Here is the latest important update from Graham for families of all the children and young people attending our schools and colleges. A separate update for young people attending our social care provision, New Bridge Horizons, can be found here.

Dear Parents and Carers,

Firstly, I would like to thank you all for your feedback relating to our ‘New Schooling’ offer and risk assessment process. I appreciate that there was a lot of information to digest, but your feedback has been invaluable.

With nearly 400 responses to our consultation, our executive team are now working to refine and update the 5 documents that we have previously shared with you (you can find them here), incorporating the collective views of professionals, families and young people. We have meetings with union representatives next Tuesday and following this final stage of our consultation, we hope to publish our updated documents to our website by Wednesday 3rd June for your perusal.

Next Steps

Our current position remains the same; our Oldham and Tameside school hubs will remain open for essential care to children of key workers and our social care provision at New Bridge Horizons will remain closed. Following the completion of the consultation (Wednesday 3rd June), we will begin to follow the processes outlined in the New Schooling Risk Assessment ~ Process. You should expect to hear from one of our staff team before Wednesday 10th June to talk through and complete the individual pupil risk assessment over the phone. Many of our families have already told us that they do not wish for their child to return to school before September 2020 (if it is safe to do so). We fully support this position and will work with you to ensure that your child continues to access a personalised curriculum offer, whether that be through virtual or face to face learning.

Our school leaders will carry out all elements of the risk assessment process over the next 2-3 weeks. At the end of this process, you will be contacted, should there be any proposed changes to your child’s schooling offer (w/c 15th June). There continue to be many ever- changing factors that may influence our decisions, but we can assure you that we will continue to keep you updated every step of the way and, as always, our staff are here to answer any questions and are available via the usual channels.

Following this initial piece of work, we plan to update our risk assessments continuously to ensure that we have up to date information to hand at all times.

I appreciate that many of you will have anxieties around what our provision will look like in September and how transition may look for those moving to a new building or joining one of our schools for the first time. We are currently exploring virtual options to support our transitions work, this may include virtual tours, films of class teachers and students and virtual open evenings. Our staff will continue to update you on this as plans unfold.

Once again, may I thank you for your continued support. If you do have any further questions or comments, please do pass them on to us via your school staff teams or by email to Daniel Wood: dwood@newbridgegroup.org.

Take care,

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous updates and blog entries here