GETTING READY FOR SEPTEMBER 2020

30^thJune 2020

Dear Parents

I would like to give you some indication of our provisional planning for the restart of the new school year, 2020/21.

Please be sure to note that our arrangements will be subject to change, given advice/regulations that may be in place. It is our hope that we can make our plans happen.

In all our planning our priorities are:

• doing all we can to ensure the safety of all

• bringing all our Year Groups into school as early as possible.

In respect of safety, we will adhere to all statutory safety guidance and advice that is issued.

We are fortunate in the excellent physical Primate Dixon campus that we have.

School Lane and the school front can be very busy on school mornings.

Even so, with patience, care and thought for others, safety at the front of school can be maximised.

NURSERY

We will have 27 children in each of our Nursery Classes.

At this time DE has indicated in its guidance on Re-School Education Restart that

‘Settings do not need to implement social distancing between the children within a group’.

Nursery children in Primate Dixon have been one group all day since our new Nursery opened – the only time they are apart is their dinner time. Primate Dixon Nursery is its own bubble in excellent facilities.

PRIMARY 1 – PRIMARY 7

Our classrooms through the rest of the school are a generous size.

Classes range from 8 children in our specialist learning centres and then from 19 to 25 in P1 to P7.

We are removing large items of furniture from classrooms to maximise the space for children.

Separating desks and placing chairs at least 1 metre apart, we see that we are able to seat 25 children.

Children’s chairs staying 1 metre apart through the day is another thing.

We are also able to create a 2 metre adult space in each classroom.

We will also be hoping that the 1 metre social distancing measure is gone by the time school restarts.

So, at this time, we are very hopeful that we can accommodate all our enrolled children.

Until restrictions are fully lifted, we will not accept new pupils other than P1 and those enrolled with us at this time. If accepting others meant that we would have to revert to half-classes and blended learning, we believe this would be really unfair on children and families already in Primate Dixon.

DE has issued a number of guidance documents on re-opening.

That these run to hundreds of pages causes us great concern.

Calling on schools to create the number and type of Risk Assessments around Covid-19 management is virtually impossible. If I was asked what made me think I was qualified to undertake such Risk Assessment, I would be answering that I don’t believe I am qualified to do so.

I am just not and no principal is.

What I and Primate Dixon will be doing is our collective best to keep everyone safe and to bring children in school.

One example of concern is a recommendation around children who seem to have Covid-19 symptoms while in school. Parents would be contacted and then this advice states that ‘A child awaiting collection should be moved, if possible, to a room where they can be isolated behind a closed door.’

(page 41 DE Re-Opening Schools Guidance – New School Day)

Imagine the reality of this for a child anything from 3 to 11-years old.

We will never, ever do such a thing.

ARRANGEMENTS AROUND COMING TO SCHOOL

School bus transport to Primate Dixon is a Translink paid-for service.

Hundreds of our children use this service, especially so at hometimes.

We have no control over how this service will operate.

In summary, as to how buses will operate in the new school year, we just do not know.

Any information we get about that, we will share with you.

We will also work with Translink and the EA in any way we can or are asked to.

SCHOOL STARTING TIME

Our normal practice is that children are able to come into school from 8.15am.

Children come into the supervised hall and we can have well over 200 children there by 8.30am.

This would be unsafe.

Until restrictions are fully lifted, we will not be able to accommodate ‘early-arrivers’ in school.

Children will be able to come into school from 8.45am and will come in using their ‘bubble-door’.

We apologise for this, but it is a precaution we must take.

PERSONAL HYGIENE

Coming into school and in class we will have routines and measures in place to promote ‘safe hands’ and other personal hygiene.

ARRANGEMENTS AROUND COMING INTO SCHOOL

The physical layout of Primate Dixon will support relatively comfortable entry and exit.

We will plan to use seven separate access doors.

Children will come into their group areas – classrooms resource areas.

These allow us to create ‘bubbles’ that will be maintained throughout the day.

MORNING BREAK & LUNCH PLAYTIME

Again our playground facilities will support our plans.

We will have a rota of morning break that gives each ’bubble’ group sole use of either our quad or back playgrounds.

A similar playground rota will operate at lunchtime.

MEALS ARRANGEMENTS

We are unsure of meals arrangements.

Dinners are managed and provided through the Education Authority School Meals Catering Service.

We have six dinner sittings – managing dinners in a socially-distanced way in our dinner halls will just not be possible.

This school’s suggestion has been made, for what it’s worth, that dinners be ‘parked’ for now.

Until it is safe to resume dinners, the current school meals payments to families should continue.

This would enable all children to bring their packed lunch to school.

Children would eat only their own food and drinks from home in class each day.

We shall see.

CLEANING ARRANGEMENTS

We are planning to have cleaning in place, with hygiene as its top priority, from 8.45am throughout the full school day.

