Welcome To
Regents Park Community Primary School
Believe in Yourself - Anything is Possible!
Dear Parents/ Carers,
Thank you again for your on-going support during what has been a difficult term, not just at school but across the whole of our local community. We were advised to make many changes to our usual procedures and routines in school and this has meant it has at times been difficult to be able to do all the things we normally do, such as assemblies, parents evenings, meetings, workshops, etc. I know this has been frustrating for you as parents sometimes but I do appreciate your patience and understanding.
COVID Guidelines in school from January - This week the recent national restrictions have ended; however, Birmingham has found itself in the highest tier of new restrictions, i.e. Tier 3. This means that there is still a lot of concern about the need to protect against the transmission of Coronavirus and that guidelines are in place to support this. We know there has recently been some good news that effective vaccines are soon to be rolled out, however, we also know that it is still likely to be many months before the impact of vaccination results in restrictions and guidelines being removed and things returning to normal.
In the meantime, we will need to carry on following the guidelines we have put in place in school to protect children, families and staff. In January, we will continue to use the staggered start and finish times, close at lunchtime for deep cleaning on Wednesday afternoons and keep children together in class bubbles at all times when working indoors, as well as continuing to make sure reasonable social distancing takes place whenever possible and that good health and hygiene procedures continue to be followed. We will still expect parents to wear face coverings when they come in to the playground to collect children.
Obviously, we will monitor how things change nationally and locally and will review our guidelines at February half term and then again at the end of term by the Easter holidays. It looks like likely we will be continuing with current practice all the way through the Spring term but when it is safe to do so we will let you know and change back to our normal procedures and routines when we can.
COVID Testing kits – We have been given a number of COVID testing kits which can be used for Regents Park children who have symptoms if families are unable to take them to a testing centre. The kits include everything you need to do the test at home and then you post the swab to a testing centre. If your child is showing symptoms and you would like a testing kit, please contact the school office.
Clothing for Forest School – As you know, one of our aims since children returned in September has been to give children opportunities to learn outdoors as often as possible. Each class bubble has a teaching session booked in our Forest School. The Forest School has been one of the successes of our post-lockdown recovery curriculum and we aim to continue with this whatever the weather.
As you can imagine however, the Forest School can get wet and muddy so we have asked parents to make sure that, on days when children have Forest School sessions, children come to school with appropriate clothing, i.e. a jumper/ cardigan, a warm coat and wellies or old trainers. The children should bring shoes to change into afterwards. Please check with your child when they have Forest School and be prepared for some mud when they get home!
Notifications and dates coming up:
Celebration Assemblies - Normally we would have a number of events planned for the end of the term; however, this year we have had to make a few changes. We will be having our end of term Celebration Assemblies in school on Tuesday 15th December; however, we will be having these online for the children to take part in class and can’t invite parents unfortunately.
Christmas Assembly - Year 2 are leading our Christmas Assembly this year which again will be recorded and shared online in school. This is always a popular event with parents and we’d like to be able to share it with Y2 parents so that they too can see their children perform. Providing ALL Y2 parents are happy for us to do so, we will upload a video of the assembly to the school website for a short number of days so that parents don’t miss out. Y2 parents – please let us know if you do not want your child to be on this video before we record it so we can make changes if necessary.
Christmas Parties - We will be having parties on Thursday 17th December but these will only be in the class bubbles. Unfortunately, children will not be able to bring in party food as they normally do - school will provide children with cake for the parties instead.
Christmas cards – Normally children bring in Christmas cards and post them in our Christmas post-box. Again we aren’t doing this this year. Children can still bring in cards if they wish to but only for those children and staff in their class bubbles. Please discourage them from licking envelopes – just tuck the flap inside instead.
Term finishes on Friday 18th December – We normally finish at lunchtime on the last day of term before Christmas. However, as we have the half day closure on Wednesdays, we will be finishing at the normal staggered times on Friday 18th December, i.e. at the times between 2.30pm and 3.00pm as normal.
January return date and training day – The first day back for ALL pupils will be Monday 4th January 2021. We will not be having a training day on this day. We are aware that parents are already having to make plans for children on Wednesday afternoons so instead we will be having our training day on Wednesday 6th January when school will be CLOSED for ALL pupils. This will mean parents only having to make arrangements for Wednesday morning that week.
We will continue to update parents if there are any changes but, in the meantime, we would like to thank you again for your all support. Please remember to keep up to date with more school news on our school website, school app, twitter and by text message.
Take care everybody,
Mr A Beale
Headteacher