Primary schools have unveiled how its classrooms will look when they reopen next month in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.
Those including children in Kingsholm Primary School in Gloucester have shown how parents will be expected to queue as they drop-off their child into pens at the start of the day.
Measures have also been applied at St Anne’s in Sale ahead of pupils returning, with staff preparing many signs and even face masks to help children in their new surroundings.
Sings are displayed at St Anne’s primary school in Sale warning students of social distancing
Head teacher Polly Goodson and Deputy Head Claire Cowgill measure the distance between desks in a classroom at St Anne’s the wake of the coronavirus outbreak
They will be given a designated time slot and and allotted area – or pen – where they leave their child before heading off along a designated walkway.
Pupils will be told to maintain social distancing between others, and they will only be allowed to mix with a small number of others.
Students who do not conform with the social distancing rules will also be sent home on a three-strikes policy.
Kingsholm Primary School in Gloucester will also be enforcing strict social distancing rules
In a video published on the school’s website, Mr Ferris talks parents through what they can expect when Year 6, Year 1 and Reception and nursery children return on June 1.
Drop off and collection times will be staggered with queues and marked walkways for parents and pupils to follow.
Kingsholm is using timeslots based on surnames, with parents being asked to drop children off alone, without siblings or other children.
Pupils will be dropped off by parents in to pens that will be sectioned with barriers as they arrive.
Measures at St Anne’s have been taken to make social distancing lines upon entrance
Signs as well as face masks will now be on display around the school in Sale for children
Like many schools, St Anne’s will seat their students to one child per desk in classrooms
Some rooms in the school will now limit the amount of people that can feature in one room
Students at St Anne’s will be encouraged to keep two meters apart around school grounds
Later, a member of staff will take each group to their classroom. There is also a set route parents must follow through the school site, arriving and leaving by different entrances.
According to Headteacher Jan Buckland, the pens will be ‘roughly a quarter of the size of a netball court’ and the barriers will consist of ‘bollards with a bit of ceiling tape around to designate the area, some cones and things’.
At Kingsholm, markings have been placed on the ground on the way towards the toilets so that pupils know how far away to stand from one another as they queue. They’ve added that toilets will regularly be cleaned throughout the day.
Supply to their water fountains have been cut off with pupils expected to bring their own water to school, plus select sinks and toilet will not be functioning.
Breakfast and after school clubs have been cancelled. Classrooms will be more spaced apart with one pupil per table. Kingsholm say pupils will be expected to use their own equipment.
Kingsholm school shows how social interaction will be limited in some classrooms with one child per spaced out desk
Classrooms in the reception year will see toilets limited to just one child at a time (left) with some teachers still preparing the classrooms for the return of the children (right)
The amount of books shared will be reduced. Plus certain toys will be removed from the school to avoid cross-contamination. Mrs Buckland, head of Kingsholm, said: ‘Talking about nursery children, we cannot guarantee at all social distancing but we will encourage.
‘We will have adults who sit in places to steer children away from each other.’
She went on to say that pupils who do not follow socially distancing instructions on purpose will be sent home after a three strike rule has been deployed.
‘We will talk to the parents, if a child is being [non-compliant] then what we will do is phone the parents and the parents will then have to come and collect them,’ she said.
Kingsholm previously had an ‘open school’ policy where parents and guardians were allowed in to the classroom, this will no longer be permitted. The school is urging parents to check their child’s temperature each day before school.
Some classrooms will have to share toilets, while water fountains (right) will be shut off
An aerial view of Kingsholm Primary school. Parents will enter the school grounds at the top left of this image, and will move along a walkway, dropping of pupils in to pens set up in the school grounds, before leaving through an exit at the bottom centre of this image
Meanwhile. Schools Standards minister Nick Gibb told MPs that the controversial plans for reception and years one and six to go back on June 1 would depend on evidence that the rate of infection – the R rate – was continuing to drop across the UK.
Appearing virtually before the Education Committee he admitted it was ‘difficult to say’ whether the Government’s ambition to bring back all primary school children back before the summer holidays will come to fruition.
He told MPs this morning: ‘It will be totally led by the science. We don’t know for certain until tomorrow that schools will return on 1 June for reception, year 1 and year 6. That will depend on the science, although schools are planning for it and all the indications are that the science is leading in the right direction.’