Dear Parents
I am writing to inform you of some changes in our management of the COVID virus. Thank you for your ongoing cooperation in both testing regularly and reporting any positive cases to the school, please do continue with this process using the following link:
To date it has been pleasing that this regular testing, alongside all of the other measures that we have all been taking, has managed to keep the level of infection relatively low within the school community.
There are two thresholds of infection that we as a school are asked to monitor:
a) 5 linked cases within a group of students.
b) 10% of any Year Group.
When either of these thresholds are met the school works in collaboration with the NHS to implement further control measures to help reduce the spread of the virus. Over the half term break and on return to school, we have been made aware of eleven students in Year 9 who have returned a positive test result, thankfully none are seriously unwell. They are now isolating and we have therefore met threshold a).
Please could I ask for your cooperation in discussing and implementing the following with your children:
1. If you have not already done, and your child is over the age of 12 strongly consider booking to have a COVID vaccination at one of the community-based centres as soon as possible. Book an NHS COVID
vaccination directly for your child aged 12 – 16 here.
2. If you would like your child to have the vaccination and are unable to book at one of the community clinics we will be offering the vaccination to those between the ages of 12 – 16 on the 16th November 2021 here at school. To be included in this program, it is essential that parental consent is provided asap via the following link. This link will be closed by the NHS at some point before the 16th November 2021, we believe this is likely to be by Friday 12th November 2021, so please do not delay in registering your consent.
3. Please all continue to complete the twice weekly tests, and report your results to both the school and the NHS via the link provided.
4. We would ask that students in Year 9 increase the frequency of testing, and the NHS have suggested that daily tests for the next five days would be a helpful step in reducing the infection rate. If your child would like more tests these can be obtained from their Form Tutor.
5. All students and staff who are able to do so to return to wearing a face mask when moving around within the school building. Masks can be removed when students are outside and if desired once seated in their classroom. We would ask everyone to return to the practice of mask wearing as quickly as possible, so ideally from arrival at school on Thursday 4th November 2021. We recognise that there are some students, indeed members of staff for whom it is not possible to follow this request, some may need to purchase some new masks for this purpose. Please can you ensure that purchases or exemption cards have been organised for full implementation from Monday 8th November 2021.
There are some other internal measures that we will also implement with regard to assemblies, order of accessing the canteen, ventilation of classrooms, reminders around use of hand sanitisers to
also assist with the objective of reducing the potential spread of COVID. We will monitor the impact
of these in school measures, as well as all other steps you are able to make at home, over the next
ten days and will inform you of subsequent steps.
Thank you for your cooperation on these matters, but doing so we hope to ensure the well-being of
everyone and avoid any return to remote learning. Our collective desire is to keep our school open
and operational to all students throughout the whole year.
Yours faithfully
Phil Grundy
Principal
