Dear Parents and Carers

 

I understand that some of you are unhappy about the provision that we have put in place for critical workers because we have listed the criteria for a place as 2 key workers or single parent who is a key worker. So far this has generated a list of 150 children signed up for provision.

 

We do know that the DFE guidance stipulates that families with 1 key worker are also eligible for a place at school but have huge concerns about the potential for this to significantly increase  the number of children on the school site each day.In our risk assessment we have put a cap on class size as 15 as this supports the staff and children in school with being safer. In order to provide remote learning for the children at home we also need teachers to be working from home and therefore have to have teacher capacity in place for key worker provision as well as remote learning.

 

The Public Health message behind a National lockdown which includes school closures is that we all stay at home to reduce the risk of the transmission of the virus.  By potentially having high numbers of children on site we feel that this significantly compromises this principle.  We also completely understand the need to support our critical worker parents in enabling you to carry out your work which is deemed essential at this current time and the need to strike a balance between the different objectives is why we set limits to the criteria for the key worker provision. 

 

However, as a result of listening to your concerns the governing body and I have agreed  that we will survey the school population to see how many families would take up a school key worker place if we open up the criteria to families with one key worker. This will help us to understand the potential numbers that we would be asked to cater for.

 

The questionnaire has been shared with this letter and we ask that your responses are  submitted by 4:00pm on Thursday 7th January. 

 

The questionnaire can be found through this link: https://forms.gle/gihUQJNm75TuCQnq6

 

Best wishes

 

The Windmill Team.