Primary Emergency Childcare
The EdB requires schools to offer emergency childcare to those children who are unable to be safely supervised at home. With teachers and educational assistants teaching classes online, we will only be able to offer a small number of emergency childcare spaces to families who are in need. It is important to emphasise that we are limited in terms of space and adults to staff the emergency childcare; therefore, it is kindly asked that you only request emergency childcare if you have no alternative options for childcare.
When considering a request for emergency childcare, it is important that you consider the following:
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Emergency childcare will take place in the classrooms at the Early Years campus that are usually used as lunch eating rooms. This means the children will be sitting at a table, socially distanced from others and separated by screens throughout their time in childcare.
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The children will be in mixed bubbles and be in contact with children from a range of year groups and potentially with children from the Early Years phase of the school.
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Your child will be safely supervised by an education assistant throughout the childcare period. Whilst your child will be able to access their home learning programme by bringing their own device and headphones into school, the education assistants will not be responsible for ensuring your child completes their activities and will not be able to manage individual children’s class timetables. They will of course support wherever possible; however, their priority and purpose will be to ensure the children’s safety.
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Depending on the number of children accessing childcare, it is possible that this will impact their ability to participate in the live sessions due to background noise from other children. Your child’s teacher may ask them to mute their microphone so that all children can follow the lessons clearly. From past experience, teachers have found it challenging to engage with children in emergency childcare during the live sessions due to the amount of noise that is happening in the background. We do not have enough adults to supervise the children on a 1:1 basis when they are participating in their live sessions or completing their Seesaw activities.
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The children will not be able to access the playground or the usual classroom resources as we are not allowed to be offering a normal school programme during school closure. Teachers will also be using their classrooms to deliver online learning.
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The timings for childcare will be discussed with families on an individual basis and according to the number of adults we have available in school to supervise. Please note that class teachers and many of our class-based education assistants will not be supervising childcare as they will be delivering the home learning programme.
Our intention in outlining the above information is to ensure transparency and honesty regarding what we can offer for childcare. We want nothing more than to have our children in school but must comply with directives from the EdB regarding the childcare we can offer and ensure that as much of our staffing capacity as possible is dedicated to providing a high-quality home learning programme for our children. Please contact me directly at [email protected] should you wish to enquire about childcare, and please be reminded that this is for exceptional, emergency cases only.
Best wishes,
Susan Walter
Head of Primary