Patcham Infant School & Nursery Class

To Our Wonderful Community

I hope you have all managed some successes this week in whatever form they come. Once again, our family have found it a challenge picking ourselves up again after the respite of the half term ‘break.’ We have all felt fatigue from the situation we are in.

The easing of lockdown restrictions must have brought mixed feelings to you all as people make their own decisions about what that means for them. I know many of you will have been alarmed by the rapid change in some people’s mindsets and may be anxious about the impact the loosening of rules could have on our communities.

I hope you have found recent correspondence useful and apologies for the change in plans; I am very grateful to be working with you all in a flexible manner to ensure we get it right for everyone. We have had to respond to so much change in such a short space of time and whilst I hope we can move towards a wider opening I think it is important we maintain a safety-first approach.

This week we have opened another Key Worker group for children where both parent/carers are essential to the COVID-19 response. Our Year One teaching team have spent time in their classrooms in preparation for the wider opening. Parents of children joining us for their time back in Year One will be informed of their week and further information about routines early next week. We will inform Reception parents the following week about their start date and Year Two families after that.

Yesterday the local authority announced that they still do not feel confident about opening schools more widely from 8th June and I am hopeful that we can stick with the plans we have put in place to open more widely for Year One children on 15th June. We will keep you informed if we must make any necessary changes. Please find attached the letter from the council explaining their rationale.

We have now commenced the final half term of the academic year and we are giving thought to the transition for all children into their new year groups and classes. Mrs Sadler will be returning only for a brief period in the Autumn Term before leaving the school to look after her daughter and we have recruited a new class teacher for September 2020, Miss Caitlin Blythe, to replace her. Caitlin is extremely excited to be joining our fabulous school and I am confident she will be a wonderful addition to the team. We will endeavour to make as little change as possible for September in order to keep a constant for your children on return after the summer holidays.

Whilst the immediate future is still uncertain, we may be feeling a loss of sense of purpose, we may be feeling tired, irritable, withdrawn and less productive. I am hopeful that at some point soon we will start to recover from this, reorient ourselves and begin to focus on moving beyond this situation as opposed to just getting by. All of this is a normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Again, I am reminded of ultra-marathon runners and running the mile we are in.

The end will be in sight!

I hope you all have a good weekend.

Chris