Dated 12.09.24

Dear parents / carers,

As you know, our first and foremost responsibility in school is to ensure that all of our fabulous pupils are both safe and happy throughout their time with us. As part of this responsibility, we must sometimes change periods of the day to make sure that we are able to keep all of the pupils in our care safe.

We have just finalised a complete review of the way that pupils come onto the school grounds and into the school building in the morning. As a result of this review, we will now be making some small changes to the processes in a morning and after school, as well as clarifying the way in which the process of taking children into school will run.

In April, we opened up the playground to parents and children before school to reduce backlog on pavements and lower the risk of pupils being injured on busy roads. This has worked to ease that concern, but the new system does need some small changes and some aspects clarifying in order to tighten our security and maintain our pupil’s safety. Please find below an explanation of the changes and how the slightly adapted system will work. The information below is in a lot of detail. A second, simplified version will be coming to families in due course.

• The school gates will still open at 8.30am to ease congestion on the roads and pavements. There is no expectation to arrive at this time, in fact it is of benefit to both pupils and parents if you arrive much closer to the 8.44am bell ringing when the children enter school. This means that the playground does not get quite as busy and the children do not become bored and restless.
• Classrooms open for pupils at 8.45am, just after the ringing of the bell. Until this time, all pupils MUST be supervised by an appropriate parent or carer. We will have staff out on duty, but staff members will not take responsibility for children on the playground before 8.45am. Please accompany your child onto the playground and stay with them until they enter the school building. In the case of Y3/4 and Y5/6, pupils will still walk around to their classes as before, but should be supervised until this point.
• In order to reduce congestion for years 3-6, we will be asking years 3 and 4 to enter via the small artificially turfed area to the right, while years 5 and 6 will continue to use the pathway as before.
• Reception pupils will now go with parents to the door of their classroom and be met there by the class teacher.  
• Year 1 and 2 pupils should come to their class door as before, to be met by a member of staff. This includes Mrs Roberts & Mrs Cass’s class, who will be met at the end of the corridor to the classroom by a member of staff.
• The members of staff on the gate in a morning have a very important role in keeping our pupils safe and so we ask that all parents move through from the gate areas without stopping. This allows the area to remain clear and supports staff in keeping our children safe. If you have a message for staff that you would like to get to us then please use Class Dojo to do this. For more complex matters, an appointment can be made via Class Dojo or the office.
• We are aware that some Year 5 and 6 pupils have permission to walk to and from school with adult supervision. We ask that any Year 5 and 6 pupils coming to school without supervision aim to arrive just before 8.45am and head straight round to their classrooms when they are open.

As always, we thank all of our Pottery families for your support in continuing to make sure that our school is a safe and happy environment for every pupil.

We look forward to welcoming pupils back into school tomorrow morning. See you then!

Yours sincerely,

Darren Hooley