Norton Junior School

Year 6 Parental Intentions for 1st June

 

Only 50% of our Y6 parents have completed our online survey that we emailed, and texted out last week. Without knowing numbers, we can’t plan for and open the school to Y6 children on the 1st June. Please contact any Y6 parents you know and tell them to complete the survey by Tuesday 19th May, 12pm – there are only 4 questions! Click here to access the survey… 

If you don’t fill it in (only 4 questions that will take you about a minute to complete) we will have to call round 30 families on Monday. We have lots of preparations to make in school and could make better use of the time! Please help us to help you…

Furthermore, could parents only complete once per child please as a small number have put in 3 or 4 responses for the same child.

If any family fails to complete the survey, they will be denied access to the school on the 1st June until such time as we can we can alter any planned provision with safety in mind!

Remember, this is for parents of Year 6 children only!

Complications with School Gmail Accounts

Good morning, apologies but getting tech support during lockdown is not easy. We need to make some changes to our domain to enable staff to reply to children’s new email accounts. This is an unexpected complication and I’m working on a solution but its not been straight forward. Until this is rectified, staff are unable to respond to your emails sent from school Gmail accounts. They are however able to read and respond to email sent to the year group addresses eg: y4@njsch.uk as long as its from your independent emails accounts not your child’s school Gmail.

Again, sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused. Please don’t think we are ignoring all your lovely home learning emails, we just can’t access them yet.

Hello everyone,

As we enter the Easter Weekend, I thought rather than providing a monologue, I would simply wish you all Happy Easter on behalf of the whole school family. Perhaps the video below will provide you with a little light entertainment at our expense – I’m sure we could all do with a giggle right now. Look after each other and stay safe!

Mr Hayes

Just flagging up some essential advice and also some things that Doncaster can do to support you. Please follow the guidance below.

This first week of closure has been strange in different ways for everyone and it is difficult for us all to adapt let alone for our children. Like yourselves, we have muddled through it all and made it to Friday last week running a skeleton staff and accepting the children of essential key workers. I thank those of you who managed to make alternate arrangements for your children and likewise applaud all of you attempting to support your children with home learning. The internet is full of very amusing videos of parents having fun trying to keep their little ones entertained while everyone goes stir crazy and also those less pleased at having such expansive amounts of work available to them.

I remind you that our home learning is there to support you, not to be a burden and I have deliberately not set timetables for you to follow at home as I’m sure you can organise your own lives well enough on your own, after all, you do it every weekend and holiday. You should by now be aware of our methods of home school communication as outlined on our Home Learning Website.

You will also be aware from reading the content on the site that we will be trying to contact you once a week just to check in and see if there is anything we can do to support you as parents. In addition to this, we want to touch base with the children and help give them just a little normality in these difficult times. This is intended to be supportive and positive and is not questioning your parenting skills or checking up on you. You might well see a “caller ID withheld” appear on your screen and while I understand you might well be ignoring calls like this, it might be a call from school. Many of us are having to work remotely and making these calls from private lines hence why the ID needs to be hidden for obvious reasons. Please pick up if you can as  one teacher made their way through the entire class list and only had a couple of people answer last Friday.

I hope that by the end of the Easter holiday we will be in a better position to predict when more normal service might resume but of course there are no guarantees. During the holiday period we will be staffing school as we have this last week to allow those essential workers to keep doing their amazing work to keep us all safe. This will be again on a rota basis and will be for the same children we are currently providing for.

Schools stocks of food are depleting as we move forward and we might not be in a position to offer a school meal for much longer but we will continue until supplies are exhausted. For the small minority that have been collecting a free school meal from the office last week, our provision in future is moving over to a voucher system. Contact school if you require a voucher and we will get this out to you.

Finally, I’d just like to take a moment to reflect on last week… It was amazing to hear so many people out clapping for the NHS on Thursday night and I’m sure you will all join me in giving out heartfelt thanks not only to those NHS workers but also to everyone who is putting themselves at risk to keep our society functioning in these difficult times. It has also been lovely to hear stories of kindness and compassion within communities where the Elderly and most vulnerable are being cared for by those around them.

Wishing you all the very best of health and happiness this week,

Kind regards

Good Evening and many thanks for bearing with us at this difficult time. I just wanted to take a moment to share some information with you and also ask for you to give careful consideration to what I am going to tell you tonight.

