Holmes Chapel Comprehensive will not reopen before September

The school and sixth form have been closed since the end of March because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Parents were told on Friday by headteacher Denis Oliver that the school would not open again before September.

Mr Oliver said there had been a great deal of speculation about how schools might start to increasingly bring more students back to the classroom before the summer break.

He said: “Attention is focused on year groups 10 and 12. These are the students who are due to sit their external examinations in 2021. The concerns of parents and teachers of students in these year groups are well founded and understood.

“School leaders and governing bodies are being asked to consider the most appropriate, local response, and the Department of Education has issued broad guidelines to help schools to make these decisions.

“We have carried out a risk assessment and a review of the potential benefits to students being in school.

“With the exception of some of our most vulnerable students, those using our Key Workers Club, and in very specific cases where targeted interventions have been identified as essential, school will not reopen before September 2020.”

He said maintaining the safety of everyone in the school community had been the overwhelming priority as the school leaders considered the potential educational benefits in inviting some students and staff to return to the classrooms over the next few weeks.

He added: “The impact of social distancing guidance on the delivery of the school day and the lack of school transport, will make it impossible to reinstate anything that resembles a normal timetable or lesson structure.

“Therefore, in the short term, any plans to invite students back to school are very much based on achieving educational benefit that cannot be achieved in any other way.

“We are therefore very clear at this stage, that we are not developing any plans to invite all students in current year groups 10 and 12 back to school before September 2020.

“The school’s senior leadership team do not believe a blanket return of all students in these year groups will have any significant educational benefit and therefore, the potential to compromise their safety and that of school staff cannot be justified.

“In a very small number of cases, there could be some advantage in inviting them to attend school for a short period of intervention, but this will be very focused and unlikely to exceed a few hours at a time during the first three weeks of July.

“Work is under way on the risk assessment of our school buildings to facilitate the implementation of the safe systems and processes needed to keep our school community safe in the longer term.

“It would be unrealistic to think the world will have returned to anything that we would previously have defined as normal before September 2020.

“We must be in a position to fully understand and deliver a safe working and learning environment while making sure the quality and range of education that we provide is of the highest standards.

“We will be carrying out consultation exercises over the next two months to get everyone's views, staff, students and parents, about the steps required not just to make our school as safe as possible, but also to take into consideration the additional steps we may need to take to give everyone the confidence to return to school.”