Good Morning to all.

School closes from Monday.

To slow the spread of Coronavirus, children should be at home and families should be minimising social contacts. This is the strong advice from the Government and Health Authorities.

The Government is asking me to provide a service to the children of “key workers”. As the guidance states, “If children can stay safely at home, they should, to limit the chance of the virus spreading”. Therefore, if your partner or absent parent does not also qualify as a “key worker”, we will not be offering places.

Likewise, if you only work part-time, the offer from school will only be part time. (i.e.  If your day-off is a Wednesday, your child will be at home with you on Wednesday.)

Even opening in this very limited manner will still mean that school is a likely source of infection to those attending. As such, please do not send your child here if they are in anyway unwell or show any of the symptoms or if any of your family have them. This is to protect key workers for as long as possible from becoming infected. (If children begin to show symptoms whilst at school, we will isolate them as best we can and call you for their immediate collection.)

 Failure to adhere to any of these requirements will result in me withdrawing the offer to your child.

We need to keep the number of children attending school to the absolute minimum to help reduce the spread of the virus and to allow the service we offer to continue as long as possible. This obviously depends upon me having enough staff to provide it. (As of today, I already have 25% of our workforce self-isolating due to their own symptoms or those of family members.)

If you require this service, please provide proof of employment and crucially let us know which days you require.

I am meeting later today with “Rainbow Childcare” to agree a package of wrap-around care and will be able to provide an update before school closes today. If you are likely to require this, please let us know ASAP.

We have already seen our neighbouring school close with a suspected case. They are having a 48-hour, deep clean and will be re-opening to provide a similar service to us from Monday. If we can avoid closure at Flowery Field, I will be able to provide the service for longer and without interruption.

One further point… I will, each day, be providing a cold meal option, free of charge, to every child and staff member in school. As such, we are not allowing any other food on site.