The priorities will be all the key items, routines and procedures of the day.

USING TOILETS

All our classes on the left side of the school have their own toilet facilities, shared only with adjoining ‘bubble’ classes.

Key Stage 2 toilets on the right side of the school are shared by classes.

We will ensure no more than one child at a time leave classes to use toilets.

HOMETIMES

Nursery hometime is already staggered, with children being collected over around 30 minutes.

This is very likely to be much more difficult to manage for other classes.

145 children finish at Primary 1/Primary 2 hometime, 2.00pm.

357 finish at usual second hometime, 3.00pm.

For the first two weeks of class, P2 to P7 will finish at 2.00pm.

We will have a staggered exit from class to manage this.

We hope to resume P3 to P7 finishing at 3.00pm from Monday 7^th September.

Staggered exits over a short time span will let us see how this is able to be safely managed.

Making hometimes work will depend on parents ensuring slots are respected.

We cannot have groups of children from year groups accumulating when others are coming out.

We will make plans for this and let you know in plenty of time how this might work.

CRITICALLY IMPORTANT – CHILDREN WHO ARE UNWELL OR BECOME UNWELL IN SCHOOL

September heralds the beginning of infection time every year.

It will be extremely important that children who have been unwell the night before or that morning remain at home.

It will be extremely important that we do not think ‘let’s see how they get on at school’ and they can come home if not well.

It is a very rare day that we do not have to contact parents because a child is unwell in school.

It will be critical that we are able to contact parents and that arrangements can be made for children to go home.

DE guidance and advice mentioned around the isolation of children would go against everything that is the ethos of Primate Dixon – we will never isolate children behind closed doors – but we must be able to make contact with families to manage this.

That advice includes

‘A child awaiting collection should be moved, if possible, to a room where they can be isolated behind a closed door.’

We will not do this to any child – working well together with parents, we will manage this.

VERY IMPORTANT – WHAT HAPPENS IF TEACHERS ARE UNABLE TO BE IN SCHOOL?

This will happen.

We have two usual ways of managing this.

• If we are able to get a substitute teacher to cover the class, we do so.

• If not, then classes are divided over neighbouring classes.

We will not be doing either of these.

Firstly, dividing classes will push classes beyond managing social distancing.

Secondly, substitute teachers will be moving across a number of schools.

So our plan is to have additional teachers here in school through September and October.

This will enable us to provide additional catch-up programmes for children.

It will also give us a reasonable capacity for covering classes if teacher cannot be here.

It is not impossible that more teachers could be off than we can cover.

We cannot divide classes because of social distancing.

If this happens, and we sincerely hope it doesn’t, we will have to inform parents that children in a class cannot come to school on such days.

We regret this but it will be the only safe way we have of managing this and it will be a last resort.

We have our additional teaching contingency in place – parents will need their own contingency arrangements.

Our arrangements will mean very substantial costs to our school budget.

Cost considerations come far behind working to get school operating safely.

I do apologise for the level of detail in this letter but it is very important to give parents as much information as possible at this time so that you can make your family, work and other arrangements.

In brief, I would hope you know that we are working to have Primate Dixon open for all.

We want to get there as safely and as quickly as possible in August and very early September.

Arrangements may very well change as we react to any changes in the Covid-19 situation and any statutory advice.

We will have a very short staggered re-start opening- a very provisional re-start timetable is overleaf.

The only reason for this is to ensure we can safely manage.

If we cannot, the alternative is children being at school only two days each week combined with online learning – we want to try to avoid this.

We will be optimistic!

We say often that if you have any questions or would like any other information, please contact us.

We certainly have not thought of all the ‘what if’ situations that might arise.

Your questions and opinions are very welcome!

We will email you through July and August with any updates and changes to arrangements.

In the meantime, let’s all continue to watch out for each other and keep everyone safe.

GETTING READY FOR SEPTEMBER 2020

PROVISIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

PRIMARY 1 CHILDREN – OPEN MORNINGS (9.00 – 11.00)

TUESDAY 18^th, WEDNESDAY 19^th & THURSDAY 20^th AUGUST

CLASS BEGINS FOR PRIMARY 7 (9.00 – 2.00)

MONDAY 24^th – FRIDAY 28^th AUGUST

CLASS FOR PRIMARY 3 & MISS GERVIN’S CLASS (9.00 – 2.00)

WEDNESDAY 26^th – FRIDAY 28^th AUGUST

CLASS FOR NURSERY, PRIMARY 1 & PRIMARY 5

TUESDAY 1^st SEPTEMBER – HOMETIMES TO BE CONFIRMED

CLASS FOR PRIMARY 2, PRIMARY 4 & PRIMARY 6

THURSDAY 3^rd SEPTEMBER – HOMETIMES TO BE CONFIRMED