Letter to Parents January 2022

Dear Parents and Carers,

Happy New Year!

We look forward to welcoming your children back to school tomorrow at the usual start times. We have received emails from some of you asking about Covid measures and what you can do to help. I thought it best to respond to everyone at the same time with this letter.

We are aware that the Omicron Covid variant is highly transmissible and rates are climbing locally and nationally. However, we expect to run the school as normally as possible with some of the following measures in place.

• The children and staff will be kept in year group bubbles within the school building to minimise unnecessary transmission.
• Adults will be wearing masks when moving around the building and at the beginning and the end of the school day when large numbers of our community are on site.
• Children and staff will wash hands or gel frequently.
• We will continue with high touch point cleaning throughout the school day.
• We will have class and year group assemblies throughout this half term, although these will be virtual for the time being.
• We will inform you of any positive cases in a year group or phase as soon as we know about them.
• We will monitor staff absence and try our best to cover classes with supply or our own staff. We would want to keep children in school having face to face teaching. However, last term it was beginning to get very challenging for schools to find cover staff and we expect January to be even more challenging.
• We will take advice from Public Health if staff or pupil sickness levels become very high.
• The classrooms have CO2 monitors.
• Staff will also purge the air regularly by opening windows and doors.  Please ensure children wear their coasts to school daily.
• After school clubs will continue until we are advised otherwise.
• All staff will be taking Lateral Flow Tests regularly and we would encourage families to do the same to help us all stay safe.

If a member of your household tests positive, please test everyone in your house even if they have no symptoms. Please only send children into school if they have a negative test result if others in your house have Covid. The school office team will be happy to discuss this with you, if you are not sure.

Please be ready to come and collect your child quickly if they become sick and ensure we have all the relevant contact details for yourself and any one you have nominated on your collection lists.

If you travelled abroad over the holidays, please let the office know on your return and follow any isolation advice.

We are expecting this half term to be particularly challenging and we appreciate your ongoing support to keep our community safe, well and the children learning in school.

The staff emails and office emails are available if you have any further concerns or questions about the new term.

Yours sincerely,

John Norton

Head Teacher