Secondary students in Fife will have one day in school during the first week of the new term, with the council planning for all pupils to be back full time from Monday 17 August.
Primary and special school pupils, meanwhile, will be back full time on Wednesday 12 August following two teacher training days. The Fife plans show, once again, that the planned “full” return of schools in Scotland in August will not take effect immediately.
The Fife Council plans have emerged in the wake of the announcement last week that Scottish schools should prepare for pupils to attend full time with no social distancing after the summer holidays.
Later in the week, the general secretary of secondary school leaders’ body School Leaders Scotland, Jim Thewliss, said that even if all pupils get back to school full time in August, that return will have to be staggered.
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The news about the aim of a full return of pupils came in the same week that most schools were breaking up for summer. It prompted one headteacher to say she “could have wept”, given that since May, schools have been planning for the part-time return of pupils based on two-metre social distancing.
A national schools return date of Tuesday 11 August had already been set by the government, but the previous messaging had suggested that “blended learning” - which in some areas could have meant pupils being in school only one day a week - might be in place for some considerable time.
In a letter to parents, Fife Council’s director of education and children’s services, Carrie Lindsay, said that primary children and special schools - including those who attended additional support classes - would “all be offered the opportunity to return to school on 12 August”.
However, she said that due to secondary schools’ “size, layout and timetabling arrangements”, they would “stagger” the intake of pupils for the first three days of the new year, “with a full return from Monday 17 August”.
Derek Allan, the headteacher of Kirkcaldy High, said in an email to parents that teacher-training days were being held in the authority on the Monday and Tuesday of the first week back, leaving three days when pupils could attend school. He said “all Fife secondary schools” were planning “a three-day period of induction with one-third of learners in on any given day”.
VERY IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ALL PUPILS, PARENTS AND CARERS: KHS Reopening Arrangements for August 2020. This has been emailed out to all our families. We’ll back in the place we all want to be ... raring to go, working safely, respecting ourselves, others and learning. pic.twitter.com/5KwOLQPwU5
- Kirkcaldy High School (@KirkcaldyHigh) July 1, 2020
Mr Allan - who described recent months as the “most surreal period in our recent history” - said: “This will be very important in testing our arrangements around health and safety, eg: buses, entering the building, staggered breaks, the new one-way system, cleaning and handwashing, etc. Having a reduced number of kids for a short time will make this important phase more manageable.”
He also said that “certain curriculum offers” like PE “might have to be a bit different” in the coming school year and made it clear that part-time schooling remained “a contingency or a ‘Plan B’”.
Last week, the Scottish government told schools to prepare for the full-time return of pupils in August, the day before many schools in Glasgow and other parts of the west of Scotland were due off on holiday.
Until education secretary John Swinney’s statement in the Scottish Parliament, schools had been preparing for a mix of home and school-based learning, adhering to two-metre social distancing as per the Scottish government’s original plan for reopening schools.
The government has sought to reassure schools that this has not been “wasted work”, as it may yet be needed given that there are “no certainties” when dealing with a global pandemic.
However, with many schools having had little or no time to prepare for full-time face-to-face learning, teacher unions and school leader bodies have argued that the return of pupils should be delayed or staggered.
