Date: 09/12/2020

To: All NCEA Trust school parents/carers
Subject: Change to Christmas closure date

Parents and Carers,

The Department for Education yesterday took the decision to allow schools to close to pupils on 18th December and hold a Training Day instead. The reason behind this is to reduce the risk of pupils having to self isolate over Christmas, avoiding the impact  this would have on family celebrations.

After much consideration, we have taken the decision that all schools within the NCEA Trust (Bishop’s Primary, Warkworth C of E Primary, Castle School and Duke’s Secondary School) will close to pupils on 18th December. The autumn term will therefore finish on Thursday 17th December and our schools will reopen for spring term on Tuesday 5th January.

This is incredibly short notice from the Department for Education and we apologise for any inconvenience that this causes to you.  However, we believe that this is the correct decision for our community because it will reduce the risk of our pupils self isolating on Christmas Day.

Yours faithfully,

Alan Hardie.
Chief Executive Officer at NCEA Trust.