Following communication received from Durham County Council today and taking into account concerns from education unions and teaching staff, our school is currently reviewing it’s risk assessment to take into account the new strain of Coronavirus.
There are a range of factors which we need to review, as advised by the local authority, including local infection rates, availability of staff as well as the school’s physical environment and organisation and we must be confident that we will be able to open safely to all pupils. The health and safety of pupils and staff is our highest priority and we hope that parents will appreciate that we are responding as fast as we can to a rapidly evolving situation.
We will have more definitive information for parents tomorrow but feel we must inform you that unless we can mitigate all the relevant risks associated with the new virus strain, we may be unable to safely open to all pupils from Tuesday 5th January.
Please be assured that we are working around the clock and we will confirm as soon as we can tomorrow whether we will be able to open for all pupils on Tuesday 5th or whether we will only open for vulnerable children of those of critical workers, with all other pupils moving to remote learning.
The education and welfare of our pupils and staff is of vital importance to us and any decision to close school will never be taken lightly however we have been forced at short notice to review our situation and any decision we make will be in the best interests of the whole school community.
As always, we are extremely grateful for your support and understanding during these challenging times.
As a school, we are developing our remote learning offer and have chosen to use Seesaw as our platform. Seesaw allows the teachers to assign work to the children and provide teacher input, instructions and templates that the children can use to complete the work set. The children can then upload their work to an online journal for their teacher to see and provide feedback on. The app can be used on phones, tablets and there is also a website which can be used if using a laptop or computer. We are beginning to introduce the Seesaw app with our children for homework activities and are gathering feedback from the children as to how they find completing different activities using the different types of technology. If you do not have the technology available to enable your child to access the app, please let us know and we will work together to find the best solution for your child.
