No space at school

[PinkDiamond1]

This is outing so have NC.

Our school is a large primary 3 form per year.

They've offered alternate weeks starting from the 8th June for year groups.

We were undecided on sending our DC back.

However we got an email yesterday saying they were at full capacity for key worker and Nursery R, Y1 and Y6 and can't accept anymore children!

Is this allowed?

Same for my year 6 niece- won’t take any more than 50 pupils.

Def unfair.
Our school put on a deadline to decide and said they would then come up with a detailed plan once they knew how many they were dealing with.

Poss understandable IF they said there will be max of x children and first come first served. Still wrong though IMO.

If they are full, they are full. So it is allowed

Well, yes, if you didn’t commit to going back you can’t expect them to plan for your child. They have to make such detailed plans for keeping the children separate. Our school have put what seems to be a military operation in place, with different entrances, staggered drop off and collection, staggered lunch and break. What is painfully obvious though is that the school is already full space wise with less than half the kids back

There was deffo no first come first served!

They did send out a questionnaire and we said No - which is fair enough but we should be able to change our mind? That's a separate issue anyway - I don't think they can lower the amount of hours they're literally offering alternate weeks as it is but not many classes - maybe they don't have the staff.

So I believe it's just 2 classes of 15 a week per year group. Then another 2 sets of 15 the following week. Total about 60 kids per year group getting 3 weeks of teaching in total.

What year are your dc in?

They are in the years allowed to go back.

What do you expect them to do? If they don’t have the physical space or the staff what else can they do?

Our primary school have said that they’ll only have room for two year groups worth of children.
They haven’t said how they’ll choose which children will get places if more than that want to go.

It means that they won’t have room for all key worker, vulnerable, Reception, Y1 and Y6 children, which is unfortunate, but they can’t really magic up extra classrooms and teachers out of nowhere.

Offer an alternative? Don't all the kids have a right to return - speak to the council? At least say they're allowed to do this.

Would rather not say what year groups as don't want to be outed!

I'm not doubting the complexity of the return I've seen how it will be planned and staggered.

You might find that some parents said yes but were actually unsure and decide not to return their children and that will open up a space for your children.

It is allowed. The DfE have been very late to provide schools with guidelines and have changed these multiple times. Schools can only have a limited number of students in, based on the number of staff available.

Your school should have made it clear that it was first come, first served though.

But any annoyance should be directed at the Govt. They have made it impossible for schools to plan and communicate in the way they normally would.

The school I work at has restricted numbers to less than 100, if all the pupils from the allowed yeargroups plus vulnerable and keychildren were in at once there'd be about 180 children. This is for safety of everyone involved.

My sister has also been told that there's no space for my y1 aged nephew to go to his school either.

Yes, you can change your mind. No, the school doesn't have to accommodate that

Ours said that if you change your mind there’s the risk there won’t be space for your child. You said no and they made plans, honestly they have to plan this absolutely meticulously and can’t just be chopping and changing up to the last minute.

I do think stating clearly this was a possibility is important though, as it would probably impact parents’ decisions.

They have to be able to offer full time spaces to key workers and vulnerable children so it depends on how many of those there are if there is space under the guidance for anyone else. Our school has had a lot of key workers who have t been coming to school, start coming in over past few weeks and now there are over 100 for infants so can only open for key workers and no one else. It's very difficult xx

They should have stated it was important to say yes if we were undecided then.

They didn't say it was first come first served - neither did they say the spaces were limited etc

They've even said there is no more space for key workers

Typically it's poor comms on their part

It's the same at our school too.

They have to restrict numbers for social distancing. They cannot mix groups, they cannot mix adults. They have also sent out plans etc to the parents who said yes so cannot go back on that.

Key workers and vulnerable are obviously priority as a need for childcare. That’s increased massively now everything’s changed.

No it’s the gov’s fault. They made it sound as if all those age groups could go back. Was never going to be possible for many schools with the restrictions they set out.

Also my future job is at a school which is 4 form entry. Taking back these children safely is using 24 classrooms and teachers as it is, let alone key worker provision which is approaching 60-70 additional children per day. Space and staffing is absolutely an issue for schools.

We also had a questionnaire- they used this to work out their resources and only had 48 hours to complete it and send it back.

You said no so you can hardly now expect a place

The government have set the priority:
Vulnerable and key worker
Y R
Y1
Y6

So it’s quite possible that some schools are at capacity with just the key worker, vulnerable and YR so no room for Y1 or Y6.
If they’re full there’s really nothing they can do about it.