Whilst the new procedures have gone well with lots of positive feedback (thank you), there have been some questions and concerns. Hopefully we can answer some of these here.

Messages in a Morning

The best way to get a message into school is either through email at hscontact @ pedmore.dudley.sch.uk (with no gaps), or to call on 01384 818955. Both of these are monitored regularly. However, from tomorrow (Thursday) there will be a member of staff by the main gate with a notebook who can take any messages if needed.

Collection at the End of the Day

When coming to collect your child at the end of the day, if you could please separate yourself as follows, this will help staff when releasing your children:

Start of the Day Procedure

Pre-pandemic all children (Reception – Yr6) would wait on the playground until the bell went and then make their way into school independently. It seems like a long time ago now. We decided that it would make for a calmer start to the day, and help to alleviate any difficulties children might have leaving parents, if they just enter the school site and go straight into school.

The staggered starts that we introduced during the pandemic, have now stopped. We are not allowed to have staggered start and end times any more. By opening the gates at 8:40am, and allowing a window of 10 minutes for all children to enter school, we can hopefully make the entrance to school smoother. We have staff on the playground to help guide children where they need to go (although they all pretty much know where they’re going anyway!) and have staff in classrooms to welcome children at the door.

I fully appreciate that this is different to what we had during the past 18 months. We are not using the car park now to enter school, as this is not the safest way to access the site, which means that it is not possible to ‘hand over’ children to their class teacher – there are not doors in the same way for all classes on the playground side of school. For some parents, this will all be new and different to how it has been over the past 18 months; however, this is similar to how things were set up previously.

Opportunities to Come into School

Previously, we were able to hold workshops/events where parents could come into school to work with their class or have opportunities to talk to their child’s teacher. As soon as we are able, we will be reintroducing plans to help re-establish these.

Concerns

Everyone at school is always available to listen to any concerns you have. We may not be able to change everything to keep everyone happy, but we will always listen and help if we possibly can.

Thank you for your continued support.

Take Care & Stay Safe

Mr Dunn