You can view our COVID information below:
This is a live and active document which must be shared with all staff and reviewed on a regular basis to ensure it meets the changing environment to control the spread of the COVID-19 virus. The government has made it clear that they require all school aged children to return to school in September. I sent letters via email to parents about this during the summer holidays. A copy of these letters can be found below. If you have any worries or concerns about sending your child back to school, even after reading all of the information we have sent out to you and information we have included on this website, please talk to us. We will do everything in our power to ensure that we can address any concerns you have so that your child will attend school. We all know how important education is for children’s future life chances, as well as their emotional well-being, mental health and social life. Thank you for your support in this and I look forward to hearing from you if you have any worries or concerns. Mrs J Sones Attendance Letter (August 2020) We are absolutely determined that no child’s education will suffer as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. This situation was not the fault of the children (or anyone else!) and it is not fair that their future could be jeopardised as a result of it. When children return to school, we will first carry out transition activities. This is something we normally do in the summer term but, of course, we were not able to do this year. We want to give children the chance to say goodbye to their old teacher if they are moving classes. After our transition activities, we will be teaching children about our new ‘Golden Rules to Keep us Safe’ (see below) and doing activities to allow them to reflect on their time since we last met. We understand that children may need some time to settle down and become used to school routines as some of them have not been in school since March. Our next job will be to assess children’s learning. What do they know and remember? What do they need to work on in order to progress their learning? Careful plans will then be made by teachers on what children need and then we’ll get cracking! The government have pledged extra money to support us in plugging any Coronavirus related gaps. We will keep you informed about how we intend to use this money to support our children. We understand that this is a very worrying time for everyone, but here at Ferryhill Station Primary we fully support the government's pledge to ensure that all children return to school this September. Our country's medical professionals know far more about Coronavirus now than they did in March when schools closed to most children. They are now confident that the risk to children is very low. They also believe that children are not 'super spreaders' of Coronavirus the way that they are with a common cold, flu or sickness bug. This is not only good news for children, it is good news for the wider community because it means that the medical professionals believe children attending school will not be the cause of a local outbreak. Having said this, we have taken stringent measures in school to ensure that there is a very low risk of the virus spreading. These measures include social distancing, increased personal hygiene and increased premises hygiene. All families have received information on what this looks like in school and copies of this can be found below. I have also included the risk assessment which was developed in line with government guidance and was used to plan for the return of our children. Thank you to all parents who supported home learning during lockdown. We had some lovely feedback about what children had been up to at home. As part of the preparations we are continuing to make in the event of future local lockdown, we are looking at how remote learning can be more effective. Our plans include purchasing a bank of equipment to loan to families who do not have internet or appropriate devices to support remote learning. Our intention is that, should there be any further lockdown, children will access daily, live lessons online led by their usual class teacher. They will then be given some activities to do and they will be able to contact their teacher for help at any time. Following this, there will be more live sessions to discuss how well children tackled their work. Attendance at these online sessions will be mandatory. The government published guidance on how future Coronavirus outbreaks could affect schools. Primary school education will not be affected except in the most sever of local outbreaks. Please see this website for more information about this COVID-19 contain framework . The guidance outlines a phased response in the event of a local outbreak. The response is in 4 tiers and primary education is only affected in Tier 4. Thank you for your ongoing support. Please browse the documents below and the rest of this COVID section of our website. If there are any questions about anything we have written here, please do not hesitate to contact me in school. Take care, Mrs J Sones Outbreak Management Plan - Autumn Term 2021 If your child or someone in your household displays these symptoms, DO NOT send your child to school. The person who has the symptoms should isolate for 10 days. Children and other members of the household must isolate for 14 days. If your child is not ill but has been asked to isolate, education will continue. School will advise. Isolation means that you must stay at home or in your garden. You must not: In this way you will do your part in breaking the chain of infection. In school we will comply fully with NHS Test and Trace. If your child develops symptoms, we will contact the Local Authority, NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England. These official bodies will advise our next steps. We will hold a small amount of home testing kits in school, however, these kits are only for people who are not able to take their child to get tested. If your child has symptoms and we send them home from school, we ask that you take your child for a COVID test as soon as possible so that we can take action to minimise the spread of the disease. Thank you for your co-operation in this. You can book a test online: book coronavirus test, or by telephoning 119. Here at Ferryhill Station Primary we are very proud of our remote learning offer for the duration of the national lockdown. We have worked hard with parents to evaluate the online capacity of each child. Every child has a Microsoft 365 account set up by our Local Authority and all staff have been trained on using Microsoft TEAMs to support remote learning, including hosting live teaching sessions, uploading learning resources and providing feedback to children. During the Autumn term class teachers trialled these systems in classes to show children how to log on and access their assignments and files. Class 4 even practised a TEAMs call and set weekly homework using this system. School converted a number of laptops so that they could be used at home and bought 4G wireless hubs to support families to