Following the latest government announcement that Covid-19 laws and regulations are planned to end on 19th July, I know many of you will have been left wondering what school will look like for our final five days at school until we end for summer on 23rd.

As I have stated since April, we will be maintaining the routines and procedures we have had in place until the term ends. The atmosphere in school is incredibly settled, calm and positive. We have been very lucky to have suffered little disruption due to positive cases and where staff have been traced as close contacts we have been able to continue children's education with little to no interruption. We are one of very few local schools to still have all our class bubbles in school and hope to see the year out with them still all in tact. To give this some context, The number of schoolchildren with confirmed Covid infections jumped from 15,000 on 24 June to 28,000 on 1 July, while the number self-isolating because of suspected Covid contacts within school rose from 279,000 to 471,000 last week. I am pleased to say, we are not part of these statistics.  This demonstrates that the plans we have in place, work!

New guidance has been sent through to explain the changes that can be put in place once we move to Step 4, and I will have to spend time familiarising myself with this thoroughly before adapting it to meet the needs of our school and our community in readiness for the start of term in September.