As you know, we do not have any confirmed cases of COVID19 within our school community although advice is just to self isolate. In the significant majority of these cases, testing has not been carried out. We know that not everyone who carries the virus will display all or sometimes any symptoms, so we can’t be clear how widespread within our community things are.

While many are attacking for the government for a lack of clarity, and indeed not providing full guidance is frustrating, it is important to remember we are in an unprecedented situation and this is an international crisis. It’s not just the virus itself that is causing issues and I would ask for everyone to do their bit so we return to some level normality with our shops and supermarkets.

Tonight I saw a family on the news talking about how hard it’s going to be for them keeping the children at home, how cross they were with the government and schools and how bored they will be… I’m sure many of you will fear this too but I plead with you to consider the big picture here and why we are being asked to take such measures. This is about sustaining life, protecting the most vulnerable and if we can’t look beyond ourselves, it’s a sad reflection of what society has become.

I am now faced with an issue that I would welcome your support on. The government advice is to keep the school population to and absolute maximum of 20% or the measures we take won’t be effective. Based on our initial data collection today, we will exceed this number and I suspect we will have more returns tomorrow. This will mean I have to make some very difficult decisions and I would ask you to be understanding as it will be impossible to please everyone. I would ask you to consider if there are other options in terms of childcare for you to explore even though this could lead to some non-essential working parents being forced to take time off work while their partners attended essential roles.

To get through this crisis we will all need to do our bit and for obvious reasons, I will try to prioritise NHS staff first. Please bear with us here as none of us wanted this, nor could we have foreseen it this time last year… We will attempt to make all arrangements tomorrow so that by the end of the day, everybody is clear if the school is open to them on Monday. If you hear nothing, then assume that for you, the school is closed.

We will be as flexible and supportive as we can during the coming weeks but I ask you to remember that there is no statutory obligation for the school to open at all. We are being asked to support our community by enabling key workers to get into work and we are very happy to provide this service for as long as we are able.

Once again, if you believe you are an essential service worker, please fill in this form – click here.

The School will close at 3:15pm on Friday 20th March 2020 until further notice.

Dear All,

We are currently in a period of information overload so I will keep things to a minimum and attempt to present the key facts below. If you wish to read a more detailed account, this is the most current one I can find – click here.

On Friday, for the significant majority of pupils, the School will close. From 23rd March 2020, we will be:

• Keeping our schools open for the children / students whose parents work as ‘key workers’, defined by the government as NHS staff, Police and Delivery Drivers, more details to follow on this.
• Opening the schools for children / students who have a Social Worker and/or Education, Health and Care Plans.

For children / students who have been asked to stay at home by the UK government, we can confirm that:

• Work is available online for all children / students to access at home.
• Details of how to access this work will be clearly available on the school website by the end of the week.
• Through the website and other appropriate communication methods, we will touch base with our children throughout the closure period.

For those parents whose children will continue to come to school on Monday 23rd March, please could you support the schools by ensuring:

• Your children wash their hands before they come to school and when then get home.
• You keep the communication between home and schools open via email and/or phone.
• Follow the government guidance on household self isolation without exception.

Schools will continue to send out updates where the situation changes and for your reassurance and information.

As always the usual lines of communication to schools will be open if you have any specific concerns related to your child or circumstances.

Thank you for your support at this time,

A Hayes

Headteacher

COVID19 Essential Information from parents

Do you consider yourself a key worker?

If so, please click here!

From 3pm on Friday 20 March 2020, there will be an enforced closure of all schools. Norton Junior School will be closed to all students with the exception of the children of key workers and those most vulnerable with Active Social Care Involvement or an EHCP. We are currently trying to assess our capacity to safely support these children.

This survey is designed to gather the information we need to support the families who need it. We are trying to determine which parents/carers consider themselves key workers. The Government have not yet published a definitive list of key workers, or what the safe operating capacity is for a school under these circumstances, but if you consider yourself a key worker then please complete the survey.

Without this key information, it is impossible to know if we can operate safely!!! If you have already telephoned the office and spoken about this matter, you do not need to complete this survey.

If you are the primary carer for your child, consider yourself a key worker such as The Police, Teachers, Social Care or Delivery Drivers and would be required to miss work if your child could not come to school please let us know by completing this survey.

If you are not the primary carer or do not consider yourself a key worker, you do not need to complete the survey.

Please complete the survey by 9am Friday 20 March.

