Meldreth Matters, July 2020

Meldreth Primary School www.meldreth.cambs.sch.uk Since the school closed on 20th March, we have continued to open our doors every day throughout lockdown for a very small number of children, predominantly those with parents who are emergency workers. We have staffed this on rotation, with all those available pitching in to help. However, the numbers have sometimes been so small that there have been occasions when the staff have outnumbered the children!

In May, the government announced that schools in England would reopen to three (out of seven) age groups in primary schools on 1st June. So began a fairly intense period of preparation for the day when we could welcome back a significant proportion of our children.

Extensive risk assessments were drafted and redrafted, amended and circulated, reviewed and rewritten as government policy and advice gradually unfurled.

We had to survey our parents to discover firstly how parents felt about their children returning to school and secondly, whether or not they were committing to the plan so we could prepare numbers.

Regular online Zoom meetings with staff enabled us to form a plan for reopening our doors. To ensure that social distancing could be maintained, numbers were limited to twelve per classroom, so all our classrooms were quickly designated for use. Tables were spaced at approved distances from one another and all unused furniture stacked up and removed to storage until whatever date in the future we ‘get back to normal’! Ha!!

In the meantime, to bolster ‘locked down’ spirits, I wrote a lockdown rap: the staff submitted videos of themselves performing sections of it and Miss McGinty deftly stitched it together into a whole and posted it 22