Dear Parents/Carers,
I hope you all continue to be safe and well. I am writing to you today as a follow up to the letters I sent out on Monday evening both from school and from the local authority. First of all can I apologise again for the late notice about what we have had to put in place for the rest of this week. There was an emergency meeting of the local council on Monday at 11:00am because of the rapid rise in cases in Waltham Forest, followed then by other meetings of heads, unions etc. Schools were promised a letter from the LA by 2:00pm on Monday but we didn’t receive it till after 5:00pm. I had already sent my letter to you because I wanted to give everyone as much notice as possible.
I know this is very frustrating for everyone and I share your frustration. We have had all the recent disruption with 5 classes having to self-isolate and it was my fervent hope and wish to have everyone back in school for the last week of term. I particularly feel for our Year 5s who were due to return yesterday. The classes who have returned in the last week settled straight back into routines and I am sure our Year 5s would have done so as well. I know we couldn’t do all the usual things this week to mark Advent and the end of term, but I had planned as nice a week as possible for all the pupils and again we have to change everything at the last minute. However I had to balance this with the need to keep everyone safe and if this “closure” means we have no further positive cases in school this term and we can all have as safe and enjoyable Christmas break as possible at this time, then it is probably worth the short interruption to our school life.
Just to clarify what I said in my letter on Monday. School is now closed except for key worker and vulnerable children who are attending today. For children who are attending this week, school will be from 9:00am to 3:00pm and we finish earlier on Friday at 1:45pm (St Joseph’s Infant School finishes at 1:25pm). Please remember it is important to reduce the numbers in school to help reduce the risk of spreading infection to both other children and staff. If you can keep your child at home this week you should. We have moved back to remote learning for all other pupils and this has been set up for the week. We are also going to use the last one and a half days of term for staff inset both in school and remotely for staff who are not able to be in school this week.
You may have heard and seen that the government is putting pressure on schools and local authorities to stay open this week. The updated advice from Waltham Forest yesterday was they still recommend that schools move to remote learning this week but it is up to individual schools to make their final decision. This morning I have had a conversation with Mrs D’Souza the head of the infant school and have contacted our respective chairs of governors and we feel the safest course of action is to remain closed except for the key worker and vulnerable pupils for the remainder of week. Both schools have staff off at the moment for a variety of Covid related issues including their own children being sent home from their schools in other boroughs or having to self-isolate. We also feel that many staff are worried about coming into school at this time with the high and growing infection rates currently being experienced in Waltham Forest. With the end of term and then Christmas so close, we feel this is an unnecessary risk for our school communities.
I will write to you all again at the end of the week before we formally finish the term on Friday.
Yours sincerely,
J Alexander (Head teacher)
