Tuesday 16th June 2020

Dear Parents and Carers,

We hope that you and your families are staying safe and well during the current crisis. We are writing to you to share how the members of the Governing Board have been working closely with the Senior Leadership Team at school to ensure that pupils are offered the best support possible within the current restrictions. The governors meet regularly to agree and review the plans for wider opening, whilst making sure that the pupils and staff stay safe.

During the last 11 weeks, staff have worked hard to provide childcare for keyworkers’ children alongside preparing online lesson links for their pupils and working to put safety measures and controls in place to enable school to open again for some pupils.

As you are aware The Ridge is a very small school, which has limited our capacity to start year groups back and continue to provide the childcare for keyworkers children, whilst maintaining social distancing. Now that Year 6 have started back, the school is currently at full capacity when childcare requests are taken into account. We are currently reviewing our capacity, especially in relation to childcare, which has been requested but has not yet been taken up.

The staff and governors are continuing to monitor the provision in school in the light of the rapidly changing Government guidelines, and also in response to feedback from yourselves. Many of you have contacted school and the governors to offer support and suggestions which we thank you for. An important part of the school’s planning is to listen to feedback and acting on it where possible and appropriate. This is important to ensure that we are meeting the needs of as many pupils as possible during these difficult times. We are aware that some parents are keen for pupils to have live interaction with their teachers, and a group of staff and governors are currently exploring this. We have recently introduced a weekly video to accompany the home learning newsletter but will look at the use of other technology to see if this is feasible within the constraints we have.

Finally, we would like to thank Mrs Hudson and the staff for their hard work and commitment to providing the best support possible to the pupils and yourselves under the current restrictions. We would also like to thank you for your ongoing support, and reassure you that we will continue to work closely with the staff to plan future provision whilst doing our very best to keep staff and pupils safe.

With kind regards

Julia Simmonds

Chair of Governors, on behalf of the Members of the Board of Governors