Thursday 19 March 2020
Dear Parents and Carers
School closure
Following the national announcement yesterday evening, I am writing to inform you that your child’s school will be closed from the end of the school day on Friday 20 March. The school closure will remain in place until we are told that it can reopen by the Department for Education. During this period, we will seek to provide as full an educational provision as we are able to. This will include both online and paper resources, the details of which your child’s school will inform you about separately to this letter.
I would like to respectfully state that whilst all of our school staff will be working as hard as they can to set work, check it through and provide meaningful feedback to pupils as appropriately and as regularly as they can, it is not a reasonable expectation in these circumstances that marking and feedback will be as regular as it normally is, nor that communication between staff and parents will be able to continue as normal for the time being. I can assure you that we will endeavour to communicate with you as regularly as we can, but please understand that this might be in the form of generic updates, at least in the short term.
We will share information with you regarding those pupils who receive free school meals and support for families within the community as soon as we can.
During this period of school closure, should you have any urgent worries regarding the safety of a child, please contact the police, and/or social services on 0116 454 1004 in the City and 0116 305 0005 in the County.
Our young people’s mental and spiritual health is of great importance along with their physical well-being. Please see the information below from the Diocesan youth Service regarding daily and weekly chaplaincy provision.
Whilst we will be unable to provide on-site education during this period, we will do everything we can to maintain supervision for the children of key workers. At the time of writing, we are awaiting the official list of key workers from the government but we are told that this will be out later today. I will write to you again tomorrow when we have this information with details of how to register online for your child’s place in school if you fall into one of these groups.
We are obviously in a completely unprecedented set of circumstances, and all of us, in every walk of life, are having to get used to doing things very differently. Again, I want to assure you that we will do everything we can to ensure that your child’s education is as full and effective as it possibly can be in the situation we are in.
Thank you for your understanding and support. Let us hope and pray that this situation is resolved as soon as possible.
Take care, and God bless you and your families.
Yours sincerely
Neil Lockyer
Chief Executive Officer, St Thomas Aquinas Catholic Multi-Academy Trust