School Update

Dear Parents and Carers,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for your continuing support, understanding and patience at this unusual and strange time.

I wanted to write to you about plans for opening of The Castle School in September. This may seem a way off, but as always, it will come around very quickly.

To date, we have been given no advice or guidance from the government on how we should prepare to ensure that we can keep your child safe in school whilst also ensuring that we meet their needs properly come the next academic year. 

This lack of information from government is unfair on you as parents as you have lives to plan for, jobs to go to and children you will want to ensure are safe and happy in school.

In light of the lack of information, we are being proactive. We are currently preparing models of how it might look at The Castle School in September. As I am sure you will understand, due to the lack of guidance available, this modelling work will take some time to work through. We will need to ensure we have plans for both partial and full opening as we await further guidance from government. It is clear that in order to fully open as we would like, there will have to be changes to the government’s current advice on how schools can operate with full regard to the scientific evidence.

The school leadership team are working hard to determine classes for next year and also to develop plans for opening. To this end, I am confident that we will have something more concrete to go send out to you by Monday 6th July at the latest. As I am sure you will appreciate, this is a rather tricky conundrum, especially with little advice on what we should do.

It is important to re-state that my first priority will always be the safety and wellbeing of your child and the school staff team. This belief will be at the centre of any decision I take.

Once again, I would like to thank you for your continuing support and understanding.

I wish you all well and hope that you and your family stay safe.

Take care,

Jon Hewitt

Headteacher