Dear Students,
As you may be aware the prime minister, Boris Johnson gave a statement COVID-19 update in parliament yesterday afternoon (Tuesday 23rd June 2020).
He announced measures to take place from the 4th July including:
- Distancing rules to change. If it is not possible to stay 2 metres apart, you should maintain a distance of a minimum of 1 metre.
- Some businesses in the hospitality industry to re-open e.g. hotels, restaurants, pubs, B&Bs, campsites and caravan parks. They must follow safety guidelines.
- Hairdressers will be able to reopen, as long as they take precautions.
Other close-contact services such as nail bars will not yet open, but the PM said they would be able to open “as soon as we’re confident they can operate safely”.
These include:
- Nightclubs
- Casinos
- Bowling alleys
- Indoor gyms
- Spas and salons
- Swimming pools
- Indoor soft play areas
The PM is due to review this over the next few weeks.
This leaves our school opening date in the air. While FE (further education) colleges are allowed to open, follow social distancing, and practice on beauty dolls only, private beauty schools fall into a grey area between the industries of education and hospitality. This is leaving private schools across the UK very much lost.
We are urgently in contact with the relevant examining boards and governing bodies to try and get more clarity on this.
We are looking at how FE colleges are able to open and the procedures they are putting in place, while also considering social distancing within our classrooms and working on beauty dolls, hands, etc. to simulate treatments.
As we offer many different courses, namely nails, beauty, facials, microblading, and laser, it is possible that some courses will be allowed to start back before others. The student numbers in each group vary, therefore we need to adapt and change these in order to accommodate social distancing. This means smaller class sizes and therefore, more classes need to be arranged to get all of the previous students completed. We now have the difficult task of adopting a bespoke pathway for the planned restarting of each individual class. This has to be done before we can commence any new classes that were due to start during the lockdown period.
This will be a complicated and time-consuming task for our team. We hope that we will be allowed to re-open for some courses, provided we use plastic models for practical treatments. Please allow a few weeks for us to organise this schedule. We will endeavor to get an updated plan in place and contact each of you as soon as possible when we are better informed.
We knew that our re-opening date was just a guide and is always subject to government rules. We hope our classes and our daily lives will return to normal soon. I appreciate that this is very frustrating for you, as it is for us, but we are doing everything we possibly can and exhausting all possible avenues. Thank you again for your patience.
For more information regarding the updates visit:
www.gov.uk easing of lockdown restrictions
Kind Regards,
Ray Cochrane Beauty School
118 Baker Street, London, W1U 6TT
