Friday, 22nd May 2020
Dear Parent(s)
COVID-19 –PARENT SURVEY
As promised in my letter of the 20th May 2020, please find embedded below a link that will take you to a survey to collect your thoughts with regards to the re-opening of Highams Park School, but also some wider thinking about how your child has been interacting with the on line work that has been provided to date. Please note, that SurveyMonkey have informed me that they are carrying out some maintenance work tomorrow from 4pm to 12am, which may prevent you from completing the survey during this time.
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/WVPQV8Q
As is acknowledged in the survey, I appreciate that for you to be able to make a fully informed decision about whether you would send your child back to school or not you require further details, about how a school day would be organised, in order to feel satisfied that you have made the right decision.
As I type this letter, I await the publication of two promised documents from the Government. Firstly, the guidelines for the re-opening of secondary schools and medical research pertaining to the spread of the virus in school settings. Once received, I anticipate both will help to inform the plans for school re-opening.
Whilst I appreciate the frustration caused to you and your family with the ongoing closure of schools, I must stress that the school Trustees and I must give priority to the health and safety of the students and the staff. The current instruction for everyone to adhere to 2-metre social distancing is hugely problematic within a school site. For example, classroom capacity is hugely reduced, many of our corridors are not 2m wide, and quite simply the area of the school is not sufficient to contain the 1800 people working on the site in a normal day.
Finally, before asking you to complete the survey I would like to re-iterate that the date of the 1st June 2020, which has been rumored to be when schools will be re-opening, is NOT the case. Our planning for a limited and phased re-opening of the school for a limited number of students is ongoing and will take into consideration the awaited guidance. Your responses to the attached survey, will help to inform both this planning and also my further communication with you, to try and answer the many and complex questions that I appreciate, we all share.
I hope that over the bank holiday weekend you are all able to have some sort of break. If you could complete the survey by midday on Tuesday, 26th May 2020, we will use your responses at this point, to enable us to inform you of our ongoing planning.
Yours faithfully
Phil Grundy
Principal
