12 December 2022
Dear Parents and Carers,
Due to a serious fault with our heating system, we have this morning at 11.30am made the difficult decision to close the school early. Local Authority engineers have tried hard to fix the fault but, as of present, have been unable to do so.
As a fundamental principle the guidance from the Department for Education (DfE) is very clear in that every effort must be made to keep schools open, even if only limited numbers of children can attend. We believe that we have made every effort but are now in a position where the school has to be closed.
A team of engineers were onsite prior to 6.30am this morning and carried out repairs that allowed us to open. However, as the heating system has become operational again it has suffered a further malfunction, and there is no prospect of this being fixed today in a way that allows us to heat the building to a safe and adequate temperature.
We are of course conscious of our need to provide both hot meals to students and have managed the closure in such a way that all students could access a hot meal before their departure.
The school will continue to update parents via our own website and twitter feed as well as via email.
Our website is available here: https://durhamjohnston.org.uk/
Our twitter feed is at @DurhamJohnston
Parents and carers can also find out about the schools' status by visiting www.durham.gov.uk/schoolclosures
Engineers are onsite now to address the problem and we will provide information about our status tomorrow as soon as possible. We hope to open as normal tomorrow, but please look at our own website as well as for information on local radio stations.
Students wanting to continue to access educational materials should first look at their class Teams. They could also make use of BBC or Oak Academy resources. Please note that at the present time teaching staff will not be able to switch to online teaching as they also have to travel home as the school cannot remain open for staff or students.
Many thanks for your continued support and genuine apologies that we haven’t been able to resolve this issue as we had hoped.
Andrew O’Sullivan