On the Friday before half term, all schools, colleges and early-years settings received a letter from the local Director of Public Health describing concerns over rising COVID-19 infection rates in the South West.
Their response to this is to ask us to reduce mixing between groups of pupils as much as possible during the first two weeks after the half term holiday.
The health and safety of our pupils and families is always our priority and so we will be complying with their request and looking for ways to restrict mixed gatherings of pupils. However, it is also important to us that we maintain a balance with other areas of school life, such as by minimising the impact on children’s learning and maintaining some of the social aspects we know are important for children’s mental health.
The school will therefore be making these changes to how we work for at least the next two weeks:
- No whole school or Unit assemblies
All assemblies will be class-only.
Celebration assemblies will be virtual ones on Fridays, so please keep sending in children’s certificates, medals and awards to share with us all. - FOSS Disco is cancelled
We are really sorry about this but we cannot have such a large mixed gathering of children in the hall. - Reducing numbers of visitors
Please do not come into the school building unless your visit is essential.
These aspects of school life will continue as before, but may change in the coming weeks:
- Small group and individual learning support across the school
- Parent volunteers working in school
- Mixed outside play
- Drop-off and collection times
- Clubs
Additional notes:
- The Year 4/5 trip to Winchester Science Centre will go ahead as planned tomorrow.
- In light of this current alarm over rising infection rates, and although we don’t know what the official guidance will be in December, it seems sensible for Christmas plans to be restricted to single classes only and shared virtually with parents, i.e. there will be no performances in school. We’ll write to you with more detailed plans nearer the time.
Public Health will be reviewing the infection rates over the next two weeks to decide whether to revise their guidance. I will keep you informed.
Meanwhile, I would like to take the opportunity to remind you of our general guidance for keeping Covid out of school. There have been no changes to this guidance since it was shared with you before half term:
1. If your child develops symptoms, keep your child off school and book a PCR test.
2. If your child is waiting for a PCR test result, it is ok to bring your child to school providing they test negative on a LFD test each morning (and have no symptoms).
3. If your child is a close contact of someone who has tested positive (e.g. someone living in the same household) it is ok to bring your child to school each day while they have no symptoms but we would recommend you carry out an LFD test on your child each morning. Whilst this is not mandatory, it is a sensible step in order to prioritise everyone’s safety.
4. If your child tests positive on a LFD or PCR test, they should remain at home and isolate. The isolation period includes the day the symptoms started (or the day the test was taken if the child does not have symptoms), and the next 10 full days.
In addition, Public Health Dorset also recommend that all parents should test themselves twice weekly using free lateral flow tests in order to prevent children being sent to school from an asymptomatic infected household.
We keep hoping that things will settle down at school and that we can return to some sort of normal life. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be possible and we keep having to quickly adjust to ever-changing guidance. Thank you for your patience and support as we try to navigate our way through yet another difficult period.