Update 20th May 2020

Dear parents/carers

Thank you for your ongoing support at this difficult time. We have managed to speak to most of you regarding your decisions about sending your child back to school in June.

All special schools in Birmingham have taken the join decision that we will not be reopening on June 1st. The local authority are aware of this collective decision. All special schools in Birmingham will work to a model of safely increasing the numbers of pupils in school based on need throughout June. The main priority is to focus on pupils whose parents are key workers and pupils who are classed as our most vulnerable. All special schools are aware that the numbers of pupils that fall into these groups are increasing due to more parents being required to work and more families become vulnerable due to the impact of the ongoing situation. 

Following the discussions we have had with you, we know there is a need to increase numbers at Cherry Oak from Monday 1st June. For this first week in June we will be focusing on providing places to those families who need their child to be in school due to work commitments and those who need their child in school due to their vulnerability. We will continue to offer a mixture of full time and part time places based on these needs. We will then review the impact of these increased numbers in line with our risk assessment to evaluate how we can increase further from 8th June. We will then hope to include children who do not fall into the 2 groups but parents have expressed a desire for them to return to school later in June.

We will be contacting all families who we are allocating places to for the week beginning 1st June. If you are not contacted by 3pm on Friday 22nd May then you can presume your child will not be attending school during the first week in June. If you feel we have wrongly assessed your need to send your child to school please contact me directly. We will then contact families again during the week ending 5th June.

I hope you can understand the approach we have taken. This approach focuses on safety of our pupils and staff and we want to ensure that no one is being put at risk.

Please feel free to phone me on the school number if you wish to discuss this.

Thank you again for your patience and understanding.

Amy