Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you for your patience whilst we are dealing with an ever-changing situation. I am now in a position to share with you more of our details as to how we will be opening school to more pupils and students over time.

We are following both Government and Local Authority guidance and with this in mind, we are completing a phased reopening, only accepting more pupils and students when we feel it is safe to do so. The current dates to accept year groups are stated below but please be aware that these may change.

Key Worker children

We will continue to accept Key Worker children on either a full-time or part-time basis (although we ask that these are full days rather than part days). Please ensure that you have registered your child(ren) on the email address partialclosure@qegsblackburn.com stating which days you require.

We do require 48 hours’ notice to ensure that staffing can be arranged. Key Worker children will be placed in their own groups, ‘bubbles’ and supervised by allocated staff following activities in the same way that we have been doing since 23rd March. Staff have been placed into groups to supervise these bubbles and these staff will only be supervising Key Worker bubbles. They will have specific classrooms that they will work in that are only used by Key Worker bubbles and before using any shared resources, such as IT rooms, both the room and the equipment will be cleaned. All children and their supervising teachers will have lunch in the Dining Hall following a rota system which allows for cleaning of the Dining Hall between each group.

Key Worker children must be dropped off at Main Reception between 8.25 am and 8.40am promptly and can be collected from Main Reception at 3.30pm. We ask that parents/carers are please prompt with these times.

Reception Children

From Monday 8th June, we will be accepting Reception children into school, whose parent/carer have confirmed their attendance by emailing partialclosure@qegsblackburn.com. Those who confirm that their child in Primary Phase will be coming into school will need to ensure their child attends on a full-time basis, 5 days a week. These children will be placed in groups (bubbles) of a maximum of 10. They will be supervised by a group of teachers and teaching assistants within their bubble and they will not be mixing with other teachers or children in other bubbles. They will have specific classrooms that they will work in that are only used by Reception bubbles and before using any shared resources, such as IT rooms, both the room and the equipment will be cleaned. All children and their supervising teachers will have lunch in the Dining Hall following a rota system which allows for cleaning of the Dining Hall between each group.

Reception children must be brought to the ginnel accessed from West Park Rd at 8.45am each morning. We ask that only one parent/carer brings their child and that social distancing measures are followed, including standing on the markings that have been placed in the ginnel when you are dropping your child off at school. You will need to pick your child up from the same place at 3.30pm again following the social distancing measures in place. We ask that parents/carers are please prompt with these times.

Year 10 and Year 12

From Monday 15th June we will start to accept Year 10 pupils and Year 12 students on a rota system. All pupils and students registered on the email address partialclosure@qegsblackburn.com will be placed into a group (bubbles) and invited to attend school for one day to see subject specialists in all of their subjects, where staffing allows. The current plans are to alternate days between Year 10 and Year 12 and to only accept a maximum of 15 pupils/students per day. The number of days your child attends before the end of term will thus depend on the number of bubbles that are created, due to interest. However, it is essential that your child attends their specified days.

On the day that your child attends, we ask that they report to Main Reception at 8.45am. They will then be shown the procedure for the day which includes a bespoke timetable to see subject specialists on a one-to-one basis for 25 minutes for Year 10 and 50 minutes for Year 12. Each pupil/student will be seeing subject specialists in teaching classrooms that have been set up to in line with social distancing measures. All children in these groups will have lunch in the Dining Hall following a rota system, which allows for cleaning of the Dining Hall between each group, and will be supervised by SLT. All Year 10 pupils and Year 12 students will need to be collected from West Park Rd at 3.30pm. We ask that parents/carers are please prompt with these times.

Additional information

Once these year groups have been settled, we will aim to bring in Year 1 children back into school following the same format as the Reception classes. We are currently aiming for this to be Wednesday 17th June but I will write again to confirm this closer to the time. We will then review the situation and the numbers of children we have in school before setting a date to accept Year 6 children.

All children will only be accepted into school if we have received confirmation via partialclosure@qegsblackburn.com from their parent/carer, along with a signed copy of the parent/carer agreement (a Word format can be downloaded here). We will only accept children where there has been least 48 hours’ notice, as additional children coming into school will require further logistical changes.

All children coming into school are not required to wear school uniform and we ask they come into school in clean clothing each day they attend. Please note, school buses will not run during this time.

Finally, we ask you please read the following government guidance before sending your child to school.

For those wishing to send their child into school in the coming weeks, please ensure you have emailed partialclosure@qegsblackburn.com with your child’s name, form/class and your contact details, along with the signed Parent/Carer agreement, (a Word format can be downloaded here).

Thank you once again for your support and for following the instructions we have laid out. These are challenging times for us all, requiring help and adaptability from us all but as a school community, I know we can work together and return to normality as soon as it is safe to do so.

Best wishes,

Mrs CY Gammon