This morning the Primary School Principals in the Ards and Comber Area met to discuss the current situation regarding the COVID 19 pandemic. We wished to collaborate and support one another in these unprecedented times and to ensure that we are being forward thinking where the inevitable school closures are concerned.
The Minister of Education sent a letter to all schools today saying firstly: “It appears likely that at some point in the future I will have to close schools based on the approach I have outlined above.”
As you can see from the above extract from the letter, schools do not yet have a firm date for this impending closure.
The Minister continued and in accompanying advice he asked that: “All schools should be preparing a work schedule for their pupils in the event of a school closure”.
In order to allow staff to undertake this task, most schools will be bringing forward a planned school development day from later in the academic year to this week. As we are already closed tomorrow for our development day, this will not impact Victoria. However, our final development day on 26 May might need to be brought forward, but I will give you as much notice of this as possible if we decide to do this.
During this day, teaching staff will be planning for the school’s closure and how best to support the pupils and parents during an enforced break from school. This support will have a number of aspects to it and each school will communicate this to parents through their preferred communication tools.
We, as a school community, will continue to work together to serve the best interests of each child and their family in our schools.