Schools in the Keswick areas have experienced a mixed response to the need to stay open to offer cover for key workers during the national emergency – but all are offering online support to the pupils
St Herbert’s School remains open and on Wednesday cared for three pupils, children of key workers, attending what is called its “childcare setting”. Staff are working a rota to care for such small numbers.
Headteacher, Shelagh Hughes said: “Staff have worked tirelessly over the past week to create an online learning platform for children and files to access over the coming weeks in an attempt to keep the learning and academic support going.”
Children in Key Stage 2 can logon to see work set by their teachers and can submit their work back to school for feedback. Teachers are able to see who has been online and has completed the learning tasks and they can also get in touch with pupils on the platform to give feedback and answer queries from their pupils.
Younger pupils have been set learning projects which include family projects as a way of getting the whole family busy together.
Mrs Hughes added: “It has been very positively received by most pupils and I think the teachers are getting in touch with any pupils who have not been on the learning platform yet to check they can all access it and to chase them.”
Braithwaite School was open on Monday for a small number of pupils; however, need reduced and the school has now closed.
Threlkeld School is currently open during normal school hours for the children of key workers. However, there are no Threlkeld families that need this provision.
Borrowdale School has not been required to stay open for any key workers, as all children are being cared for at home.
Keswick School remained open this week to offer support to key workers and their children, but as the up take was for just two students on the first day and one student for half a day on Wednesday the school made the decision to close.
Students can continue to access work on Google Classroom, which will be updated on a weekly basis after Easter.
There are a number of free web-based resources for students to access over the Easter break whilst schools are closed and over the coming days Keswick School plans to put a selection of these resources onto the Google Classroom for each year group. In addition, the school recommends that all students continue with at least an hour of reading every day.
There are plans to centralise the work of schools over the coming days and provide “hubs” for childcare; more details are expected to be released in the coming weeks.
