Please find attached some advice we’ve put together about student home-working, including a possible Daily Schedule. These are just suggestions but may be useful in helping your young person structure their day.

Included is information about how to contact staff, and who to contact if students need pastoral support. We are very mindful that we are shut to most students for an indeterminable period of time, and we would like to remind all students that we are here to help. Every week on Friday we will continue to email out the ‘Pulse’ with helpful information and reminders.

As per the government announcement yesterday, whilst the school is shut to most students, we do remain open to the following:

• Those students with an Education, Health Care Plan (EHCP)
• Those students who have a Social Worker
• Those students who are children of ‘Key Workers’

Whilst we will be contacting families who are included in the first two categories, we are not very certain about which of our parents/carer are key workers. If you are employed in the following professions, and there is nobody else at home to look after your child(ren) then you can continue to send them to school. At the time of writing we are still waiting for a definitive list of jobs considered by the Government to be key workers, but broadly speaking they are people who work within the public sector in roles that are vital to the infrastructure of the community. They are likely to include some or all of the following:

• National Health Service, including doctors, nurses, midwives and paramedics
• Armed forces
• Teachers and childcare staff
• Care home workers
• Social workers
• Police officers, community support, civilian staff
• Prison officer or other probation staff
• Firefighters
• Local authority planners
• Environmental health officers
• Highway Agency traffic officers
• Supermarket workers
• Delivery drivers
• Infrastructure workers, such as gas and electricity

Please keep an eye out for the definitive list which should be published later today – we will confirm this tomorrow. Can I ask, in the first instance, that if you are in a job that is included in the list, you let us know emailing us at the following email address: keyworkers@meole.co.uk

In your communication, please let us know the following information:

• Your name
• The name(s) of your child(ren).
• Your occupation
• The occupation of your partner or other adults in the household
• Whether or not you wish to send your child into school
• Whether this would be full-time Monday-Friday, or whether you want us to consider a part-time arrangement (and if so, what that would look like).

As we are a secondary school, even if you are a key worker you may feel that your son/daughter is old enough to be at home. This would be consistent with the Government’s stated aim of trying to limit the spread of coronavirus. However, if you are a key worker and wish to have your child(ren) in school during the closure, we will be happy to have them.

At the moment we do not yet know whether we will need to continue to stay open for children of key workers during the Easter Holiday, but we are drawing up plans to do so if needed.

For those families in receipt of Free School Meals, we will be posting out Sainsbury’s vouchers tomorrow, which will cover the next two weeks.

Please remember that should any member of your family display the coronavirus symptoms during the school closure, the 14-day isolation period will still apply to the whole household and your child must not come to school. As a reminder these symptoms are described as:

• A new persistent cough and/or
• A temperature above 37.8°C

Thank you for your support and understanding at this difficult time.

Yours sincerely

Alan Doust

Headteacher