You will be aware from the Prime Minister’s announcement on Wednesday evening that Covid rates across the country are rising. This is particularly the case in the South West of England, where there has been a rapid rise in recent weeks.
As a result, when we return to school on Monday 1st November, after the break, our local Director of Public Health has requested that all schools increase our measures to curb the spread of infection.
Thank you for your considerable support throughout this period, and for your flexibility in working with these new, revised arrangements.
We will be sure to contact you with any other changes as we are asked to make them in the interests of public health.
The main symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are:
a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you’ve noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal
If you have any of these symptoms, get a PCR test (test that is sent to a lab) to check if you have coronavirus and stay at home until you get your result, even if the symptoms are mild.
Colds and other non-Covid symptoms are circulating but in the first instance cardinal symptoms should be treated as possible COVID and trigger isolation and testing as outlined above.
You will be aware from the Prime Minister’s announcement on Wednesday evening that Covid rates across the country are rising. This is particularly the case in the South West of England, where there has been a rapid rise in recent weeks.
As a result, when we return to school after the half term break, our local Director of Public Health has requested that we increase our measures to curb the spread of infection.
As a reminder, the main symptoms of coronavirus are:
Most people with coronavirus have at least one of these symptoms.
Thank you for your considerable support throughout this period, and for your flexibility in working with these new, revised arrangements. We will be sure to contact you with any other changes as we are asked to make them in the interests of public health.
This autumn, all young people aged 12-15 are being offered a first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine at the same time as the annual flu vaccine.
Children who are 12 years old and over on the day the School Age Immunisation Service (SAIS) team visits, will be offered a vaccination as part of the in-school vaccination programme.
Our local SAIS provider, Sirona Care & Health, is legally responsible for the delivery of the Covid-19 vaccine and flu vaccine to pupils in our region of Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.
Like all school-based vaccination programmes, these vaccinations will be administered by Sirona Care & Health following the usual approach to school-based immunisation.
Parents and carers will be contacted by their academy to confirm when the clinic will be held and to provide consent forms for both the flu and Covid-19 vaccines. Please do not return these forms to your academy. Please follow the instructions on the forms and return direct to Sirona Care & Health.
Parents can provide consent for both the flu and the Covid-19 vaccine, for one or other of the vaccines or neither. Our academies are not responsible for vaccines and so will not have access to any of the consent data that is gathered.
All eligible pupils will be asked to attend the clinic, where their consent data will be checked by Sirona Care & Health staff. Pupils without the appropriate consents will not be vaccinated.
For further information about the Covid-19 vaccination programme in schools, please refer to:
COVID-19 vaccination – A guide for children and young people (publishing.service.gov.uk)
COVID-19 vaccination programme for young people: guidance for parents – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
For further information about Sirona Care & Health and the vaccination clinics, please visit:
http://www.sirona-cic.org.uk/contact-sirona/
New Government guidance for Covid-19 testing for families, households and support bubbles with primary, secondary and college-age children or staff has been issued.
To support the NHS finding every case of Covid-19 as quickly and easily as possible, families, households and support bubbles with primary, secondary or college-age children or staff can now access regular testing.
As previously announced, secondary school and college students will be tested twice a week from March 8, receiving three initial tests at school or college before transitioning to twice weekly home testing. Primary school children will not be regularly asymptomatically tested due to low levels of transmission between younger aged children, but will continue to need to come forward for tests if they have symptoms.
Twice-weekly testing, using rapid lateral flow tests, will also now be given for free to all families and households with primary, secondary and college-aged children and young people or employees, including childcare and support bubbles, to help find more COVID-19 cases and break chains of transmission.
Twice-weekly testing is already provided to all teachers and will now also be offered to adults working in the wider school community, including bus drivers and after school club leaders.
Schools and colleges will not be providing test kits to families or administer the family testing process and this is encouraged but not mandatory. The tests are available for adults in these households from March 1.
You can get a twice-weekly test:
Twice weekly testing involves taking a test twice a week (every 3 or 4 days apart) and reporting every result to NHS Test and Trace on the same day you take the test, online here or by calling 119.
About a third of people with coronavirus show no symptoms and potentially spread it without knowing, so targeted, regular testing will mean more positive cases within households are found and prevented from entering school or college.
Testing families, households and support bubbles is an additional tool, working with other protective measures that are in place in schools to help protect staff and students, including social distancing, handwashing and face covering. Rapid testing detects cases quickly – in under 30 minutes – meaning positive cases can isolate immediately.
We hope you have found this information useful. The latest Coronavirus information for schools in the Cabot Learning Federation can be found on our Covid-19 hub
If you have any specific concerns or questions about your child returning to school from March 8, please do not hesitate to contact your child’s academy directly.
For specific support or questions regarding your child returning to in-person learning from March 8, please do not hesitate to contact your academy as soon as possible.
Secondary schools will be a focus for mass rapid testing for staff and pupils from the start of next term. The first day of term, Monday 4 January has already been planned as an in-service training day for staff, which means that the school will not be open for students. In line with Government guidance, we will then operate a staggered return as follows:
There have been a number of changes over recent days. To ensure that you have the most up-to-date information, your academy will update you on Monday 4th January with additional information, including how to access schoolwork.
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From December 2nd all Cabot Learning Federation Schools are in Tier 3 areas.