get online. These were supplemented by a number of laptops from the Department for Education. We now know that all of our families are able to access our online remote learning offer. During partial closure, teachers provided three hours work for children who are in KS1 and four hours for those who are in KS2. Teachers uploaded the work to synchronise with their live teaching sessions. If individual children are at home isolating, teachers upload work, including lessons from the Oak Academy, onto Teams and ensure children have devices and can be connected to the internet. Teachers will then do short, live calls every morning and every afternoon to ensure children are able to access learning tasks for the day and provide feedback on work completed. Our remote learning curriculum is closely aligned to what children would have been doing in school if they were in attendance (please see the curriculum section of our website). Teachers stripped back learning into objectives that would support progression on children's return to school. During partial school closure, children in our Key Worker and Vulnerable children provision also took part in the live online teaching sessions and completed the same work as children at home. This means that all children were having the same learning experiences at the same time, which made planning learning more fluid and appropriate when everyone returned to school. Teachers kept records of attendance at live teaching sessions as well as records of work completed online. Parents were contacted if children missed sessions so that teachers could identify barriers to engagement and offer necessary support. Teachers of younger children and those who needed more support, were also provided with weekly paper copies of any learning scaffold documents so that their learning was not obstructed by having to type into resources online. Please see guidance document below that was sent to all parents. It outlines expectations of school and home, as well as advice around safeguarding including online safety and safety during live teaching sessions. Our staff constantly reviewed the effectiveness of our online sessions during weekly staff meetings on Teams so that we could be sure we were providing the best learning support we could. We were happy with the general structure of our remote learning offer during partial school closure and so would use this again in the event of future closures. Mrs J Sones Remote Learning Agreement Below are the messages we are constantly giving children in school to help to keep themselves and everyone safe. Children are not required to wear masks, however, we have included this guidance here to help anyone who reads this page. Good regular hand washing is one of the most important prevention and protective measures anyone can take. The more you do it and the better you do it, the more protected you are. The coronavirus is covered in fatty particles and these are attracted to soap particles and will attach themselves to the soap particles any chance they get. In turn, soap particles are more attracted to water molecules and attach to them. This means that as the soap and water are washed away down the sink, they take the virus with it. Remember to wash your hands after you blow your nose, sneeze or cough, before you eat or handle food and after using the toilet. Often used on the go, hand sanitizers containing alcohol can kill bacteria, viruses and germs by breaking down and dissolving their membrane and proteins. Hand sanitiser must have an alcohol content of 61% or more to be useful and is not a replacement for good handwashing. We would always recommend washing hands with soap and water whenever possible because handwashing reduces the amounts of all types of dirt, germs and chemicals on hands. Hands can pick up lots of dirt, bacteria and a whole host of other things in a short space of time. If your hands come into contact with a coronavirus infected surface, the virus will be transferred onto your hands. This will not infect you; the virus still needs to make its way into your body. The easiest way in is through your eyes, nose, and mouth. Keeping your hands off your eyes, nose, and mouth is another simple way to protect yourself. If you need to touch your face, wash your hands first. If someone is infected with Coronavirus, then the moisture in their breath and saliva will contain the virus. These droplets don’t travel very far which is why two metres social distancing rules are in place. However, when you cough or sneeze droplets from your mouth and nose can travel much further. To stop this from happening use a tissue to catch the droplets. The tissue will now be covered in germs so throw the tissue in a bin. If you don’t have a tissue use the crook of your arm. Remember to wash your hands after you blow your nose, sneeze or cough. If someone is infected with Coronavirus, then the moisture in their breath and saliva will contain the virus. These droplets don’t travel very far which is why two metres social distancing rules are in place. The further apart you are the lower the risk. People should either stay 2m apart or ‘1m plus’ – which means one metre plus mitigations. These mitigations will depend on the workplace or setting. For example, on public transport and in other indoor venues, people must wear a face covering, as it is not always possible to stay 2m apart. It is not recommended that primary aged children wear face masks as the risk to them is low, the masks protect others and not themselves and they are thought to be detrimental to early education. If you have been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for coronavirus you will receive a call or text from the NHS Test and Trace Service. (Under 18's will get a phone call and a parent or guardian will be asked to give permission for the call to continue). You will be asked to begin self-isolation for up to 14 days, depending on when you last came into contact with the person who has tested positive. It's really important to do this even if you don't feel unwell, because it can take up to 14 days for the symptoms to develop. Remember we don’t want the virus to spread so although this may be disruptive for you, it is less disruptive than an outbreak of coronavirus and far less disruptive than a local lockdown. By doing this you will continue to protect your family and friends and the wider community from coronavirus.Current Risk Assessments
Previous Risk Assessments
Temporary Head Teacher
Attendance Policy (Leaflet)
Flow Chart
Temporary Head Teacher
Staying Safe this Summer
Attendance Letter Aug 2020
Attendance Policy Leaflet
County Letter
Golden Rules for Children
Teacher Allocation September
September Full Opening
Covid Security Measures
Covid Catch-up Plan 2020-21Symptoms of Covid-19
What is Isolation?
NHS Test and Trace
Headteacher (Temporary)
Review of Remote Provision
Remote Learning PolicyWash your hands frequently with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in a bin.
Keep a 2m distance from anyone not in your household or support bubble.
Wearing face coverings
If you are contacted by the NHS Test and Trace Service you must self-isolate.