The Prime Minister announced plans for living with COVID-19 last night. The government also published guidance for schools. Key points for our school:

• From today, no need for pupils or staff to test twice a week for asymptomatic infection.
• From Thursday, the legal requirement to self-isolate and stay at home following a positive test is removed.
  • Instead, staff and pupils who test positive are advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for at least 5 full days, and then continue to follow the guidance until they have 2 negative test results on consecutive days.
  • Close contacts, who are fully vaccinated, and those under 18 years old, no longer need to test daily for 7 days.
• We will continue to send a pupil home from school if they show common symptoms of COVID-19 at school, including a continuous cough, high temperature or loss of taste and/or smell.  
• Until the end of this school year, we will continue to provide remote education by Microsoft Teams to those pupils who are self-isolating at home.
  • Parents please continue to use our form to tell us about pupils who are self-isolating at home (Fielding, Parents, COVID pages).
  • Pupils should only join remote lessons if they are well enough to work at home. Otherwise, please rest and recover.
• During April, the government says that the NHS will contact parents to offer vaccination to all children aged 5 to 11 in England.

 

The government continues to highlight the importance of high attendance at school. We will continue to write to parents if attendance falls below 95% for any reason. If we are worried about a pupil's attendance at school, we will work with families, including involving support from professionals beyond the school, until attendance improves.

 

In school, we will continue to reduce the risk of infection transmission by:

• regular hand-washing at break time and before eating food;
• encouraging good respiratory hygiene - 'catch-it', 'kill-it', 'bin-it' approach for coughs and colds;
• good classroom ventilation, balanced with warmth, by opening doors and windows;
• staff distancing from pupils.

 

National tests for pupils at the end of year 2 and 6 will take place, as planned.

• The government will not publish 'league tables' to parents.
• Schools will be given the usual information that lets us compare how well we are doing to other schools. 

 

Shortly, we will set out our plans to phase out our remaining control measures in school, returning to pre-COVID arrangements and organisation. This will include relaxing the requirement for adults to wear masks in busy areas, returning to face-to-face assemblies, other large gatherings of pupils indoors and face-to-face parent events.

 

A degree of caution remains because:

• some members of staff have become ill with COVID-19, often needing a phased return to work over several weeks;
• we may need to introduce more control measures if advised by our local public health team.