Dear parents / carers,

The current advice about self-isolating and social distancing is now that young people who have a learning disability and are routinely offered a flu job are now considered to be in one of the high risk groups. In addition to this there are other vulnerable groups which are relevant to some of our young people, e.g. diabetes, chronic health conditions. As a result of this then we believe that the majority of our families should follow the advice around self-isolating and social distancing in order to delay spread of the virus, this is advised for an extended period.

In addition to the risks to the young people, who are of our paramount concern, then there are also a growing number of staff who are either needing to self-isolate due to their own health concerns or because of those that they live with.

Over the past few weeks and more intensely over the last few days have been considering further actions that we need to take. Each action has been considered in relation to a full risk assessment.

As a result then the school (all sites) will be closed to pupils from the end of the day today, Tuesday 17^th March. We will reconsider this decision on Friday 20^th and on a regular basis following this.

We will endeavour to continue to support learning opportunities and your class team will be in touch over the remainder of the week with ideas to support this.

I hope you can understand that this has been a very difficult decision to make and at all times have kept the needs of our young people as our priority.

We will update the website front page and use schoolcomms to communicate with parents and carers.

Jo Hill

Head Teacher