Dear Parents and Carers –

We hope you enjoyed the start of school, despite the strange circumstances we are currently living in.
We wanted to give you a short update about the parent council after-school clubs.

The clubs team has met up and discussed the issue and have decided that we will not run any Bruntsfield parent council after-school clubs until the end of 2020.

We will keep assessing the situation for 2021 and will update you before the Christmas break. We are aware that this must be disappointing news for many of you, and we did not take this decision lightly.

There are mainly three reasons for this decision:

  1. Edinburgh council are currently mainly concerned with running core school services, and rightly so. Any lets for after-school activities have been cancelled for the foreseeable future, also due to the increased cleaning regimes.
  2. Trying to run clubs in- or outside of school in the current situation would require complex risk assessments and ongoing management of very diverse activities, something we don’t think can be achieved by a volunteer-run organisation.
  3. The tenure of three crucial office bearers (the clubs team and the clubs treasurer) comes to an end this autumn, and so far we haven’t been able to find successors. All three are happy to provide support for their successors, but will not be able to dedicate as much time to their roles as in the past two or three years.

During lockdown a smaller number of online activities have been offered, and we will continue to support these activities, but not necessarily through our online booking system. Any updates will be communicated through the usual channels.

Point 3 above also highlights the fact that we urgently need new volunteers for running the clubs. Whilst the circumstances are obviously very difficult right now, the lack of day-to-day tasks also means that now is the time to get involved without the risk of being overwhelmed by the usual managerial tasks. It’s rather a time of reflection and planning of how we want to continue with running our clubs in the future.

Given the very positive developments around St Oswalds (which have been communicated elsewhere), this could be a very exciting time for shaping something new.

Kind Regards,
The Clubs Team