18 March 2020
Good afternoon,
As you will know, the situation regarding Coronavirus is fast moving however I thought it would be useful to send you an update regarding Galley Hill, particularly as it has been announced that schools in Scotland and Wales will be closing on Friday.
This morning I 'attended' a webinar presented by Hertfordshire's Director of Public Health and members of the County Council responsible for education. Their messages remain the same as government guidance in that we remain open for the time being and continue to observe regular hand washing and maintain the high level of cleaning that we have now had in place.
As I am sure you can appreciate, this is impacting on our levels of staffing however we have so far been able to maintain a satisfactory level of staffing across the school and children have so far had little interruption to their learning. We will maintain this for as long as possible.
We know that some children and families are self-isolating following medical advice due to underlying medical conditions. We have packs of work that can be requested from the school office or class teacher to complete if this is the case for you. Unfortunately, at this stage, we are unable to set further work as our class teachers are having to cover for absent colleagues and prepare and mark lessons for the children who are in school so we appreciate your patience at this time.
We do have plans in place for home learning if there is a full school closure and the class pages on the school website will be utilised to provide the daily tasks for the children to complete.
In line with social distancing recommendations, we have cancelled all events in school (open classrooms, open mornings, school trips and sporting events, sharing assemblies and the Year 3/4 Easter performance) and are no longer holding our daily whole school assemblies.
We are awaiting advice regarding the provision of free school meals in the event of school closures.
If you do have any questions relating to any of this, please do contact the school and we will try our very best to support you in finding an answer. In the meantime, I would like to thank our amazing staff for all they are doing in keeping a level of normality for the children and all parents for their patience and support during these uncertain times. I am very proud of our whole school community.
Many thanks,
Mrs Birch
Headteacher