Dear all,

Happy New Year !

This wasn't the e-mail I had planned or drafted ready to be sent tomorrow ready for the children to return on Wednesday ! Everything has changed and school will not reopen until after February half term at the earliest, at least there is a vaccine programme starting so a positive change from March. 

Whatever your personal feelings about Covid may be, we are back to a situation similar, but not the same as March. This is not an easy option for school, you or staff and is a lot more work than being in school normally, as we were last term ! Hopefully we will be back at school after half term and things will begin to ease. 

I will be in contact again tomorrow with more details but we are set up for home learning using SeeSaw (you have their home learning log on that is personal to your child) and other platforms that we have, teachers are prepared and will start to post work from Wednesday for you (it will be a mix of on-line and project work so they don't become addicted to a screen !). During the last lockdown the vast majority of children (96%) worked well at home and accessed things (we know there are some families who struggle with devices etc so we will see what we can do to assist you). 

We are expecting similar or lower numbers (between 10 and 15) of key worker children to March (more clarity of what constitutes a key worker tomorrow but essentially your job must be essential to the fight against the virus and school is a last resort for provision, if you can make alternative arrangements then you should).

Unlike March teachers will be fully engaged with home learning all day, every day and posting/checking work daily on SeeSaw  and we need to staff any other provision safely (all staff worked hard during the last lockdown but we have wider provision now and it will be more prescriptive with the learning that we expect, hopefully it should relieve some of the pressure on you).

Unlike March key worker children will be supervised doing the same work as their classmates and it is not child care, they will not mix as they did previously. We will provide provision between 9am and 3:30pm. I will clarify more when we have all of the details tomorrow (we will then invite you to send an e-mail to admin@madley.hereford.sch.uk clarifying why you are a key worker and the provision you need). 

These are fresh challenges and trying times for everyone, there are no easy decisions and we won't keep everyone happy but we will do our best and provide you with work for your children (we know from March that a full day is too much for them and you so we will plan for up to 4 hours a day then feed you some ideas for other activities). And Joe Wicks is back (apparently !) although that isn't PE but exercise ......... (not that that bugs PE teachers at all !!).

More to follow tomorrow ...........
Best wishes 
Mr Batstone