Support for Key Workers (Update 29.03.20)

School Hubs 

We are now providing a seven-day school and childcare support operation across ten school hubs ONLY for key workers to enable them to carry out their critical roles in the NHS or other essential services during this health emergency.

All ten of our school hubs will be open from:

Monday to Friday from tomorrow, Monday 30 March between the hours of 8am and 8pm and at the weekends on Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 3pm, to provide crucial care for key workers and other vulnerable groups.

It is essential, to stop the spread of coronavirus, that parents and carers who are able to take care of their children at home or have a partner who is not a key worker, provide childcare. This seven-day support is being offered to key workers who absolutely require it to enable NHS and other critical services to function.

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should any child who has symptoms of coronavirus, or who lives in a household where someone has symptoms, present at school. The whole family must follow the self-isolation advice..

The service outlined below will be available at the following schools Monday to Friday for children and young people at early years (from birth to age five), primary and secondary age:

Pre-school:  8am – 9am

School day: 9am – 3pm

After care:   3pm – 8pm

School hubs

If your child normally goes to school in KILSYTH and surrounding villages:
Please take your child to St Patrick’s Primary School, Backbrae Street, G65 0NA.

If your child normally goes to school in MOODIESBURN, CHRYSTON, STEPPS and surrounding areas:
Please take your child to Chryston High School, Lindsaybeg Rd, Chryston, G69 9DL

If your child normally goes to school in CUMBERNAULD:
Please take your child to Cumbernauld Academy, South Kildrum Ring Rd, Cumbernauld G67 2UF

If your child normally goes to school in AIRDRIE and surrounding villages:
Please take your child to Hilltop Primary School, Petersburn Rd, Airdrie ML6 8BH

If your child normally goes to school in MOSSEND, NEW STEVENSTON, HOLYTOWN and surrounding villages:

Please take your child to New Stevenston Primary School, Coronation Rd East, New Stevenston, Motherwell ML1 4HX

If your child normally goes to school in BELLSHILL or VIEWPARK:
Please take your child to St John Paul II Primary School, 1 Laburnum Rd, Viewpark, G71 5DG

If your child normally goes to school in COATBRIDGE and surrounding villages:
Please take your child to St Ambrose High School, 65 Townhead Rd, Coatbridge ML5 2JE

If your child normally goes to school in MOTHERWELL:
Please take your child to Cathedral Primary School, 171 Milton Street, Motherwell, ML1 1DH

If your child normally goes to school in WISHAW and surrounding areas:
Please take your child to Clyde Valley High School, Castlehill Rd, Wishaw ML2 0QS

If your child normally goes to school in SHOTTS and surrounding areas:
Please take your child to Calderhead High School, Dyfrig St, Shotts ML7 4DH

For early years’ childcare in Shotts, please take your child to Shotts Family Learning Centre, Shottskirk Road, ML7 4ER

 

If you are a parent/carer of a child who attends an LCSC unit, and you require school support as you are a key worker, your child should attend the nearest school to you as listed above.

All children and young people will be provided with a hot meal and snack.

The service will be managed by a team of volunteer staff from Education and Families and other services across the council and will provide learning appropriate to the needs of children and young people, Monday to Friday. Children and young people will be offered a range of indoor and outdoor active play, sport and leisure activities with Active Schools, Culture and Leisure North Lanarkshire (CLNL) and third-sector partners for the after-care and weekend service.

In line with government guidance, all staff and children and young people attending the hub schools are exercising social distancing measures and practising good hand hygiene while enjoying a range of activities.

Appropriate risk assessments have been carried out at each venue and incorporate relevant adult/pupil ratios and the specific needs of children and young people.

As before, all parents/carers will need to complete a keyworker form on arrival at the hub school.

Volunteer staff should attend hub school nearest their place of work for 8.45am.

 

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Transport

Key workers must take their child to the relevant school hub as listed above. No school transport will run.

