Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to a new term.  It has been an extremely strange and challenging few weeks both in school and virtually with the vast majority of the children accessing our home learning.  Thank you all for your support and care during this time.

Free School Meals

Firstly, can we apologise for the delay in parents who are eligible for the free school meal funding receiving their allocation.  We are still waiting for clear guidance from the local authority as to how they want us to provide for you.  Until this guidance arrives we are unable to put things into place for the future.

We are aware that some families eligible for the free school meals are finding this time very challenging financially so have ordered vouchers for last week and this which will be sent to you via text message as soon as we are able.  There is a delay in receiving the vouchers into school, I will let you know as soon as they are ready to be sent.  These vouchers will come to all parents of a child in receipt of free school meals and also to parents of all children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2.

We still have a large number of vouchers that have not been claimed from over Christmas and also when class bubbles have been required to isolate.  Over the next few weeks we will be contacting parents to support them accessing these.

The vouchers are sent to the email address and phone numbers that school holds for you.  If that number has changed or the email address is inaccessible you need to let me know by leaving a message by following the link

https://www.stthomaswernethprimary.co.uk/covid-form/

If you feel you are eligible for Free School Meals but are not claiming them, please either contact the school office or follow the link below

https://www.oldham.gov.uk/forms/form/525/en/free_school_meals_fsm_application_form

Children in school

After undertaking a thorough risk assessment of the school last week we agreed we had measures in place to open for the children of key workers and vulnerable children.  Thank you for your patience while we put these measures in place.

Online learning

All classes are now receiving our schools online learning offer.  All children have access to Seesaw and need to be logging onto this daily to complete their work.  The staff in school are setting work following our in-school plan so that the disruption to your children’s education is kept to a minimum.  Please can you ensure the children are completing the work and posting it daily.

We have been contacted by a number of parents and children who are finding the work hard and challenging to do at home.  It is new to all of us and we are still finding the best ways to support all children engage in their learning.  If you are struggling to access the work please contact the class teacher through Seesaw or call the main school office.

Technology Problems

We are aware that pressure on technology in some homes is an issue.  We have asked parents and carers to contact school if they are struggling with this.  We have given out over 70 devices to families both from the government and from our own stock in school.  We are currently trying to find more devices to share with families to allow all children to have access to devices in the home to use or share.

We have a number of SIM cards in school donated from Vodafone which will provide 30Gb of data over 3 months free of charge.  These SIM cards need to be placed in either a phone or a tablet/laptop which has a SIM card slot.  The data can then be shared with a laptop or tablet in the home.

The government have just released a scheme where families can access more data on their home devices free of charge.  I will share this information with you later this afternoon.

Once again, thank you all for your support.