Dear parents and carers,
I hope that you and your families are safe and well and have had an enjoyable Christmas.
I am writing to you to give you an update following the latest Government announcement. As you will be aware from Monday 4th January to Friday 15th January, children will not be physically attending school but will instead access remote learning from home. This is as a result of Medway being identified as a Tier 4 area with ongoing very high infection rates.
On Monday 4th January, the school will now have a staff development day to allow us to organise the key worker/vulnerable hub, prepare remote learning and to send out invites for live lessons for your children to attend. Home learning will therefore commence on Tuesday 5th January. The school office will be open until 1pm on Monday 4th January to respond to any queries, phone calls or emails from yourselves. We will also send out further guidance on remote and live learning so you know when and how your child should log on. You will receive an invite on Monday 4th from your child’s class teacher to allow your child to access the live sessions for the remainder of the week.
We will be offering key worker/vulnerable hub provision from Tuesday 5th January and this will run from 8.45am – 3.15pm every day. There will be no minibus or breakfast clubs running during these next two weeks. For those children who qualify for universal school meals (EYFS and KS1) or for free school meals and are attending the hub, there will be no hot meals available from the kitchen and so free school meal children will be provided with a packed lunch by Cucina until Wednesday 6th January and then after this you will need to provide your child/children with a packed lunch with the food parcel that Cucina will then provide. For those families who qualify for free school meals but are not attending the hub, I will be in contact about a food parcel that you will be able to pick up in the week. For those attending the hub that do not qualify for free school meals, you will need to provide your child/children with a packed lunch as there will be no option to purchase food from Cucina.
In line with the government guidance nursery settings and phases are still able to open as normal from the start of term. Whilst we will not be opening the nursery from Tuesday 5th November, we will endeavour to open the nursery at Allhallows Primary Academy from Monday 11th January and we will write to those parents again within the week to explain the arrangements for this in readiness for the following Monday.
We have some idea from the previous lockdown around which children attended the hub but can we please ask that you contact the office if you believe that you are a key worker or that your child falls under the vulnerable entitlement and you wish to send your child/children into the hub so we can look at the numbers who will be attending. We ask that if you wish your child to attend the hub and believe that you qualify, you will need to bring proof of your profession with you on Tuesday 5th January. The children will access the hub through the Allhallows school hall and members of staff will be on hand to check this on the first morning. We do have a good idea of who might need to arrange to pick up paper packs but please do contact the office if this is the case and so we can arrange for you to be able to pick these up early next week. Please see a list of those who qualify for the key workers/vulnerable hub here.
We hope that the government will provide us with another update around 13th January and so we will then be able to update you as to whether all children will be returning to school on Monday 18th January, so please look out for further communication from myself after those announcements.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your continued support at these very challenging times. The teachers are looking forward to welcoming the children back on Google classroom and through live sessions next week and it is really important that your child/children attend and engage with the online learning provided to ensure that they don’t miss any more time away from their learning. Parents provided us with very positive feedback, when year 5 had to self-isolate and received live sessions at home and we look forward to hearing your feedback over the coming weeks.
Wishing you all a Happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Mrs L Rimmer
Principal