New national restrictions to reduce the spread of coronavirus and COVID-19 start today. Government guidance for primary schools, published yesterday, requires little change at Fielding:

• gov.uk, Education and childcare settings: new national restrictions from 5 November

Key points:

1. Specialist sports and other clubs after school remain open because they are part of our wrap-around childcare and are necessary to enable parents to work, search for work or undertake training or education. Pupils continue to attend in their protective year-group bubble.
2. Essential visitors only. The main office is closed to parents except for essential reasons, including medical, pupil drop-off and collection during the day. Forgotten lunch boxes, water bottles or musical instruments and use of the toilet are not essential. This is added risk. Please help us keep risk of spreading coronavirus as low as possible.
3. Critically Extremely Vulnerable members of staff are strongly advised to work at home. There is no impact on class teaching but we continue to monitor, review and work with colleagues in this group.
4. Face covering. Visitors must wear a face-covering while inside the school. Members of staff should wear a face covering when working closely, one-to-one with pupils. If any member of staff feels more vulnerable, they may also wear a face covering while inside. Pupils at primary school and parent visitors outside the building do not need to wear a face covering.

This week:

• Pupils continue to come to school because being in school is safe, first-best for children and we do not want this generation to miss out on the learning they need for life.
• No other confirmed cases of coronavirus in staff or pupils since half-term. If we have a confirmed case, we will:
  • tell you by email if your child has been in close-contact and needs to self-isolate at home for 14 days. This might mean collecting them from school during the day.
  • tell everyone by Latest News that there is a confirmed case in one of our 'bubbles' so that everyone knows what is and what is not going on.
  • tell you if staff members are self-isolating, when they will return to work and how their class will be covered (COVID, Staff changes page).
• targeted pupils have started their 'catch-up' support, for example, on-line tutoring with Third Space for maths, using our share of the government's catch-up funding for schools. 
• Breakfast Club starts new hours, 7.30-8.30am, to better match the school day. Staffing is re-organised to better match new times and uptake. 
• teachers and every adult in school are being stricter with pupils. Our walks around school and review of 'red' behaviour records show attitudes in class are improving but they are not quite at pre-COVID expectations. A few children still need to get the basics right, for example, sitting in a chair on their bottom not their knees; not picking their toes while the teacher is reading in story time; swinging on one leg of their chair; and facing forwards all of the time to reduce risk of any infection being spread. Any chat and reminders at home from parents will help teachers in class.
• outside, pupils know to stay and play with their own class bubble, telling us that this is to stop infection being spread between class bubbles. They are avoiding touching games and inventing new games with no hand-to-hand touch. New timings and use of new playground zones after half-term are working very well.
• new lunchtime supervisors join our team soon. This will help improve our lunch service. Meanwhile, pupils are superb at sitting in an allocated seat at the same place each day so that we know who has been a close-contact in the event of any infection. Most teachers have matched this seating to their classroom plan. A couple of classes need to do this better.
• since September, 48 pupils have had up to 14 days learning at home while self-isolating. Half of these were in our Year 1 after-school bubble. Our quality assurance checks show the strength and positive impact of teachers checking-in regularly with pupils by video or audio call. We need to improve consistency between classes and age groups; and the quality of some things teachers have published in Microsoft Teams. We are helping teachers with better guidance and support.