Our School in Lockdown 1 and beyond - 2020
On Thursday 19th March 2020 Gavin Williamson, the Secretary of State for Education, announced that, as part of the country's ongoing response to COVID-19, schools, colleges and early years settings would be asked to close to everyone except children of key workers and vulnerable children from Monday 23rd March. A few days later the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced a national Lockdown.
At Marlow C of E Infant School we sent out a questionnaire to all our parents on the morning of the 19th March to ask them to identify if they were a key worker. By Friday 20th March we had 194 responses to this which enabled us to identify those children whose parents were key workers and who would need their children to attend school to allow them to work.
On Monday 23rd March school opened for a limited amount of children and our teaching staff began preparing work for children to access at home. We made the decision not to put a set timetable in place but instead to provide activities for families to access at a time and pace that suited them. We recognised that many parents were working from home, had other children also needing to complete school work and were experiencing a very stressful situation. We felt that imposing a timetable and due dates for completion would add to this stress and families needed to be able to fit school work around other activities at home.
As well as providing term time learning for key workers and children at home we also provided a 'holiday club' for the children of key workers throughout the school holiday periods to allow those parents to continue to work. Food parcels were provided for any families in need of that support whilst they were not having school meals.
Our Headteacher contacted all families by phone to understand how the Lockdown's were effecting them, to offer support and to give guidance with the home learning.
Throughout the Lockdown our staff worked to maintain links with the children, provide support to our school families and reached out to the local community to help wherever we could.
The links to the right provide a very small insight into some of the things that went on during the first national Lockdown.