September Return to School

Dear Parents and Carers

I hope that you are all enjoying the summer break without the pressures of homeschooling. Thank you to all parents for the support you have shown regarding the plans for the staggered start and end of the school day. We understand that these are still very testing and challenging times and we hope that these temporary arrangements will be short lived. 

If you have missed the information regarding the staggered times please read the blog which can be found here. 

We are on the countdown to September and welcoming all pupils back to school. We thought you might appreciate us sharing some of our initial plans for the children’s return to school in September. Please be aware that our recovery plan is draft due to guidance from the government being updated regularly and could of course change in the next few weeks.  However, the following points are highly unlikely to change before September:

• ALL CHILDREN WILL BE ABLE TO RETURN TO SCHOOL IN SEPTEMBER! 
• BUBBLES: We will have year group ‘bubbles’ in school made up of pupils in each year group.
• SOCIAL DISTANCING: Children will not be expected to socially distance within their bubbles. This is in line with the guidance released from the government.
• SCHOOL UNIFORM: All children will be asked to return to school in uniform in line with our policy. Please see the school office for further information.
• PE DAYS: On the days that children have PE we will allow them to come to school wearing their school PE kit. This will be for the Autumn term and will be reviewed at Christmas. You will receive further information regarding PE days from class teachers during the first week of the term. 
• PERSONAL ITEMS: Children will be encouraged to bring minimal items into school. 
• WATER: Children must bring a clean named water bottle into school each day and take it home at the end of the school day. 
• LUNCHTIME ARRANGEMENTS: Lunchtimes will have to be staggered and will look a little different to the canteen system that we were using to serve meals before lockdown. We will be in a position to offer school meals from September but the choice will be greatly reduced temporarily and will be a cold service of sandwiches and fruit. We will send further details of the menu when this has been confirmed with Havering Catering Services. Pupils will eat in their classrooms and will then go outside but will stay within their bubbles. 
• ACCESS INTO SCHOOL: Sadly, we do not anticipate being in a position to be able to welcome parents into the school building in September. Please use the following communication methods:
• Leave a message with staff on the gate in the morning to pass onto the class teachers. 
• Telephone the school office on 01708 342880
• Email the school office - office@broadford.havering.sch.uk
• Use the Facebook messenger application
• Email class teachers via the year group mail boxes

eyfs@broadford.havering.sch.uk

year12@broadford.havering.sch.uk

year34@broadford.havering.sch.uk

year56@broadford.havering.sch.uk

• WHOLE SCHOOL EVENTS: There will be no whole school events for the first half of the Autumn term at least, this will then be reviewed for the second half of the term but may not change. This will mean there will be no whole school assemblies or stay and learn sessions. We are in the early stages of exploring ways we can celebrate these events AND include parents and carers by revisiting the virtual world that we have relied on so much over the past few months. Watch this space!
• AFTER SCHOOL CLUBS: Unfortunately there will be no after school clubs for at least the first half term. We will then review this and explore how we may be able to offer a smaller range of after school clubs to year group bubbles. 
• BREAKFAST CLUB: We are in a position to be able to offer a breakfast club however there will be some changes to how this runs. To ensure that pupils stay within their year group bubbles we are going to have to introduce a booking system and there will be limited places available. This information will be available on Monday 24th August and booking will begin on Tuesday 25th August. This information will be available via the school website, blog and Facebook page.

FINALLY…

We appreciate that some families may feel anxious about their children returning to school in September.  If you haven’t seen our transition blog which was posted in July you can find the information here. These pages were prepared by staff before the summer break with information about new year groups for September. Hopefully this information will alleviate any anxieties your children may have. 

I promise that we will continue to work very hard to ensure we support every individual family on your return to some sort of normality. As always we want our whole community to be safe AND we want our pupils to continue on their learning journey. We will try as much as we possibly can to make school 'normal' and ensure that these plans do not hinder the education of our children. We will continue to celebrate and reward the hard work of our pupils to ensure that they are successful.  

On behalf of school staff, I want to say one final, and quite emotional, ‘THANK YOU’ to you all. What a year it has been so far! I am determined that the Autumn term will be great for our pupils. 

Enjoy the rest of the break and we will look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 7th September.