Dear parents,
During his address to the nation on Sunday evening, President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster to deal with the spread of the Coronavirus in South Africa.
One of the decisions made in this regard was that all schools in South Africa will be closing on Wednesday, 18 March, until after the Easter Weekend.
As the 2020 Easter Weekend falls on Friday, 10 April to Monday, 13 April, it is expected at this time that the school will reopen on Tuesday, 14 April.
While all necessary arrangements to facilitate this has now been made by the Union Schools, we regret to inform you that this has resulted in us also having to postpone our upcoming 33rd annual Senior Rugby & Hockey Festival as well as our Matric Farewell.
The festival was scheduled for this weekend, Friday to Monday, 20 – 23 March, and would have been attended by 30 visiting hockey and rugby teams from all over the province.
The school’s Matric Farewell would have been held this Wednesday, 18 March.
While this was by no means an easy decision, we believe it is in the best interest of the safety and well-being of our learners and everyone else that would have been associated with these events.
We hope this postponement puts us in the best position to safely host these events at some later date.
Please accept our apologies with regards to this unfortunate matter. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you and appreciate your understanding.
The Union Schools care deeply about the well-being of our learners, staff, friends and family of the school as well as the greater Graaff-Reinet community and our nation at large.
As a country we are facing a very uncertain time, but we trust that the decisions made last night by our government will help us to try and curb the spread of COVID-19.
We need to work together, and remember that this affects us all.
We support the President in urging all citizens to remain calm, to stay informed and to take the necessary precautions to prevent the spread of the virus. We know matters will change from day to day and we will keep in close contact with the National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) – to remain on top of the latest health news.
We understand that closing of schools seems to cause a bit of uncertainty, but we support this measure to ensure families can be at home until more clarity is obtained about the way forward.
We are hoping to keep our educational programme alive, by perhaps allowing our learners to study via e-learning, this will however be determined, if and when, it is deemed necessary.
The Union Schools will endeavour to keep the school community informed of all developments in this regard as well as to how this will affect the school year going forward.
