Upcoming events at Holy Cross Primary School
Reminder:
Parents/guardians, school will not be opened tomorrow, Monday 23rd March, due to the lack of clarity and detail surrounding the process of a school becoming a child care facility for children of KEY WORKERS. We are working on issues such as safety of your children, safety of staff, lack of provision of protective equipment, not to mention insufficient staff available.
We have major concerns with social distancing throughout the day as that is not possible with young children.
We will keep this matter under daily review and keep you informed.
Principals from Primary schools in Upper Mourne Parish.
Update re support for Key workers
Firstly, thank you to those parents who made contact today to enable an accurate gauge of the number of children for which we would be required to provide a ‘care hub’ over the coming weeks.
These numbers are crucial to enable careful consideration of how this hub will operate.
However, with a lack of clarity, or operational plan from DE outlining the protective measures that need to be in place, we feel we cannot safely provide childcare for children of key workers on Monday 23rd March.
We need adequate time to risk assess to ensure full compliance with PHA guidance related to personal protective equipment and social distancing.
At present medical professionals advise that the safest place for your children is at home.
We will endeavour to keep you fully informed of all developments. We fully recognise the importance of the key roles you provide and seek to support you fully during this challenging time.
Thank you
Parish of Upper Mourne Primary Schools
Dear Parents,
As per the statement by our Education Minister we are making arrangements to enable us to support key workers.
It is hoped we will do this via a hub. Please make contact with school via csloan154@c2kni.net or Facebook messenger by 4.30pm today if you are going to make use of this service.
It is vital to remind you that this provision will be operating with a significantly reduced number of staff and therefore must only be used where all other means of childcare have been exhausted.
Every child who can be safely cared for at home should be.
Only children with BOTH parents working as key workers and when both parents will be working at THE SAME TIME should attend the hub. In single parent families the main carer must be a key worker and must be required to work.
There will be limited availability and therefore the school will prioritise provision.
Thank you
As announced this evening, our school like all those across the country has now closed to all pupils. We have prepared resources for home learning in the form of 'Packs'
These packs will be distributed tomorrow, Thursday 19th March, between 11-1pm. Please adhere to the guidance in the letter with regards to the procedure for collecting the packs.
Letter is accessible on the following link:
https://www.holycrossps.com/letters-issued/
Thank you and stay safe.
Important information
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to our entire school community. This St. Patrick’s day is considerably different to any we have known before.
The government announcement yesterday was far from adequate, requesting we apply ‘social distancing’ for a host of reasons, but outlining that schools remain open.
While we remain hopeful of a cohesive approach by next week, we have to take some action to safeguard our staff and pupils. We are not immune and therefore need to follow the guidance too.
With that in mind, after much consultation, we are moving the remaining staff training day from May to tomorrow. This means it will be staff only in school to prepare for an inevitable closure. Additionally, we are moving our two remaining optional closures from May, to cover Thursday and Friday of this week. Updates will be made to the school calendar in due course.
As mentioned, we hope there will be an appropriate directive on closures by next Monday. Like many schools, after this week, we are out of options in terms of additional days.
These are worrying and incredibly uncertain times. Your support with these matters, as always, is greatly appreciated.
Update re Covid-19
We at Holy Cross have the health and well-being of our pupils and staff at the core of all we do. The current situation in relation to Covid-19 is worrying and uncertain.
We are not in a position to close our school until we have been advised to do so, however we do recognise that with the growing number of cases of the virus, parents are concerned about their children and the risk they pose to vulnerable family members, should they remain in school.
Please be reassured that we are putting measures in place within school to limit the spread of infection and are following the PHA guidance. Having said that, we fully understand that for some the risk is too great and that you may wish to keep your child off school.
We ask that parents follow the guidance- if your child is displaying any symptoms such as a dry cough or temperature they should remain at home.
As a staff we will be preparing for a closure, that will surely come, as we want to ensure that pupils will have access to resources to aid their learning from home.
As this is an incredibly fluid situation it is advised that you monitor the website/Fb page and messages.
Stay safe and follow the advice.