Return to School - COVID Update

We are looking forward to seeing the children back in school tomorrow after the half term break.

On Monday 21 February, the Prime Minister set out the next phase of the government’s COVID-19 response ‘Living with COVID-19’. COVID-19 continues to be a virus that we learn to live with and the imperative to reduce the disruption to children and young people’s education remains.

We now have updated advice and guidance for schools on the new ‘Living with COVID’ strategy. I felt it important to write to you all with the updated information and to share new parental guidance that has been produced what-parents-and-carers-need-to-know guidance.

In school, we continue to follow the control measures set out in the guidance:

• Regularly review and update risk assessments
• Ensure good hygiene for everyone. You should continue to ensure that pupils clean their hands regularly. This can be done with soap and water or hand sanitiser. Follow catch it, bin it, kill it approach for respiratory hygiene.
• Maintain appropriate cleaning regimes.
• Keep occupied spaces well ventilated.
• Follow public health advice on testing, self-isolation and managing confirmed cases of COVID-19.

If your child tests positive, or develops any of the main symptoms of COVID-19:

• a new continuous cough
• a high temperature
• a loss of, or change in, your normal sense of taste or smell (anosmia)

you should order a PCR test. You are advised to keep your child at home and avoid contact with other people while you are waiting for the test result. (We expect further guidance on what happens after 1^st April when testing is no longer widely available.)

If your child develops symptoms whilst in school, we will contact you to collect them and advise that you book a test.

Please note: If you insist on your child attending nursery, school, or college when they have symptoms, the educational establishment can take the decision to refuse your child if, in their reasonable judgement, it is necessary to protect other pupils and staff from possible infection with COVID-19. Their decision would need to be carefully considered in light of all the circumstances and current public health advice.

For education and childcare sectors, the main changes announced include:

• Changes to self-isolation and daily testing of close contacts -  Contacts are no longer required to self-isolate or advised to take daily tests, and contact tracing has ended.
• Changes to testing in education and childcare settings - staff, students and pupils in all mainstream education settings are no longer advised to undertake twice-weekly asymptomatic testing.

Our staff will continue to be vigilant around their own health, and will inform us if a member of their household tests positive, so we can put protective factors into place around their attendance at work and reducing the risk.

Our Director of Public Health, Dr Debbie Chase, reminds us that we can be cautiously optimistic - but that we can be more certain of that optimism if we do not suddenly give up all protective and hygiene measures.

Please remain vigilant around your child’s health and contact us if you have any questions that are not answered in the guidance links above.

Thank you once again for your support in this matter as we move into a new half term.