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Free school meals

A new payment system is being set up for pupils who receive free school meals – this includes all primary 1 to primary 3 pupils.

This commenced on Friday 27 March and will run throughout the current health crisis.

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ASN Schools

From Monday 30 March 2020, five ASN schools will be in operation as listed below. They will be open Monday to Friday between the hours of 9am and 3pm:

Firpark Primary School, 177 Milton Street, Motherwell, ML1 1DH

Buchanan High School, 67 Townhead Road, Coatbridge, ML5 2HT

Mavisbank School, Mitchell St, Airdrie ML6 0EB

Redburn School and Nursery, Kildrum Rd, Cumbernauld, Glasgow G67 2EL

Portland High School, 31-33 Kildonan St, Coatbridge ML5 3LG

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Early Years Provision

Key workers who require care for their child or children will be supported by the school hubs as outlined above.

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Key worker categories

Please note: these are the categories of key workers who can, if absolutely necessary, access support. The council does not make decisions, beyond council employees, about who must or must not attend work. Your employer must behave responsibly in making decisions and heed UK and Scottish Government advice.

Category 1

Includes:

• Health and care workers directly supporting COVID-19 response and associated staff
• Workers supporting life-threatening emergency work as well as critical primary and community care provision
• Staff of energy suppliers
• Staff, including teachers and early years workers, providing childcare and learning for other key workers and staff who support school buildings

Category 2

Please note that the first presumption is that staff who can work from home will work from home

• All other health and care workers including home support staff and care home staff
• Emergency services staff, including police, fire and rescue, prison officers
• Military personnel
• Social workers
• Homelessness staff

Those supporting critical national infrastructure including:

• Staff keeping air, water, road and rail passenger transport operating
• Oil, gas, electricity and water and sewerage workers
• Logistics staff including drivers and transport workers
• Food and other necessary goods staff including food production, processing, distribution, sale, delivery as well as those essential to the provision of hygienic and veterinary medicines
• Staff in essential financial service provision including: banks, building societies and financial market infrastructure; IT and data infrastructure; postal services; civil nuclear, chemicals and telecommunications; payment providers; waste disposal.
• Journalists and broadcasters

Category 3

Other council and associated staff in the following categories. Please note that the first presumption is that staff who can work from home will work from home

• Strategic-level management and support staff
• Waste services staff
• Fleet services staff
• Cemeteries staff
• Property repairs and maintenance staff including frontline workers of Mears and Saltire
• Roads and lighting maintenance staff including staff of Amey
• Facility support services including cleaning, catering, school crossing patrollers and janitorial staff
• Essential human resources staff including payroll and employee service centre
• Essential IT staff
• Essential communications staff
• Essential finance staff including welfare, revenue and benefits staff and municipal bank staff
• Registration staff
• Essential legal services
• Psychological services staff

Original NLC post

Hope you and your families are all keeping well. It has been a turbulent few weeks to say the least! However, as always, I am very grateful to my staff at Braidhurst who have been working extremely hard to ensure there are resources online for your child to access during this period. There is plenty of work to keep them busy! Please encourage your child to participate and use them appropriately.

Staff have also volunteered, in great numbers, to help with the Motherwell Hub to look after the children of key workers to enable them to get to their work – I am humbled, but not surprised, by the response I have received.

I appreciate these are worrying times but, as a community, we will get through this by looking after each other. Before the school temporarily closed we managed to deliver approximately 50 boxes of supplies to families. North Lanarkshire have just announced that the families of those pupils in receipt of free school meals will be sent vouchers twice a week with a voucher code. If you know of anyone in our school family who you are concerned about please contact us and we will do our very best to support them.

Please encourage your child to stay in touch with each other and the staff through the contact details they have been given.

In the meantime stay safe – we are thinking of you and miss you.

Mrs Rooney

Head Teacher

Tuesday 24 March 2020

Following the announcement by the First Minister on Sunday, that no young person with SQA coursework to complete should attend school to do so, we continue to work hard on how we should take coursework evidence into account, in determining young people’s final grades.

