Planning for Reopening in the New School Year

I'm sure it's not news to anyone that, while the Department of Education have been promising guidelines for over a month now, they are yet to issue anything to or for schools on how we are to reopen. It has been very frustrating and we are regretful that we don't have any certainties to offer to parents as we finish up this school year as to what school will look like in the new school year.

We are, however, primed and ready to go again in mid August, in the hopes that guidelines will have reached us by that stage.

We have various reopening committees who have been planning as far as we can plan:

• Reopening learning and teaching
• Reopening logistics
• Reopening Junior Infants
• Covid-19 Committee
• Reopening Relationships
• Summer Provision team

Each committee has tentative plans based on the different scenarios we anticipate may be happening.

We have plans for a full reopening, partial reopening and distance reopening. We have plans for lunches, yards, arrival and dismissal. We have plans for support teaching, co-teaching, resources and movement breaks. 

We are as set up as we can be at this stage.

Whatever scenario greets us at the end of August, we have identified a number of areas where we expect children to struggle. We will be focusing on those areas in September and we encourage you to do what you can to set your child up for success too.

We expect to have a plan to share with you some time between 14th and 21st August. If you have any feedback that will help us in planning for next year, particularly in relation to how distance learning went, please let us know below. We will not be able to reply to each one but we will take it into account when planning in mid August.

​Many thanks.