COVID-19 Update 4: Limited reopening of Elstree UTC to offer face-to-face sessions for students
Re: Limited reopening of Elstree UTC to offer face-to-face sessions for students
Dear parents and carers
Following further changes to the government guidance given on 25th May 2020 regarding the lifting of lockdown and limited reopening of secondary schools, we are planning to provide face-toface sessions for students back in school from 15th June 2020. We have already been providing in-school support to children of critical workers and those identified as more vulnerable and we are now able to increase this offer to all students. Please note this increases face-to-face offer will be phased and carefully managed in line with government guidelines. The purpose of these sessions is described by the department for Education to ‘offer some face to face support for children and young people in year 10 and year 12 to supplement their remote education’. We are really fortunate at EUTC that our specialism and IT infrastructure has allowed us to provide an impressive virtual offer - Elstree ON AIR. This is seeing nearly 90% of students engaging every week and around half of students are engaging 5 or more times per week, so as a school we are in a good position in comparison to a lot of other schools. However, we know that face-to-face education is vital for maintaining connection and community and also for easing our young people back into school. Therefore, we have made a plan...
Our proposed plan will allow us to welcome every student back to school for at least 1 session with each of their teachers. We are implementing a number of measures to make the school as Covid19 safe as possible. We know that a lot of our students are keen to return and see each other and their teachers and we have missed them and are keen to see them too. However, it is important to realise that the school will not be fully reopen for some time yet and these face-to-face sessions will certainly not be school as normal. The purpose of these face-to-face sessions is to provide a limited and safe offer as a 'supplement' to our virtual offer. Teachers are planning some small group activities including practical demonstrations and additional course content, which it has not been possible to provide through the online provision.
I will be writing to you all again soon with more details of our safety measures. For now, please be assured that we will be implementing social distancing guidelines. Students will attend in small groups and will arrive at school at different times to avoid any ‘pinch points’ or crowding and to keep any queues as small as possible. Their behaviour on site will be inline with our safety measures. They will be placed into small groups (of around 8) and required to stay in assigned classrooms whilst on site, their teachers will come to them to minimise movement around the buildings. No food will be served and or eaten on site, and students are advised to do this both before and after attending school. All sessions will finish before lunch - children entitled to free school meals can continue to claim for this through the government free school meal voucher scheme, which is continuing as it is now.
We have introduced ‘deep cleaning’ of the school site before, during and after students have attended. For the use of toilets, and for handwashing facilities, there will be a ‘one in, one out system’. We have ordered PPE equipment and will have a member on site to test if a student becomes unwell. If any students or staff display symptoms of coronavirus, they will be sent home and parents will be asked to come and collect their child. Any other students in the same group will also be contacted so that they can self isolate for 14 days as per government health guidance.
We’ve worked hard to ensure the school is ready for this reintroduction of students, albeit on a small scale to begin with. Those students who are vulnerable and or have parents who are key workers, will continue to attend school each day as they have been for the past 7 weeks, joining in with the face-to-face provision on those specific days.
To summarise we have ensured we have followed government guidance and considered all the following measures:
Risk assessments are in place for safety and risk mitigation
Class sizes are significantly smaller than government recommended maximums
Protective measures are in place and signs, a small digital booklet and staff will ensure that the
rules are followed for everyones safety
Where possible, students should walk, cycle or get dropped off to school by car. Where students have to use public transport, we have staggered start times to reduce crowding on trains and buses at peak times
We continue to offer counselling and pastoral support where students feel anxious. Details of the programme are as below:
Friday 19th June 2020 - half of year 10 attend for English, Maths and Science sessions
Monday 22nd June 2020 - the same half of year 10 attend for options subjects
Friday 26th June 2020 - the second half of year 10 attend for English, Maths and Science
Monday 29th June 2020 - the second half of year 10 attend for option subjects
Friday 3rd July 2020 - half of year 12 attend for face-to-face sessions in their subjects
Friday 10th July 2020 - the second half of year 12 attend for face-to-face sessions
Please note that while our proposed plan refers to ‘half year groups’, we are in fact further dividing these halves into smaller groups. Our year groups are roughly half the size of mainstream secondary schools therefore our numbers of students onsite are far below government guidelines and therefore our provision is working with quarter year groups pragmatically on site.
Also, along with this letter, we are issuing a further parent survey. The link to this survey will be in the email that sent you this letter. Please respond to this survey as soon as you are able and before Wednesday 3rd June 2020. The results will give us a helpful estimation of the number of children who will be on site and participating with this face-to-face offer. This will allow us to further reduce group sizes or increase staffing in response to the number of children anticipated on site during these face-to-face days.
Thank you so much for your ongoing support both of our online provision and also as we now start to safely reopen school in a phased way to small groups at a time. I will write again soon with further operational details and to make clear which students should attend on which days.
Good health to you all.
Chris Mitchell
Principal