Cattle class! Primary school unveils classroom of the future with parents dropping off children into segregated PENS before they are taken to socially-distanced seats – with rule-breakers told three strikes and you’re sent home
- Classrooms have undergone a major change in the wake of the coronavirus
- Parents required to drop their children into pens at different times of the day
- Crucial social interaction with classmates drastically limited in new rules
- These include ‘one child per table’ and no breakfast or after-school clubs
- Students who constantly break social distancing rules will be sent home
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
A primary school has unveiled how its classrooms will look when they reopen next month in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak with children being dropped off by their parents into pens.
Co-headteacher Matt Ferris of Kingsholm Primary School in Gloucester has shown where parents will be expected to queue as they drop-off their child
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 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.
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.
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)
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.
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
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.