Dear Parents and Carers,

I wanted to thank you for your support since our return from the half term break. Covid has not gone away and we are still seeing isolated cases, clusters and in one case, an outbreak in our classes. We are aware that there have been a number of cases where children have been asymptomatic: we really appreciate your ongoing commitment to lateral flow testing in your households. Thank you too, for your support in getting children tested if they are showing any of the diffuse symptoms. By all playing our part, hopefully, we can continue to keep case numbers relatively low.

Christmas Activities

This week we have received guidance from Public Health about Christmas arrangements.

With cases of Covid-19 continuing to rise locally, the situation in education and childcare settings remains unstable. Therefore, Dudley Council Public Health are asking settings to consider the following measures in the lead up to Christmas to help reduce transmission within settings and local communities. These measures will go towards enabling staff and children to have a healthy and well-deserved Christmas break.

Recommendations include...

· Keeping Christmas productions class, year group or phase based and ensuring mixing between classes is limited

· Live stream performances to parents and carers rather than inviting visitors in

· Keeping parties class or year group based

· Christmas gifts and cards can be given out, provided they are quarantined for at least 3 days before they are distributed

We recognise that every school is unique and risk assessments based on many factors will differ from setting to setting. What may be possible in one school might not be feasible in another.

Although again this year, things will be different to how we have traditionally done them, please be assured that we are working hard to make our Christmas celebrations as memorable and fun as we can for the children. We will be recording Christmas performances and nearer the time will send information about this and also our other Christmas activities.

Thank you for your ongoing support.

Kind regards,

Mrs D Hudson

Headteacher