I just want to say a big thank you to families and staff for their amazing support over the past few weeks. These are unprecedented times, but we are dealing with them.

Every day brings new challenges, but the important thing is that we work together to deal with them.

As far as we are concerned school continues on Monday…just not face to face! Teachers will be setting work on the class news pages daily and we really want children and parents to email work, photos, comments to the class teachers through the class email addresses. I will be sharing news, ‘Thunks’ etc. Contact and communication is really important!

Remote teaching has never been done before….but we can do it!

Have a relaxing weekend, and we look forwards to hearing about and sharing  all the activities and learning that you are all doing!

At the beginning of the Department of Education’s keyworkers guidance the government states “As a country, we all need to do what we can to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus. If children can stay safely at home, they should, to limit the chance of the virus spreading. That is why the government has asked parents to keep their children at home, wherever possible, and asked schools to remain open only for those children who absolutely need to attend.”

So therefore we need to know which parents on the key worker list, and who cannot safely keep their child/children at home need Child Care, and on which days.

Please can you contact us this morning to let us know if you meet these requirements and need care next week, letting us know which days you need care for.  As a school we will be able to offer it from 8.30am to 3.15pm.

Keyworker List

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:

Health and social care

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.

Education and childcare

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.

Key public services

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.

Local and national government

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.

Food and other necessary goods

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).

Public safety and national security

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.

Transport

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.

Utilities, communication and financial services

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.

The government has asked parents to keep their children at home, wherever possible, and asked schools to remain open only for those children who absolutely need to attend.

They have now produced guidance of what a keyworker us here. We are still looking into how we could possibly do this safely and how we would staff this.

If you qualify as a keyworker and you have no way of caring for your child at home, please contact us and let us know. We may not have answers right away but will be doing our best to sort this out at such short notice.

Please May we remind you that this is Child Care and not teaching.

We are still awaiting guidance on the definition of keyworker, and of whether one or both parents are required to be keyworkers to qualify for Child Care in school.  Once we know this detail, we will be asking parents who qualify and who wish to take to take this offer up, to contact us at school.  It may be that this Child Care would take place in a hub.

Please note that this is purely Child Care and not teaching.  Our teachers are planning and setting work for all children remotely and therefore we don’t have capacity to teach in school as well.

We would just like to remind parents that the class pages and school news pages on the School Website will be the key source of learning materials for pupils and of information following the closure of the school tomorrow. Can you please share.

We are looking into options to support parents who receive a Free School Meal for their child and will let those parents know what the solution will be as soon as possible.

To clarify this is not Universal Infant Free School Meals, but income related.

You may have heard that the UK’s Education Secretary’s statement this afternoon in which he announced that school’s in England will be closing at the end of the school day on Friday, and quite possibly for an extended period of time.  It was also mentioned that that schools will still need to look after the children of key workers which are NHS staff, police and delivery drivers, as well as vulnerable children which includes children with EHCPs. We don’t know how this would work for our school with such a small number of these children and will await guidance from the authorities.

These are unprecedented events and we very much feel that we all have to ‘pull together’ to ensure that we support our school community the best we can.

As you are aware we have been preparing for this eventuality and have put a number of plans in place to ensure that we can continue to operate remotely, and provide learning opportunities for children to carry out at home.  In our update earlier this week, we informed you that class work would be set on the class pages on the school website.  We have also set up Class email addresses which will be active as of next Monday, where you can contact your class teacher regarding the work set.  These emails are as follow:-

class1@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk – Mrs Fox

class2@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk – Mrs Morris

class3@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk – Mrs Heath

class4@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk – Mr Harley

We do not expect pupils or teachers to operate to a set timestable as everyone will need to live their daily lives their own way.  However, teachers will respond to any emails between 10am and noon, each week day during term time.  Please do not expect responses at any time of the day, weekends or through the Easter Holidays.  Also, please note that the Easter holidays are from 6^th – 18^th April, so there will be no work set during these weeks (naturally reading, spellings, timestables can still be carried out!)

Mrs Harman will also be working from home and will respond to emails via the usual office email address: admin@brownclee.shropshire.sch.uk during the same window of 10am to noon.

We are very much moving forwards blindly in a way as this has not been done before, so please bear with us if there are any glitches!  Again, openness and transparency are key, as is the importance of being a supportive team. Please keep referring to the school website: www.browncleeschool.org.uk as this will be the source of whole school news and classwork as we move forwards.

We are going to miss everyone, so please keep in touch and we look forwards to being back together as soon as we can.  In the meantime, we very much hope that everyone stays well and safe.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Update on guidance for coronavirus: if you have kept your child off school today as they have a new continuous cough or temperature, the guidance is now for the whole family to stay at home for 14 days. Please can you let the school know if this affects you.

Due to the current situation with the coronavirus, we felt it prudent to minimise visits/visitors into school, and as a result we are postponing tomorrow’s Maths Workshop for parents and from this Friday onwards, Well Done assemblies will be for pupils only.

We are also cancelling the Mothers’ Day Coffee morning that was due to be held this Friday, 20th March.

We are sorry for any disappointment but feel that we need to minimise risk of transmission.

Dear Parents,

Coronavirus COVID – 19

We have been monitoring the development regarding the coronavirus very closely. Last Thursday the government announced that they have now moved on to the ‘delay’ stage of their plan to combat the Covid19 virus. This means that anyone, children or adults, with a high temperature or cough are to self-isolate for 7 days. At the moment this does NOT mean that unaffected other family members should also be isolated, although the government have indicated that this advice may change to include the whole household isolating themselves where only one person has symptoms.

The NHS website offers more detail about the virus here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

The whole scenario is a very fluid and is a rapidly changing one but we are aware that school closures are a risk. With this in mind we are drafting an action plan, and these details will be shared when appropriate. In the meantime it would be helpful for parents to ensure that they have the appropriate log-in details for the Spelling Shed, Timestable Rockstar and Numbots programmes.

Along with governors, we have also been attempting to legislate for the vast number of scenarios (or combinations of) that might affect our day to day operation and may even force a short term closure, for example: Absence of key staff (eg Teachers, Designated Safeguarding Leads, first aiders, etc) either through illness or self-isolation and/or disruption to school services (e.g. school meals, cleaning arrangements etc.). Please be aware that this may also affect our ability to run Breakfast and Care Clubs.

Decisions will be based on the nature of the situation and risk assessment carried out on a daily basis. Where it is decided that closure is necessary, this will be communicated to parents directly and as soon as possible. This is a highly dynamic situation and we will continue to adapt and adjust as appropriate. We appreciate your patience and cooperation in the coming days and weeks.

Please monitor the school website for any changes in guidance and information, and please share within the school community. We think transparency is important, so if you or anyone in your household is self-isolating we would really appreciate being informed.