Everyone here at SQA will do their utmost, given the current situation, and with the support of the education system, to ensure that learners’ hard work is rightly and fairly recognised and allows them to proceed to further learning or work.

The current public health advice has meant that we have had to make some really difficult decisions about coursework. This means that for this year, schools and colleges are not required to submit learner coursework for marking, in Higher and Advanced Higher courses.

We have taken this difficult decision to be as fair as possible to all Higher and Advanced Higher candidates, whilst taking on board the current public health advice, the many varied coursework requirements across different subjects, and how these are managed in schools and colleges across the country.

I appreciate that some learners may have already completed their coursework for Higher and Advanced Higher courses. This work can still be used as part of the suite of evidence for teachers and lecturers to draw on as they consider estimated grades.

We have received coursework for a range of National 5 subjects and have contacted National 5 coursework markers to confirm marking arrangements. All National 5 coursework, due to be uplifted in April and May, will not be submitted for marking.

We will provide further details on the estimation of grades, that we will need from teachers and lecturers to inform certification, and fuller details of our approach to certification, as soon as possible.

This is an unprecedented situation for us all, and circumstances are rapidly changing. With every change in circumstances, we continue to consider how best to recognise learner achievement in as fair a way as possible.

Please be assured that everyone here at SQA is fully committed to working with you to deliver for Scotland’s young people. Thank you for your patience and continued co-operation.
Fiona Robertson
SQA Chief Executive and Scotland’s Chief Examiner

Original post: https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/93658.html

Dear colleague

I am writing to provide you with an update on the activities that UCAS is undertaking in response COVID-19, and assure you that UCAS has the flexibility and expertise to support all audiences during this time.

UCAS set up a cross-business coronavirus working group in early February to identify and understand risks and issues relating to our services, review contingency planning, and coordinate communications and risk mitigation activities – this group now meets daily to ensure we are responding to the fast evolving environment, and are well positioned to support the universities, colleges, schools and students.

Most undergraduate applicants are already in the UCAS system. There are currently nearly 600,000 undergraduate applicants, and just under half are UK 18 year olds. The majority of these applicants will be holding an offer and have pending qualifications, such as A levels or Highers.

We continue to operate the admissions process as normal – we are continuing to support customers via our Customer Experience Centre and will continue to keep students informed of the latest developments via our established communication channels.For our customers, we are publishing the latest updates online in three main places:

[ https://www.ucas.com/undergraduate/after-you-apply/coronavirus-covid-19-latest-updates ] for students, also linked to from the homepage of UCAS.com

[ https://www.ucas.com/advisers/guides-and-resources/adviser-news/news/coronavirus-update ] for advisers in the relevant area of ucas.com

[ https://www.ucas.com/providers/coronavirus-update ] and for universities and colleges, in an open-access area of the providers section of our site.

However, with the cancellation of examinations across the UK, we recognise that the way in which students are accepted to higher education this year will be different to previous years. We are working extensively with the relevant government departments, regulators and sector bodies, such as Department for Education, UUK Ofqual, Scottish Government and Office for Students, to ensure that there is shared information and understanding as the situation developments.

I am confident UCAS has the flexibility to accommodate any changes to the examination awarding process. We will be providing further information about this once there is clarity regarding the awarding process and timeline. However, when reviewing how we can flex the cycle to accommodate the cycle, our paramount consideration will be fairness to students.

We’re also currently undertaking modelling exercises to understand how potential changes to the application cycle could alter behaviour in both the 2020 and 2021 admissions cycle. We will be able to share some of this intelligence in due course in order to support their sector with their own planning.

UCAS is ready to play a key role in supporting the sector to reduce the impact of the pandemic on admissions to higher education. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss further, particularly if you feel UCAS can offer you support.

Yours faithfully

Clare

Clare Marchant

Chief Executive