August re-opening information to parents and pupils June 26 2020

Written by Mrs Flavell

Thurso High School Information for pupils and parents on August re-opening 26.06.2020

All parents should have received an email with this information.

For the past number of weeks we have been planning for a part time return to school with 2m social distancing.

We had information prepared to try and address some of the hundreds of questions you all must have concerning this return to school in August and straight away, can I thank you all for your patience in not bombarding the school with these; you have been very understanding!

However, since I put this together, on Tuesday we were given the unexpected information from the Deputy First Minister that so long as certain medical benchmarks are achieved we will be opening for all pupils full time in August.

If this is the case it will obviously make our return to school look very different, but we are in an excellent position for this, as we are fully prepared with a ‘normal’ timetable ready for the first day back, with the classes that our staff and pupils have been engaging in since the Easter holidays.

So, effectively, we are facing one of the options below, with the first one currently appearing to be the most likely.

Option 1 Full time return to school with no social distancing.

Option 2 If social distancing is required again, we follow our original plan to accommodate this that allows for 2m distancing with 30% in school learning with the rest online (blended learning).

Should we be at 1m distancing, we can amend this plan to have 50% in school learning with the rest online. (For either of these situations, help from Highland Council with extra school transport would be essential to allow for social distancing on school buses.)

Option 3 If the situation deteriorates significantly back to early May levels, we will revert to the fully online learning we have been delivering since lockdown started.

I have sent an email to all parents with the already prepared information that relates to Option 2, so that you are aware of how this contingency plan will look should we have to follow this.

Early next week I will add further information relating to Option 1 (returning to school fulltime) and the extra plans we will look to have in place for this, to try and be as safe as possible; hopefully following more guidance from either Highland Council or the Scottish Government.

I hope this is helpful and please send any questions you have to thurso.high@highland.gov.uk and I will endeavour to answer these.

Best wishes

Hannah Flavell

Head Teacher

Thurso High School