With changes anticipated by the Government on 19th July, we would like to confirm that we will continue with our existing risk assessment for the final 3 days of the term. We will continue to operate our staggered starts and end to the days and maintain our bubble system. Please can we ask that families continue to observe social distancing rules, mask wearing and being aware of symptoms of COVID-19 and ensuring that PCR tests are undertaken.  

With all of this in place, it would be nice to think that we could get to the end of term without having to shut any more bubbles. As we rapidly approach the end of term and the holidays, we really hope that families and staff will not be required to isolate for 10 days at the start of the summer break. These arrangements are in line with both DfE and our Local Authority’s guidance, allowing us to retain current procedures even though the country may have moved to step 4 of the roadmap. 

We are looking forward to our two shut bubbles returning to school on Monday 12th July as long as everyone is well. Fortunately, their period of isolation ends at midnight on Friday 9th July so, hopefully, all can enjoy the weekend. We have missed you being in school. 

Finally, if you are an England or Italy football supporter, we hope you enjoy the Euros final on Sunday night! May the best team win. 

We love reading at Dunalley and would like to encourage your children to participate in the summer reading challenge again this year. Details can be found at this link. 

https://summerreadingchallenge.org.uk/news/general/wild-world-heroes-intro 

Summer Reading Challenge flyer

Many thanks if you have responded to our survey this week. New Reception children have been contacted via Tapestry. Hopefully, the money we save will be able to be used to add to our class and shared library areas. 

Complete survey here - https://dunalleyps.schoolzineplus.co.uk/form/20

New classes for 2020/21 academic year

Please see below the timings for the new academic year.

You will notice that we have retained the staggered drop-off and pick-up times but altered them to a 5 minute gap between year groups.

We will retain the separate Reception / Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 entrances and exits in the hope that this will ensure a continued calm, less congested start and end to the school day eventhough DfE guidance has said this can be curtailed. 

Families with children in different year groups can continue to drop off at their earilest time, and pick up at their latest time.

Following the confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in school this week, please can we continue to ask you to remain vigilant and to ensure that a PCR test is taken at the slightest sign of symptoms in your child/children or any member of your household. All members of the household must isolate at home until a negative PCR test is received. Your child/children MUST NOT BE IN SCHOOL until the results of the PCR test come back negative.

It is important that you notify school if anyone in your household has symptoms and is going for a PCR test. Please inform school by phone or email of the result.

If the school is closed, and the result is POSITIVE, please text or phone us on 07413 173395 immediately.  Mrs Godfrey is very happy to receive messages out of hours (early morning/evening/weekend) so that bubbles can be closed quickly.  This will help to reduce the transmission in our community.

Continuing to remain vigilant when numbers are rising across Cheltenham and Gloucestershire will, hopefully, help to ensure that we keep as many of our class bubbles open as possible for the last few days and we are not having to ask families or staff to isolate for 10 days at the start of the summer break.

We are absolutely delighted to welcome Mr Isher to the Dunalley community this week. Mr Isher has taken on the role of Caretaker/Grounds person, supporting Mr Childs. We have a lot of site development planned for the summer and Mr Isher is well skilled to help us carry out the work. We hope to make the most of his love of gardening too.   

We are seeking to recruit a team of dynamic Play Partners who will support meaningful and productive child-initiated play during our lunchtimes to ensure that our children have the very best lunchtime opportunities possible.  This is a fabulous opportunity to join our team here at Dunalley as we implement a new, whole school play initiative. Full details are available on our website – opportunities to work at Dunalley available here. 

As the academic year draws to a close, it is really important that any outstanding debts are cleared.  As we have mentioned previously, we are not able to cover debts with the school budget.  We have a strict debt policy in place and will follow this to ensure that families are not in arrears. 

Atlas Camps are really looking forward to starting their working partnership with us here at Dunalley. The camp will run for 5 weeks over the summer from July 26th. Have a look on their website for further information and booking details here. 

Please think of our app as the go to place for school information, if you have not yet downloaded it please do so as we will build on the information available from now on.  We are proud to be so forward thinking here at Dunalley, we are certainly one of very few primary schools to have a school app. The benefits of the app are many; it holds lots of information in one place; you can report an absence; inform us of medicine requirements; change personal information and vote on important polls and once school trips start to take place, we will be able to keep families updated by alerts too.    

As usual we will be breaking up for the summer holidays after lunch on the last day of term.  The staggered finish times will be as follows:

As usual, if you have children in different year groups, please collect at the latest finish time. Lates will be operating until 3:30pm