Ribbleton Avenue Methodist Junior School

Dear Parents and Carers,

Thank you for your patience and  continued support.  I am sure that this will not come as a suprise and as many of you will be aware, there has been increasing concerns regarding the safety and well being of pupils and staff in schools across the country from various professional bodies.

It has been reported that the new variant of the Covid-19 virus is spreading much more rapidly and is causing significant problems across the country.  You may also be aware from the news that there are calls to keep schools closed for a period of two weeks so that the spread can be reduced.   

The main teaching and school leader unions are giving advice to move to remote learning and I want to clarify for you the reasons why. 

Whilst we know that children, thankfully, rarely become ill with the virus there is still a lot of uncertainty about the role they play in spreading the virus and the impact this has on the spread in the community.   Until there is further clarity around this, the main teaching unions have advised that schools remain shut.  Keeping everyone in our school family safe is our number one priority, this includes all of our pupils, their families and our staff team.

Unfortunately, school is unable to open to the wider community from January 4th 2021 due to limited staffing.  As you can imagine, this has been an incredibly stressful time for our whole school community and the decision to limit face to face teaching has not been taken lightly; however, school will continue to provide:

• Remote Learning via Seesaw
• Learning packs for those with no internet access
• Meal packs for families in receipt of Free School Meals (please order with school office)

At present, we anticipate that school will be closed this week and we will continually review the situation and reopen our doors as soon as we feel it is safe to do so.

As was the case in March, school will continue to operate Key Worker and Vulnerable children provision.  I have included a link to complete should you be a Key Worker and wish for your child to access this provision.

https://forms.gle/yTVbEpcfp4rYYQpU6

We will notify parents of Vulnerable children via text message.

We will continue to provide Breakfast club for Key worker/Vulnerable children from 8am and if you are not accessing this provision the start and finish times will remain the same:

Year 6

8:50 am-2:50 pm

Year 5

9:00 am-3:00 pm

Year 4

9:10 am-3:10 pm

Year 3

9:20 am-3:20 pm

Thank you for your ongoing support-we hope to see everyone safely reunited as soon as possible