Our school will remain open from Tuesday 24th March 2020 for key workers and children who are confirmed as being eligible, this will include children with Education, Health and Care Plans, or in receipt of an Exceptional Needs Grant (ENG).
Liz has called everyone identified with an EHCP, those who have social care involvement or are looked after.
Robin has had email contact from 8 parent and carers who are ‘key workers’.
The Government definitive list now published is as follows:
Health and social care
This includes but is not limited to doctors, nurses, midwives, paramedics, social workers, care workers, and other frontline health and social care staff including volunteers; the support and specialist staff required to maintain the UK’s health and social care sector; those working as part of the health and social care supply chain, including producers and distributers of medicines and medical and personal protective equipment.
Education and childcare
This includes nursery and teaching staff, social workers and those specialist education professionals who must remain active during the COVID-19 response to deliver this approach.
Key public services
This includes those essential to the running of the justice system, religious staff, charities and workers delivering key frontline services, those responsible for the management of the deceased, and journalists and broadcasters who are providing public service broadcasting.
Local and national government
This only includes those administrative occupations essential to the effective delivery of the COVID-19 response or delivering essential public services such as the payment of benefits, including in government agencies and arms length bodies.
Food and other necessary goods
This includes those involved in food production, processing, distribution, sale and delivery as well as those essential to the provision of other key goods (for example hygienic and veterinary medicines).
Public safety and national security
This includes police and support staff, Ministry of Defence civilians, contractor and armed forces personnel (those critical to the delivery of key defence and national security outputs and essential to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic), fire and rescue service employees (including support staff), National Crime Agency staff, those maintaining border security, prison and probation staff and other national security roles, including those overseas.
Transport
This includes those who will keep the air, water, road and rail passenger and freight transport modes operating during the COVID-19 response, including those working on transport systems through which supply chains pass.
Utilities, communication and financial services
This includes staff needed for essential financial services provision (including but not limited to workers in banks, building societies and financial market infrastructure), the oil, gas, electricity and water sectors (including sewerage), information technology and data infrastructure sector and primary industry supplies to continue during the COVID-19 response, as well as key staff working in the civil nuclear, chemicals, telecommunications (including but not limited to network operations, field engineering, call centre staff, IT and data infrastructure, 999 and 111 critical services), postal services and delivery, payments providers and waste disposal sectors.
The Government have now said, children with at least one parent or carer identified as critical workers by the government could send their children to school if required.
Any in school service is optional for eligible parents and carers. Many parents working in these critical sectors may be able to ensure their child is kept at home. Every child who can be safely cared for at home should be. This is an offer to parents and carers and there is no requirement for parents and carers to send their children to school if they do not need or wish to do so.
Useful reading:
The government has put in place emergency legislation here:
This provides powers that relax some requirements around education legislation including that for children with special educational needs.
We hope the information below is helpful to explain the nature of the provision we will be providing and the flexibility we are allowed under the emergency legislation needed to ensure we can provide a service for our eligible children and keyworkers.
This means we may need to alter our opening hours and change staff for example. Please be reassured that all staff are DBS checked, but children will not necessarily be with staff who usually work with them. It is likely that there will be daily changes to staffing.
The school may need to close due to reduced staffing and it may be necessary to offer you a place at another site if this is possible.
If there are any changes to opening hours or the site where you child can attend we will give you 24 hours’ notice wherever this is possible.
Although your child will be at school they will not have their normal curriculum. This will be in mostly normal school hours 9:00 – 3:00
Pupils will follow broadly the same model as those at home and provision will otherwise be based on a childcare model.
During this time, it may not be possible to provide the special educational provision as specified in your child’s EHC Plan – for example, many health workers will be required to provide frontline support in our hospitals and will not be available to provide non-urgent services.
We are working closely with our colleagues in both social care and heath to ensure we are identifying those children who will require additional support. The Council and Camden Learning will be in touch with you if your child falls into that category.
We will continue to ensure that our safeguarding procedures are in place, and although there may not be a Designated Safeguarding Lead on site, we will ensure that a member of staff will be the safeguarding contact.
Due to staff shortages, we may not always have a first aider on site, although we will do our best to facilitate this.
If your child requires medication, please provide this at home where at all possible. Children who already attend our school will have a plan in place regarding their medication. Please remember to alert us to any changes. There may be times when we cannot provide the staffing to deliver your child’s medication and the school will need to make a decision whether you child is able to attend if there are concerns about their safety.
Please make sure we have your contact details and an emergency contact so we can get in touch if you child is ill or has an accident. If your child does become ill, you, or your emergency contact, must collect your child immediately.
Please remember that emergency services may not be available immediately so having up to date contacts and being able to contact you in an emergency is really important.
If you haven’t already done so, please email Robin at head@primrosehill.camden.sch.uk and let him know by 10am THIS MORNING – FRIDAY 20th MARCH 2020.