As many of you may know about the new Alfo
playground rules that have been in put in place. Our kids are now no longer
allowed to go into the school playground to burn all their energy, along with
they are not allowed to be within the safety of the school grounds. The school
play ground use to be open all time for the parents and kids to come in.
however now this has been changed to the gates only being opened at 8:45. This
does not help any parents whatsoever as they have work to get to, and other
schools to drop their other children to. The new Alfo head has put in the rule that when parents
arrive at the school with their kids, they are expected to make a single file
line outside of the gates up the pathway (outside Wilkos), and another single file line up the alleyway.
this causes many issues. Firstly, to have all the parents and kids line up,
this is causing a safety issue with no-one can get through the path as it's entirely
blocked. (From kids, parents, buggies, wheelchairs, etc). Secondly, the school
is wanting our children to line all the way up the alleyway, which is nothing
more than concerning as an alleyway is no place for a child to be in. Why
should we have to pay, when the staff already get a wage. The school want to
pay a simple fifty pence charge for the children to be supervised. The charge
may not seem so significant, yet many parents have more than just one child in
Alfo, if you have around 4 kids in the school, then that is ten pounds a
week. What the school haven't taken into consideration is some people can't
afford for this due to financial issues. Another point I'd like to make is how
when the old head teacher would run the school their was no issues of any kind
with the playground being opened at specific times. Yet since the new head has
taken over, she feels it should be necessary to put this rule into place and trying to make parents
pay for their own kids to go into school so they can get to work on time. I
find this preposterous! There is the saying 'if it's not broken, don't fix it'
Perhaps if the school had consulted with parents BEFORE making thus autocratic decision there would have been a better solution in place and some people may have been happy to supervise the playground before 08:45.