Inside Wales’ hub schools where teaching continues for children of key workers

At Marlborough Primary School in Cardiff you’ll still hear children laughing in the playground. You’ll still see pupils reading at their desks. At first glance, it’s as if nothing has changed: a normal day for a suburban school.

But look closer and you’ll spot the difference. In the playground there are fewer than 30 children; six weeks ago there would have been 500. In the classroom, pupils are carefully spaced out, and are regularly reminded by teachers to keep a safe distance from their friends.

Marlborough is one of 23 schools in the Welsh Capital that have become childcare hubs. Between 8am and 5pm, Monday to Friday, it opens its doors to the children of key workers.

For headteacher Geraldine Foley, it’s been a huge adjustment. “We’ve had to think very quickly and creatively about how we ensure that when children come here they are safe - first and foremost. That we can look after their wellbeing and that there’s a range of activities the children can do, as well as their learning which also needs to continue.”

Marlborough accommodates children from five different primary schools in the city. Teachers from each school are on a rota. The focus for staff has been to create a safe, settled environment for the children in their care.

“Hygiene has become an integral part of our role now,” explains Geraldine. “The children all have their own locker, they have their own equipment so there’s no cross contamination. They have their own pencil case sets that we’ve made for them. As the day goes on we wipe down all the contact surfaces. And we still have our cleaners come in every evening when the children have left.”

Watch the full report by Carwyn Jones here:

Children from Nursery up to Year 6 can attend the school. Social distancing is a priority, but not always easy.

“It’s our biggest challenge,” says Geraldine. “Children naturally gravitate towards one another, and the nursery children have usually got their lace undone and the first thing you do is kneel down and do their laces up. And we still have to do that, children still need comforting.

“But we’ve put a lot of thought into how to use the space available to us. Teachers plan in advance the kinds of activities they can do with the children and how they can make sure that children are kept two metres apart while they do those activities. When the children have their breakfast or lunch, we make sure that they’re sitting two metres apart.

“Of all the health and safety measures we’ve put in place, it’s the most difficult one, day in, day out. We have to think it through very, very carefully.”

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10 miles away, teachers at Bedwas High School near Caerphilly are also adjusting to change. Like Marlborough, their school has been repurposed as a hub for the children of essential workers. Their youngest child is three, their oldest is 15.

“I’m trained as a secondary school teacher,” explains Assistant Headteacher Gareth Williams. “So seeing little three and four year olds running around is a new experience for me.”

“I only have one child here that I knew beforehand. So all of the children are new. They were strangers at the start, but they’re not any more.”

Gareth taught his last lesson, to his Year 13 Geography students, on Friday 20th March. His classroom has now been transformed into a play area for infants, complete with dolls’ prams and toy dinosaurs. Elsewhere in the school, children colour in t-shirts in the science labs and make mosaics in the design and technology workshops.

Converting the school into a childcare hub, at short notice, was a huge logistical undertaking. Staff at Bedwas High had to completely remodel their secondary school to accommodate younger children. Desks, chairs and play equipment were brought in from local primary schools. Everything had to be made age appropriate, from the toilets to the canteen. But Gareth was unfazed. “Get teachers in a room together,” he says, “and they’ll solve anything.”

No-one knows when the school will fully re-open to normal capacity. Looking ahead, Gareth has already identified potential problems.

“If social distancing is going to be the main guideline, and we do have to open the school with social distancing in place, it’s going to prove very challenging for school leaders,” he says.

“I measured my own classroom to see what a two metre distance would look like if we had students coming in to do a geography lesson. And I know I could, at a safe distance of two metres, have eight students in the class and only eight students in that class.

“Some of my classes are up to 33 students so that’s just an example, just one example, of some of the challenges that we’re going to face.”

You can see more on this story in Wales This Week: Coronavirus - Our Changing Nation.