Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you have had an enjoyable summer.  The new school year is almost upon us and brings with it, at least for the foreseeable future, slightly different routines and procedures at school.  Updated Risk Assessment and Control Measures documentation are available on the school website.

Please note the following points:

• Pupil drop off – in order to minimise footfall on the yard we are asking for parents who drop their children off at school to drive onto the turning circle at school no earlier than 9.15am and pick up no earlier than 3.15pm (2.15pm Friday). This will enable us to get pupils onto buses and taxis before parents arrive on the turning circle.  Please do not wait on School Avenue, as you know this gets very congested and could bring the whole operation to a standstill!  Being a bit late is preferable to being early in this instance. If you walk from home with your child to school please continue to do this. New Reception pupils have slightly different arrangements for the first few weeks to enable parents to bring their children to the reception soft yard.
• Phase Bubbles – Each class at Cleaswell is part of a Phase group made up of 3 or 4 classes. As our class sizes are small the size of a phase can vary between 25 – 40 pupils (some mainstream schools are having ‘bubbles’ of 100 or more children).  Most of our younger and more complex pupils are very much classed based, however, some of pupils, whose understanding of social distancing is more developed, will still move around specialist class rooms and have more interaction with other members of their phase at particular times e.g. breaktime/lunchtime. We will also have zoned areas for each phase at break time and lunchtime.  By restricting interaction across the school’s population potential risks will be reduced.
• Face masks – there has been a lot of media discussion around the wearing of face masks in mainstream secondary schools. If your child would like to and is able to wear a mask while moving around the corridors in school then that is fine (a number of our pupils did this prior to the summer).  Obviously the numbers of pupils and staff in the corridors at any one time at Cleaswell is a lot smaller than a high school environment which reduces risk.
• The now usual emphasis on the importance of handwashing and enhanced cleaning around school will also be taking place.
• In the event of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in school we will be following the directives of the Health Protection Team (HPT). This could involve self-isolation of affected groups for 14 days, or in the worst case scenario closing the whole school. The risk assessment and control measures documentation on the website should give you a more in-depth overview.

Hopefully over the school year we will be directed by the National Institute for Health Protection to reduce these measures, we will keep you informed.

On a more positive note, the school site is looking great and our staff are looking forward to welcoming your children back on Wednesday.

Thank you for your ongoing support,

Mike Jackson