St Mary Magdalen's Catholic Primary School

Dear Parents

Parentmail is down so I need to communicate this way. Please spread the word.

As you will have heard on the news last night school will be closed to most pupils from tomorrow.  We are staying open to provide child care for the more vulnerable children and the children of key workers.

We were promised clarification today of what constitutes a key worker and what constitutes a vulnerable child. This has not come yet but could come later tonight. I will share as soon as I know for sure. We think this will be where both parents are key workers or a single parent is a key worker.

At the moment there is uncertainty around whether children with a social worker have to attend school but it is likely that they will.

We know that social distancing is what will bring this virus to a halt so we need to avoid big crowds wherever possible.  I know that when you are able you are going to keep your children with yourselves or with people you know to lower the risk of infection for them and the people they come into contact with.

However we also know that some children of key workers will have no other option but to send their children to school.  For those children we will keep open as long as we are able to safely staff it. At that point we will look at merging our staff and pupils with another school.  If you feel that you will need school provision please email school asap stating what your key role is: bursar@st-marymagdalen.lancs.sch.uk

We will be sending an email tomorrow with a full list of online learning, useful websites and great TV programmes to keep your children’s learning going across the curriculum. You should already have received a paper pack of activities.

Tomorrow will be the last day in school for some time and we will be curtailing all our Lenten fundraising efforts.  In order that we can still raise a good total for the good Shepherd Fund please can you send money with children for raffle tickets regardless of whether they are in infants or juniors.  We have enough eggs to make sure that all the infant children get an egg. We will divide the rest of the eggs into the four junior classes and do a proper raffle for those tomorrow.

Mothers’ Day Gifts will be on sale tomorrow at £2.50 each.  Please send money in an envelope for that if you haven’t already done so and would like your child to purchase a gift.

Kind regards

Mrs Gallagher