Special Schools in lockdown -how are you doing?

[parrotonmyshoulder]

We’re open to about half of our pupils who are attending 2 days a week in small bubbles, mostly with their ‘next year’ class/ teacher/ staff where possible. This has been since June 1st.
Logistically challenging to get to where we are. We have quite a number of shielding staff and it is often essential to have the ‘right’ staff for certain pupils than ‘any’ staff.
We have, of course, remained open full time for some very vulnerable pupils for whom, it was decided, school was a better option than home.
Supporting pupils at home remains quite a challenge. Some are doing great just enjoying time doing their own thing - but it will be hard to get them back into school routine and expectations. Others are much harder to occupy. Some are engaging with work sent home, but this is certainly not the sort of learning that would be happening at home.
My headteacher believes it’ll be ‘back to normal’ in September. I think she’s deluded...

It's been really challenging. We're a secondary and doing twice weekly phone calls to every student- I'd say about 1/4 are doing work at home (this is due to parents input, you can tell which ones are going to work and which ones aren't being pushed). That's low numbers but with the nature of our kids (SEMH) not surprising. I worry about the behaviour and expectations upon their return and there's been lots of talk in SLT about the 'recovery curriculum'.

We've remained open for just over 1/3 of school, half come in two days then the other half two other days. Which is a LOT but the max we could do with the number of staff. We have so many shielding for various reasons (illness, age, pregnancy etc).

I definitely don't think we're reopening fully in Sep. Our head expects us to be open for the new Y7s and Y11s plus the existing vulnerable kids on a part time basis til at least October half term.