26.06.20 LCT Update to Parents

Dear Parents,
I hope you and your families are safe and well. We do know that a small number of our families have suffered bereavements over the last few weeks and I am sure you will join with me in offering our sincere condolences to those families, it is always incredibly hard to lose a loved one but at this time it is even more difficult.

We continue to make great progress with more children and young people attending school, meeting all the government guidance on numbers and year groups. I have had really good feedback from Headteachers, staff, parents and children as everyone has adjusted to how school works at the moment. The children have behaved brilliantly and enjoyed being with their teachers and friends.

As we approach the final part of the term we are making some changes, particularly focussed around our primary aged children. Our Y6 children will finish on Friday 3rd July with some celebration events to mark the end of their time in primary. This allows us to invite in Reception through to Y5 in half classes over two weeks, to be with their new teacher in their new classroom, so that they are settled, happy and ready for September. Our Y2, Y3, Y4, and Y5 students have not be able to attend school, but we are now allowed to be more flexible and bring in children as long as we operate the bubbles of 15 with all the other safety measures, which are currently in place. You will have received the relevant information on these arrangements from your child’s school.

In order to provide capacity in our primary schools to bring in more children, our secondary schools have agreed to provide space for Y6 children from HLC Primary and Wrekin View Primary on Monday 13th/Tuesday 14th July. This will be carefully managed by each school to ensure we meet Government guidelines. We are only offering this to our Y6 children in our Trust schools as we have to keep numbers low and maintain small groups.

We have taken the decision that we will have Y7 students only in Charlton, Ercall Wood and HLC on the first day of term, Wednesday 2nd September, so they have a proper induction day, in their new secondary school, before the other year groups attend.

In order to support our current Y7, Y8, and Y9 students prepare for school in September then each child will be contacted over the next three weeks for a chat with a member of staff, this we hope will happen through Teams, as a video call or if not by telephone. This, we hope will ease anxieties and prepare them for next term. We will continue to support Home Learning for these year groups until the end of term.

Queensway will continue with its current offer with students attending part-time until the end of term.

The government have informed us that there is no requirement for schools to open to key worker children or vulnerable children over the summer holidays and therefore this provision will finish on Wednesday 15th July when we break up for the summer holiday. We have building work, maintenance and redecoration planned in most schools over the summer as well as returning the sites to more normal operation.

I hope you can gather from all of this information that we are focussing on getting all children prepared, as well as we can, for September and at this stage we are planning for all our schools being open to all children full-time from September. This is the current Government directive and one I completely support, too many children have been out of school for too long because of the pandemic. It will be hard for some of them but we will provide all the support they need to get them back into the routine and enjoy school.

My best wishes to you and your family.
Dr. Gill Eatough
CEO LCT