Dear Parents & Carers
I can’t help but be pleased that this term is drawing to a close. There has been much to celebrate. Online learning is improving and has come a long way since lockdown 1, many of the changes forced upon us in school have shown significant benefits to the extent that we will keep them, almost all our students have shown a level of resilience that young people are rarely credited with. However, the disruption to learning for many (if not all) students has been extensive. I am eternally grateful for the patience shown by students, parents and staff as we have dealt with case after case of Covid-19, sending hundreds home. It has been hard, and for many it has happened three or even four times; not something which can continue. As the term draws to a close, we look at our records and see over 110 cases of Covid-19 since mid-October among students and staff, and I believe pretty much every single student in the school has now had to spend some time at home due to either being a contact or because of a year group closure.
Therefore, it will come as no surprise that we welcome the announcement that isolation periods will be phased out in January and replaced with daily tests. It is a great step forward; a relief to everybody when it justifiably hit the headlines on Tuesday this week. The Department for Education have not felt the need to share with us any details on how this might work just yet. I wonder whether they know that at its peak in Myton last term, the pandemic would have meant administering over 500 tests per day to those identified as close contacts. This isn’t something we can just start in January without some guidance. I am sure Mr Williamson is very pleased to have broken this news, but as his record shows – opening schools in the summer (or not as it happened), the exam results in August and the overall state of university education – he really isn’t one for detail.
As it happens, Schools Week, a publication for teachers, managed to get hold of a document, prepared by the NHS, advising schools how to do this. Having read it, I have learned that every test must be administered and supervised in school, all test kits logged and scanned, all results recorded and shared, all spent tests disposed of as clinical waste, all test stations to be 2 metres apart, and parental consent given and stored for the tests to happen. They recommend that a team of 9 people can carry out 100 tests in 3 hours… Hmmm. We may need a few more than 9 people with the numbers we have dealt with, and quite a lot of space. They do say that schools will be reimbursed for ‘reasonable’ spending on this project, although they don’t define what that means. That in itself is scary. Our version of ‘reasonable’ is likely to differ greatly from theirs. They called the initial exam results in the summer ‘fair and robust’ whereas we described them here as ‘an utter disgrace’. We often differ.
Nevertheless this is the right way to go. Testing on this scale will allow us to keep kids and staff in school and we will work to getting it sorted as soon as possible, but I do ask for patience. This will require space, hiring of staff, safeguarding checks, training, and the solving of any number of other challenges we are not yet sure about. It will also require a lot of people. I can assure you that after 10 years of austerity, I do not have teams of 9 people sitting around with little to do. To this end, I may need to come to you, our ever-patient and supportive parents and ask for help to get this up and running. I will likely be advertising a job or two for gifted administrators and/or people with medical experience and these adverts will go direct to parents first in the hope that we can help at least one or two people whose careers have been hit by this pandemic. When the testing starts, we will be asking for very prompt returns for parental consent and, as ever, we will be asking for all our stakeholders to continue showing the empathy and understanding we have seen over the last few months.
This is all a huge challenge but, for the first time in quite a while, we can see a route to having full attendance in school. That’s definitely worth fighting for.
I wish you all a Happy Christmas and best wishes for 2021.
Andy Perry – Head Teacher
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