educational-settings-information-for-parents-and-carers. If you’re unsure about whether your child would be classed as vulnerable or if you are a key worker, please read the government guidance and speak to your child’s school. If they are able to, schools will be opening on Monday for vulnerable children and those of key workers. In the days and weeks that follow, schools will be working in local areas to group together and make the best use of resources. Schools will keep in contact with you as arrangements are made.
The resilience shown by your children’s schools over the last few weeks has been truly remarkable and I’m sure you share my heartfelt gratitude for how school staff have responded to this outbreak. Everyone has total commitment to ensuring that this unprecedented situation is handled as well as possible. Schools are working on innovative ways to make sure that children can access learning over the coming weeks and will be in touch with you about this.
I know that this will have been an extremely unsettling period for you and your children, especially those due to sit exams or leave school or move to new schools later this year. Please be assured that schools will continue to do everything they can to support pupils during this difficult time. Please also see the council’s website for a range of other information about services at this time https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/news/article/560/covid-19_affected_birmingham_city_council_services.
Kind regards
Dr Tim O’Neill
Director for Education and Skills
Dear Parents/ Carers,
Overnight the government have published more information for schools on who could be identified as being a "key worker" and, as such, eligible for child care provision in school from next Monday 23rd March.
The first thing that has been re-emphasised in the guidance is that:
This is because the fewer children making the journey to school, and the fewer children in educational settings, the lower the risk that the virus can spread and infect vulnerable individuals in wider society.
However, if a child needs specialist support, is vulnerable or has a parent who is a critical worker, then educational provision will be available for them at school for the forseeable future.
If your work is critical to the COVID-19 response, or you work in one of the critical sectors listed below, and you cannot keep your child safe at home then your children will be prioritised for education provision and we would ask you to complete the form below or ring the school office today to let us know.
Provision for children of Key Workers - Questionnaire
LIST OF THOSE WHO COULD BE IDENTIFIED AS KEY WORKERS:
This includes but is not limited to doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, social workers, care workers, and other frontline health and social care staff including volunteers; the support and specialist staff required to maintain the UK’s health and social care sector; those working as part of the health and social care supply chain, including producers and distributers of medicines and medical and personal protective equipment.
This includes nursery and teaching staff, social workers and those specialist education professionals who must remain active during the COVID-19 response to deliver this approach.
This includes those essential to the running of the justice system, religious staff, charities and workers delivering key frontline services, those responsible for the management of the deceased, and journalists and broadcasters who are providing public service broadcasting.
This only includes those administrative occupations essential to the effective delivery of the COVID-19 response or delivering essential public services such as the payment of benefits, including in government agencies and arms length bodies.
This includes those involved in food production, processing, distribution, sale and delivery as well as those essential to the provision of other key goods (for example hygienic and veterinary medicines).
This includes police and support staff, Ministry of Defence civilians, contractor and armed forces personnel (those critical to the delivery of key defence and national security outputs and essential to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic), fire and rescue service employees (including support staff), National Crime Agency staff, those maintaining border security, prison and probation staff and other national security roles, including those overseas.
This includes those who will keep the air, water, road and rail passenger and freight transport modes operating during the COVID-19 response, including those working on transport systems through which supply chains pass.
This includes staff needed for essential financial services provision (including but not limited to workers in banks, building societies and financial market infrastructure), the oil, gas, electricity and water sectors (including sewerage), information technology and data infrastructure sector and primary industry supplies to continue during the COVID-19 response, as well as key staff working in the civil nuclear, chemicals, telecommunications (including but not limited to network operations, field engineering, call centre staff, IT and data infrastructure, 999 and 111 critical services), postal services and delivery, payments providers and waste disposal sectors.
Dear Parents,
We are still making plans for next week to support pupils who are vulnerable and also children whose parents are "key workers".
