Wednesday 26th January 2022
Dear Parents/Carers,
Face Coverings and PCR Tests
As you are probably aware, from tomorrow, face coverings are no longer compulsory in indoor or public places. However, it is still advised that people wear face coverings in enclosed or crowded spaces and when meeting strangers. We know in our school community that Covid is still circulating. We still have staff absent who are suffering from the after effects of Covid, as well as staff, children and parents still testing positive. Due to this, we are still going to ask staff/visitors to wear a face covering in communal areas, or when meeting together in school. Therefore, if you are invited in for a meeting with a member of staff, or to speak to someone in the office, we will still ask you to wear a face covering to help keep everyone safe. Some people are still testing positive on a lateral flow test and are showing no symptoms at all. Wearing a face covering helps to protect all of us from this virus.
We are also still asking you to please book your child for a PCR test if they have any symptoms: a new, continuous cough, a temperature or a loss of smell or taste. Many children, and staff, have suffered with a temperature, headaches, a runny nose, sneezing, sickness and pains before testing positive. If children come in to school with any of these symptoms, we will contact you to collect them and take them home. If they have a negative result from a PCR, and feel well, they can then return to school.
Following on from Public Health advice, if someone in your household tests positive, please get a PCR test for everyone else in the house and isolate until a negative result is returned. Children can then come to school if they take a lateral flow test result each morning for 7 days so long as each day, the test is negative. If one of these tests shows positive, please contact the school and isolate your child in the home.
Lunch Time Clubs and After School Clubs
We have taken the decision to not introduce any clubs for the rest of this half term. Mixing different children together, and the uncertainty of staff shortages, could potentially cause difficulties and increase the spread of Covid-19. We will let you know before we break up for half term (18/02/22) whether the clubs will start after the holiday, week beginning 28/02/22.
Parents of children who had secured a place for the clubs for this half term, will be telephoned and asked if they would like their children to still take part in these clubs. Assuming the clubs will start after the half-term holiday, these children will know that they still have their place.
Parent/Carer Consultations
We were expecting to hold parent/carer consultation meetings face-to-face at the end of this half term. We have decided to stay with the option of either a telephone consultation or Zoom meeting as we did previously. Details of these meetings, eg, dates and times, will be sent to you next week so that we can book you in if you would like to have a meeting with your children’s class teachers.
Thank You
Thank you for your ongoing support. It has been a very difficult half term so far and we have seen the negative effects of Covid in our school community. Many children, parents and staff have contracted this virus and it does have a massive impact on the children’s education. Thank you to those parents/carers who have had children isolating and encouraged them to complete the work on Dojo that their teachers have set for them. This was especially evident during our day’s closure for the deep clean: many children joined their teachers during the Zoom lessons and brought their completed work into school with them the next day. They could not have done this without your support so thank you.
Please stay safe.
Yours faithfully
Mrs Janet Edwards Mrs Sharon Brewer
Head Teacher Deputy Head Teacher