Dear Parents and Carers

Provision for Critical Workers

Thank you to everyone who responded  to the survey regarding additional; provision for families with one critical worker. We had 63 responses with the majority of families requesting access to school places. We now have 140 children who are accessing places who fall into the vulnerable children and two key worker categories although they are not all taking up provision every day of the week. Now that we are up and running, the booking form system has been put in place for next week so that we know which days these children are in school. This will identify days when there may be additional spaces available for other children.

We have read the guidance from the DFE on the school closure which is very clear that:
the school risk assessment which gives detailed information about how the staff and children in the school will be kept safe is a key document to guide decisions. It also states that  “bubble” groups should be small although the number isn’t defined . Based on this information the school has agreed that, in line with guidance in the previous summer term lock down,the maximum size of “bubbles”  at Windmill will be 15, To keep everyone safe we have capped the capacity off the school at approximately 25% of the normal school roll. This is around 160 children on any one day.

To ensure that the whole school gets the best quality teaching that we can give in the current circumstances,and also as an additional safety measure, we have decided to keep “bubbles” within year groups rather than mixing them as we did last time. For some year groups this means that we are having to create 2 or 3 “bubbles” in order to accommodate the demand for places as well as ensuring that there are teachers available to support feedback to children who are working at home.

Based on all of this information we are in a position to offer a small number of additional spaces to a few families with two critical workers and some with one critical worker.
These will have to be prioritised, with hospital staff as our highest priority,  as we won’t be able to meet everyone’s needs. To that end if you would like to request places from next week in the key worker provision please complete a further questionnaire which gives us some additional information. The closing date is Sunday 10th Jan at 12:00pm. Children who are offered a place will be able to start from Tuesday 12th January.

Link to registration: https://forms.gle/riShAXo2YhicBp749 If your child already has a place then you do not need to fill out this form.
We do understand how hard it must be for you to have your children at home and to be fulfilling the demands that your own work brings but we also have a fundamental responsibility to the health and safety of everyone in the school building which is requiring us to make some tough decisions. We hope that you will understand this.

Best wishes
The Windmill Team