Peterborough ‘fourth highest in the country’ for schools fully re-opening

Peterborough ranks fourth highest in the country for schools fully re-opening, the city council believes.
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The authority said despite an absence of national date “we believe that on Monday, September 14, Peterborough has the fourth highest level of schools fully open (out of 150 local authorities)”.

It stated that pupil attendance was “above national average” and only 1.5 per cent below the top performing local authority, but that it has “already identified an increase in the numbers of parents making the decision to home educate their children”.

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It added: “The Attendance Team are continuing to offer advice and support schools to ensure that they adopt a supportive and nurturing approach in the first instance to manage any school attendance related issues before any type of legal interventions are considered.”

Make sure your face covering covers both the nose and mouth in order to be effective (Shutterstock)Make sure your face covering covers both the nose and mouth in order to be effective (Shutterstock)
Make sure your face covering covers both the nose and mouth in order to be effective (Shutterstock)

A council report does not include overall figures for attendance, but states that in early years settings at the start of September there was approximately 64 per cent of usual numbers, with 84.3 per cent of childminders and 98.1 per cent of settings now open for children.

Schools fully re-opened for all year groups at the start of September, and the report notes: “We have seen higher rates of suspected symptoms in line with increasing pupil numbers but very low reported cases of Covid-19 in either staff or pupils.

“There have been a low number of suspected and confirmed cases in early years settings during the summer holidays.”

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Peterborough has also been the only local authority in the East of England to receive a two-week testing unit for frontline education staff which was provided by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Clinical Commissioning Group.

This has seen approximately 200 people tested.

School improvement advisers have been working to support headteachers draw up post-Covid-19 recovery plans, with some focusing on the next three years and others just on the current academic year.

The council stated that “the recovery planning template has been typically well-received” and that “all of the risk assessments were signed off by the local authority prior to the beginning of term”.

Moreover, so far around 1,300 laptops, Chromebooks, tablets and 4G routers funded by the Department for Education have been sent either to schools or to social worker teams in Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, with another 186 either ready to be collected by social/family workers or awaiting preparation by engineers.