A Welwyn Garden City primary school headteacher has praised her catering staff for providing "quality" free school meals while most pupils learn from home.

Holwell Primary School headteacher Sarah-Grace French also sympathised with families and staff acknowledging that it's a "challenging time for everybody".

She said: "We've had a very successful start, obviously it was very difficult at the beginning trying to make the right decision and trying to support staff and families. But we have had a very smooth transition into our remote learning.

Welwyn Hatfield Times: A food package for a family who have one child.A food package for a family who have one child. (Image: Holwell Primary School)

"We've had lots of laptops we've given out to our families and our food hampers have been incredible.

"We're very lucky because we have an in-house catering manager called Mrs Chalkley who is fantastic. So our food hampers are the essential items that parents will need to ensure that they can provide healthy and balanced diets for children."

The food hampers contain bags of pasta, tins of beans, fruit, fresh vegetables, treats "that the children love" and more.

Miss French continued: "We're very proud of the resources, time, and effort that has been put into our hampers."

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The transition from normal in school teaching to online learning has been a relatively smooth process for the school thanks to the use of tools like Google Classroom.

Miss French said: "It's been very easy and very smooth. Obviously, it is new technology so for a lot of our families and parents it's not something that they've really ever needed to use prior to lockdown.

"So I know for them I think this has probably been as much of an education as it has been for the children.

"All of our families have been very resilient and have tried to work with us and with the platform. We also provide live lessons each day for the children as a way for them to touch base with the teachers and interact with each other. I think that face to face contact is what the children really miss."

Speaking on when children should return to school Miss French added: "We want to welcome our children back as soon as possible however the decision must be made at the right time to ensure, not only the safety of not only the children, their families, and the staff."