As many of you will be aware, members of UNISON will be taking industrial action on Wednesday 16th July and Thursday 17th July. This will involve a significant number of support staff at Whickham School including caretakers, cleaners, administrative staff and learning support assistants.
In the interests of maintaining health and safety and the security of the site, the school will only be open for the morning sessions on July 16th and 17th.
School will be open as normal in the morning but closed at 12.25pm.
Students wishing to remain for school lunch can do so but all students and staff will need to be off-site by 1.30pm so that the site can be secured.
New Temporary Accomodation
Temporary classrooms have arrived in school to replace the accommodation lost during the Easter fire. They are due to be handed over on Monday 14th July 2008. It had been our intention to use Wednesday 16th and Thursday 17th July to facilitate a great deal of the packing away and movement of materials and equipment into the new buildings as well as all the other reorganisation that our revised accommodation plan involves.
We had intended to bring in additional caretaking support to facilitate this but the Unison strike means that this cannot now take place. As a result, this packing and movement will need to take place on Friday 18th July 2008 if the school is to be ready for a crisp start in September after the holiday period.
Therefore the school will be closed to students on Friday July 18th 2008.
Staff will be in school as normal.