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From the Catholic Education Commission, Victoria (CECV)
Dear Parents and Carers
Thank you for all your support during these past few weeks of remote and flexible learning.
Following advice from the Chief Health Officer, the Victorian Government and the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria Ltd (CECV) have advised that schools can begin a phased return to onsite schooling.
In the first stage, students in Prep, Grade 1 and Grade 2, senior secondary students (Years 11 and 12 VCAL and VCE) and all students in specialist schools will return to school from Tuesday 26 May.
To support all school staff to prepare for this transition, Monday 25 May will be a student-free day.
In the second stage of our return to onsite schooling, all other year levels will return to school from Tuesday 9 June.
For those students who cannot be supervised at home and vulnerable children, the existing model of onsite schooling will remain in place during the two-week period from Tuesday 26 May to Tuesday 9 June. The current process that we are using to enable parents and carers to indicate the days or part-days for which onsite schooling is required will continue for this two-week period. (Please see 'Conditions of Supervision' on 'Online Learning Hub' on Szapp.
All other students in those year levels will continue learning from home until Tuesday 9 June.
Once a year level has returned, all students will be expected to attend school as normal. This means if you choose to keep your child/children home after their year level has returned to onsite schooling, we can no longer support their learning from home.
This does not apply to children who need to be absent for health or medical reasons. For those families, please contact us so we can make an appropriate plan.
This same approach is being taken by all Catholic and government schools in Victoria.
To support the health and wellbeing of all students and staff, our school will continue an enhanced cleaning routine and will encourage frequent handwashing.
If your child is ill or is feeling unwell, they must not attend school. They must remain home and seek medical advice.
While the Chief Health Officer has advised that students will not be required to maintain physical distancing at school, there will be a number of important changes to our school operations, consistent with health advice to all schools. These will apply until further notice. I will provide more details about our local school context as soon as possible, but it is important to note that changes will include:
- there will be no assemblies or group gatherings
- restrictions on access to the school site for anyone other than immediate school staff and students
- there will be duty at the front and back of the school before school but not handling students from cars. You can enter the school from A'beckett or Wynnstay entrances.
As OLOL is a small school we do not need to stagger the start times or finish times of school. 8.45am start - 3.30pm finish.
We understand that some families may feel anxious about this move back to classroom teaching and learning. I can assure you that this decision has been taken on the basis of the best health advice available to our state.
More information about the return to school and coronavirus (COVID-19) can be found on the CECV website, which will continue to be updated: www.cecv.catholic.edu.au/Coronavirus-information-for-parents.
Thank you for your continued support and patience during this time. We look forward to welcoming students back to the classroom.
Yours sincerely
Francine Walsh
We have organised for next week to be 'Wellbeing’ week. There will be more information in tomorrow's newsletter but essentially we have suggested a series of daily tasks that pull back from the prescription of the past five weeks and look to explore family-based ‘fun’ activities.
Now that the government has given us a timeline to return to school this ‘Wellbeing Week’ sits extremely nicely as a final remote learning week for Foundation, Year 1 and Year 2 - and a bit of a midterm breather for years 4, 5 and 6. This week also means the teachers can use the reduced intensity to begin writing semester reports which will still take place but naturally will look different from our usual reports.
We share more on the details of this much-looked-forward-to week in this week's Newsletter. (Out tomorrow!)