As many of you will be aware from last nights news and social media, the Government have now stepped up the response to dealing with the Corona Virus. The information given seems to contradict itself by banning public gatherings and self isolating apart from essential services however, we have to remember that a school is an essential service.

Without a school operating safely, a significant portion of the workforce would be incapacitated to care for their children and this, combined with the inevitability of the circumstances now form part of the reason why schools at this time are being directed to remain open. We have to assume that the large team of experts and scientists understand the circumstances and the best course of action far better than any of us so all we can do is follow the advice given and keep ourselves updated.

Rest assured, Schools receive daily updates from the DfE although with things moving so quickly, as with last night, guidance can change very suddenly. The current advice to you as parents relating to school attendance is as follows:

• if you live with others and you or one of them have symptoms of coronavirus, then all household members must stay at home and not leave the house for 14 days. The 14-day period starts from the day when the first person in the house became ill

For me this translates into simple terms, if the above applies, you should not come to school, nor should any of your family members!!! We would appreciate you informing school at your earliest convenience as we have meals to prepare and wish to minimise waste etc.

We already have plans for the various scenarios the school might face and we will act in the best interests of our community whatever that may be.

The rest of the guidance follows below:

• it is likely that people living within a household will infect each other or be infected already. Staying at home for 14 days will greatly reduce the overall amount of infection the household could pass on to others in the community
• for anyone in the household who starts displaying symptoms, they need to stay at home for 7 days from when the symptoms appeared, regardless of what day they are on in the original 14-day isolation period. (See ending isolation section for more information
• if you can, move any vulnerable individuals (such as the elderly and those with underlying health conditions) out of your home, to stay with friends or family for the duration of the home isolation period
• if you cannot move vulnerable people out of your home, stay away from them as much as possible
• if you have coronavirus symptoms:
  • do not go to a GP surgery, pharmacy or hospital
  • you do not need to contact 111 to tell them you’re staying at home
  • testing for coronavirus is not needed if you’re staying at home
• plan ahead and ask others for help to ensure that you can successfully stay at home and consider what can be done for vulnerable people in the household
• ask your employer, friends and family to help you to get the things you need to stay at home
• wash your hands regularly for 20 seconds, each time using soap and water, or use hand sanitiser
• if you feel you cannot cope with your symptoms at home, or your condition gets worse, or your symptoms do not get better after 7 days, then use the NHS 111 online coronavirus service. If you do not have internet access, call NHS 111. For a medical emergency dial 999

Remember, Keep Calm and Carry On!!!!

Hello and Welcome to our new school website. It’s going to take a while to populate it fully so please be patient if some pages are not yet complete or updated.

In light of the Corona Virus, in order to effectively communicate with our community, I am launching the site ahead of schedule so you can find official communication about the current status of school closures and other urgent information here…

Currently, there is no directive to close schools and as such Norton Junior School remains open as normal. If you have questions, you can read the latest update by following the link below:

Latest update from the Government about the Corona Virus

Government coronavirus action plan

The government coronavirus action plan sets out what the UK has done to tackle coronavirus (COVID-19), and what we plan to do next.

The situation is constantly reviewed and action informed by expert science and advice, guided by the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Adviser.

The action plan can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-action-plan

Action plan recap

The action plan sets out a four-phased approach in response to coronavirus – Contain, Delay, Mitigate, and Research, based on the latest scientific evidence.

The current emphasis is on the Contain and Research phases, however planning for Delay and Mitigation is already in train.

As part of the Contain phase, we have been providing advice to educational settings in England. We also launched a DfE helpline to manage the flow of increasing queries, from providers parents and young people.

How to wash your hands properly

Wash your hands more often for 20 seconds with soap and hot water.
Watch this short NHS film for guidance:

https://youtu.be/bQCP7waTRWU

Teach young children how to wash their hands with the NHS handwashing song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9VjeIWLnEg

Public Health England recommends that in addition to handwashing before eating, and after coughing and sneezing, everyone should also wash hands after using toilets and travelling on public transport.

Department for Education coronavirus helpline

The Department for Education coronavirus helpline is available to answer questions about COVID-19 relating to education and children’s social care. Staff, parents and young people can contact this helpline as follows:

Phone: 0800 046 8687
Opening hours: 8am to 6pm (Monday to Friday)

Please note, we are currently experiencing high volumes of calls and apologise for any wait that you may experience. Your call will join a queue and we will answer as soon as possible.

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