Charlton School

01.05. 20 Update to Parents

Dear Parents,

I am struggling to believe we are now in May and I am not sure what happened to April! I do hope you and your families continue to be safe and well. It does seem that Telford has fewer cases compared to national statistics and I know we are all very grateful for that, our hospitals are doing a great job locally dealing with immense challenges.

We have spent quite some time this week discussing the challenges around schools re-opening with the Department of Education and we have been asked for our views and thoughts. No decisions have been made but clearly they are looking at this in some detail and I am meeting all our Headteachers next week to look at the planning required once we understand what the government policy is on this complex issue. It is very clear that this will not happen until June and will need to be managed very carefully. As soon as we have any detail on this, we will be sending out information to you.

I think I might sound like a broken record, but we do understand the enormous frustrations around Free School Meal Vouchers, and we spend hours every day trying to support parents with the voucher system. We have delivered food parcels to families this week, where they are not able to access vouchers and we will continue to support where we can.

A number of parents have asked about the laptops for some Y10 students and again, this is not straightforward. We are being told we will not receive any devices until June and they will only allocate the Trust a certain number, below what we would have expected. Again, we will be making sense of this and trying our best to apply for more, but it will not fully deliver the Government’s announcements on this initiative.

I also know Y6 transition is a concern and again once we have some understanding of the re-opening of schools, we will look closely at how we will manage this so Y6 children are really supported into secondary school for September.

We continue to support Home Learning as best we can with staff working from home, so please be patient, we really do try hard every day to make this work and I know some parents are frustrated occasionally but we respond as quickly as we can to issues and concerns.

The Trust continues to support the community and Wrekin View opened the Community Fridge Initiative this week which has gone down really well, many congratulations to Russell who has made this happen at the school. I delivered, with Mr Roberts, visors to Severn Hospice yesterday that have been made at HLC and they were delighted to receive this valuable PPE kit.

We are open on Friday 8^th May for the children of key workers to continue to access their school and will look to offer provision over May half-term for these children. We are planning this next week.

I do remain optimistic that we are moving through this crisis and I cannot thank you enough for all the support you are giving us; every day gives us new challenges but we have a great staff team across the Trust doing their very best.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Gill Eatough

CEO LCT