At this point we still do not have guidance from the government to help us identify who key workers are. However, to help us plan as best we can it would be useful if we could ask parents to give us as much information as you can, i.e. whether parents might be identified as being key workers and whether you would need support from school to look after your children during the day from next week.
In order to help us with this, could you please click on the link below and complete the online form as soon as possible, preferably before 11am tomorrow, Friday 20th March.
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=hK6Sjwgw_kWNfZnF5eaflVzZGxWxCk1DitHfegI2LyZUQ00ySTdEU1BEWDdXTk9VMkMyRFBQMkJCSi4u
Thank you
Dear Parents/ Carers,
I'm sure many of you will have seen the news this evening and the statements by the Prime Minister and the Education Secretary about schools closing for the forseeable future at the end of this week from 3.00pm on Friday 20th March.
Schools have been asked to consider how they can then provide daytime schooling from Monday 23rd March for children whose parents are "key workers" or children who are seen as being "vulnerable", providing there is the staffing to do so. We will look into this tomorrow and let you know more when we have looked at more guidance.
In the meantime, school will be open as normal tomorrow (Thursday 19th March) and on Friday 20th March for all pupils who are able to attend.
Mr Beale
Dear Parents
As you will be aware, this has been a difficult week at school. As we have been instructed to do, we have stayed open to provide your children with a safe place to come and learn during what is a very worrying time for many of them. I am proud of the way our Regents Park community has responded during such a challenging time. I am sure you would like me to thank all the staff who have come in to school despite their own anxieties and worries about their own families to ensure that the children's learning at school could carry on.
It is now looking increasingly likely that schools in England will be asked to close by the end of this week. There will be an announcement by the Education Secretary at 5.00pm today and we will update our website in response to this announcement.
Children will be coming home from school today with a pack of work to keep them busy over the next couple of weeks - this is to be used when school closes and parents are asked to support children with it. More activities and links to online learning will be added to the school website. If your child isn't in school, please contact the school office as soon as possible to either arrange to pick it up if it's safe to do so or organise for someone else to do so.
Thanks again for your support and understanding.
Mr Beale
We are, understandably, receiving questions and concerns about Coronavirus and its impact on school and the children. I am writing to update you as to what we are doing and the contingency in the event of closure.
At the time of writing, the school remains open and all children are expected to attend. We continue to receive daily briefing emails from the Department for Education and we are following all advice given. School will remain open until we are advised otherwise. We will continue to make sure that school is cleaned thoroughly everyday and that children have easy access to paper tissues, soap and, if possible, hand sanitiser.
As the UK government moves to the "delay" phase of its plan to tackle coronavirus, anyone with a new persistent cough or high temperature is now advised to self-isolate for seven days, even if the symptoms are mild.
It is important then that if your child shows signs of having a cough or a high temperature that you keep them at home with you for seven days. We also ask you to be sensible about whether to send children to school if there is someone else in the immediate family who has developed symptoms such as a cough or a high temperature and is self-isolating.
There is a possibility that if the situation develops further that school may have to close for a period of time. In the event of a school closure we will send a text message and we will put a message on our website. We will keep you updated throughout any period of closure. To ensure good communication between school and home, please make sure that you have updated us with your current phone number and that you have downloaded the School App on your mobile phone. If you don’t receive a text message from school later today, then we don’t have your up to date number.
We are also preparing to organise work for children to do at home if school closes. We are hoping to prepare some paper based work packs for children to do at home and on our school website we will let you know of links to work that children can do online if they have access to the internet on laptops or tablets.
Although we will expect children to complete work that is given and return it, we will not be able to mark it in detail or give feedback. We are relying on you as parents to support your children’s learning and give feedback on the work they do during any closure.
I would like to reiterate that we are following all advice given and our first priority, as always, is the health and wellbeing of the children.
Thank you for your support.
Parents - if you have any concerns please let us know and please update us if you are aware of any children or other family members who have travelled recently from areas affected by Coronavirus and are displaying symptoms.
Thanks everyone