Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope this email finds you all well in the run up to the end of the session. I am sure we are all a little ‘spent’ and ready for a break but I wanted to take the time before the end of term to give you an update on parent run extra curricular clubs (ECC) for Session 2021-2.

Your Parent Council team have been working hard to find a way to get ECC back up and running, however it is proving very challenging and I wanted to take the time to explain to you some of the constraining factors we are working with:

1) As per the updates from Ms Kyle, we have been told by CEC that in school, children should remain in year group bubbles in order to minimise contacts. It is recommended Parent Councils respect this. It is anticipated this will be reviewed at the September break but for planning purposes we should anticipate this being the case until October.

2) BPS will continue to run staggered finish times across next year as this minimises congestion for both parents and children in the school and on Montpelier. Even when year group bubbles are ‘burst’ this will add complexity to the start times for ECC.

3) We expect that the school will continue to use spaces such as the dining and stage halls for breakout teaching spaces to facilitate education recovery. This will limit our access to lets as and when they are made available to us.

4) We have a new booking system in Class4Kids which has not been tested.

5) Many of our club tutors and club organisers have moved on and due to a change in personal circumstances, we are in need of a range of new volunteers to help administer the club system. For those who have organised clubs in the last year, you should be in receipt of a seperate email from me.

Given all of this, we have concluded a need to be pragmatic and take a step by step approach to clubs for September.

Our proposal is that

  • from early September – October half term we will run clubs for P6/7 only;
  • these will take place in MUC where the P6/7s are able to walk to without chaperone (subject to parental consent);
  • there will be one (or potentially two) clubs per day;
  • we will aim to cover sport, science, music and creative areas:
  • we will continue to employ coaches on a freelance basis whilst minimising costs to parents;
  • we will continue to employ on a freelance basis a Clubs Manager (doorkeeper) based at MUC. They will have responsibility for monitoring children in and out of the building, act as first aider and as COVID officer for track and trace purposes.

Separately, due to a change in Sports Scotland policy, we are unsure of which Active Schools sports clubs will be available. There is much work to be done with our AS Coordinator, Tony Segal, across the summer to be able to bring you an Active Schools programme for sport. I hope to have more information on this in due course.

Parents of children moving into P6 and 7 can expect more information in the next week and in the week prior to school returning.

Whilst I am sure this will be disappointing for many, I hope you will agree that it is a pragmatic step to ensure we can run this smoothly and within the constraining factors that are before us.

When COVID hit and we closed down clubs in March 2020, it was heartbreaking. We now have the potential to build back better and ensure that our clubs system returns to one to be admired across the City. If you would like to help us on this journey, please get in touch. We will need many of us to make it light work for all and to give our children access to some amazing activities to supplement their Bruntsfield experience.

Please get in touch if you can help or have any questions.

Best wishes,
Karen Galloway
Chair
Bruntsfield Parent Council