Restricting Attendance in School
Following the Prime Minister’s announcement on 4 January 2021, only children of critical workers and vulnerable children and young people should attend school or college. All other pupils and students will receive remote education.
The criteria for limiting attendance in school during this Lockdown has changed when compared to last summer. The guidance for this Lockdown is that 'Children with at least one parent or carer who is a critical worker can go to school or college if required, but parents and carers should keep their children at home if they can' and the definition of a critical worker has also been widened. This has meant that there are more children currently in all schools across the country.
How schools manage this is up to them as long as they apply the criteria appropriately and they have the staff available. It is another complex issue and some schools will have more staff shielding, for example, than others and this will mean that they do not have sufficient adults in school to offer places to as many children.
We sent a questionnaire to all parents when the Lockdown was announced to ask if they were critical workers and if they would need their children to be in school. We are satisfied that we have applied the criteria fairly and consistently and we continue to remind parents that they should keep their children at home if they can to ensure the safety of all.
We have been lucky that we have been able to provide places for the children of critical workers and vulnerable children who have needed our support and that the numbers that we have coming into school are not so high that it puts at risk the safety of our staff and the children (and their families) that are coming into school. We do have a set of criteria to apply if this safety becomes an issue (eg if we have illness amongst the staff team which means that we do not have sufficient staff to deliver the support to all those who need it).
Every school organises their in school and remote education differently and in our school, teachers are preparing lessons and activities for all the children in their class. They also spend time each day giving children at home feedback on the activities/learning outcomes/observations that are submitted via the learning platforms. The sessions for the children in school are led by our teaching assistants and Mrs Phillips. They use the same materials that are set by the teachers that the children at home are accessing.