The Tier 3 rules mean:
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Dear parents and carers,
I am writing to you again on behalf of the Cabot Learning Federation, the multi-academy trust of which your child’s school is a part. When I wrote to you in March, as we faced the first period of national lockdown, I noted that it is unusual for the trust to communicate directly with families, since your usual contact comes directly from your child’s school.
Since then I have written again to all families in July and in September, with updates about school opening. With the ongoing challenges of Covid-19 it was important for you to know that we work very closely as a broader team across the trust to ensure that all CLF schools are supported in providing the best possible school experience for all of the pupils in all of our schools.
From the start of September our schools have been fully open for pupils, with careful measures in place to comply with Public Health England’s guidance and ‘system of controls’, which have helped to minimise the risk of spread of the coronavirus within our school communities.
Following the Prime Minister’s press conference on Saturday evening, which announced a further period of national lockdown but with schools remaining open, I am writing again to inform you about the actions we are taking as a trust to continue to keep our schools fully open, as much as is possible.
Our schools have established the recommended safety measures that continue to minimise the risk of spread of infection for everyone in our community; frequent thorough hand washing, good respiratory hygiene, enhanced cleaning, restricting contacts and keeping a safe distance between pupils as far as possible. Until now we have followed the Government guidance closely and this has not recommended that wearing face coverings was necessary for staff or pupils in schools in our area.
Since the start of this week we have been talking to our secondary school students about face coverings and encouraging both staff and students to wear them in communal areas and when moving around inside the building. Your child, if in Year 7 or above, is encouraged to wear a face covering at school from tomorrow and this will be obligatory from Monday 9 November 2020. We recommend a material face covering that is washable and re-usable. If you will not be able to provide your child with a suitable face covering, or if your child is unable to or exempt from wearing a face covering, or you would like to discuss this further, please contact your Academy directly.
Face coverings are not required or expected to be worn in classrooms during learning, where protective safety measures are in place that mean the risks of spread of infection are mitigated. We will continue to inform and train all staff and students in our secondary schools about how to wear and take care of a face covering safely and our expectations about safe use.
At this time, and in line with previous Government guidance, it will not be mandatory for pupils or staff in our Primary schools to wear a face covering. However, we recommend that parents/carers wear a face covering when coming to school to drop off or pick up your child. This is a precautionary measure to reduce the chances of both transmitting and catching the virus, in line with the latest Government guidance about large gatherings and the upcoming national lockdown requirements. Your child’s academy will inform you further about specific local arrangements, as appropriate.
As this term, and the period of national lockdown, progresses, what happens to the infection rates locally in society is likely to be reflected in schools. We will continue to manage individual cases and contacts, with the support of Public Health, and where a group of pupils (within a ‘bubble’) may have to remain at home to isolate, schools will remain open for all other pupils as widely as possible. At this time I am pleased to be able to report that the vast majority of the 12,000 children in the trust are in school.
As always, if your child shows any of the common symptoms of coronavirus (high temperature (fever), a new continuous cough, loss of smell/taste) they must stay at home and not come to school – anyone showing symptoms can and should get a test to confirm whether or not they have Covid-19. You must report a positive test result to your child’s school if they have been in school in the 48 hour period prior to symptoms starting or prior to the test.
We fully intend for all of our schools to remain open to all pupils throughout the lockdown period and for the foreseeable future. The Government guidance that we are expecting before the lockdown begins on Thursday 5 November is likely to include advice for people with certain health conditions that means they are recommended to stay at home. For this reason, and if staff are otherwise obliged to isolate, our schools may have to reorganise our arrangements for learning. We remain committed to ensuring that there is continuity in the delivery of our curriculum and that pupils’ learning is well-supported and of value. Since the first lockdown we now know a lot more about what works well in different working and learning environments.
During the four-week lockdown from Thursday 5 November, as always, your Academy is your main point of contact and your Principal will provide further local details about current health and safety measures and any changes to arrangements for pupils that may follow. We are aware that sometimes messages appear on social media that are not always accurate. Please do check school announcements and newsletters posted on the school website for any updates. If you have any questions or doubts about the arrangements for your child please contact your Academy.
I want to reassure you that our utmost priorities are safety and continuity of education. If any of our pupils have to remain at home, they will be provided with learning to be completed remotely.
Thank you for your patience, understanding, and continued support for our schools, for my colleagues and of course for your own child’s learning.
Yours faithfully
Mr S Taylor
CEO
21 September 2020
Dear parent/carer,
I hope you and your family are keeping well. As we are now three weeks into term I thought I would write to update you about the return to school and how we are ensuring that all schools in our trust are able to be open and maintain health and safety for pupils, staff and everyone in our communities.
Thank you for your continued support in helping us to get all pupils back into school safely at the start of this new academic year. I have seen how much our children and young people are enjoying the school experience again. It is clear that many of them understand the risk of coronavirus, both because of messages in school, but also from the support and guidance you have provided at home. As a result, most are sensibly observing the health and safety measures and new routines, such as staggered entrance, washing hands and using hand sanitiser, and staying in their own bubble.
Part of our preparation for re-opening has been about what we will have to do if there is a positive case of a child or adult with coronavirus in one of our schools. If this happens, a decision about actions that must be taken is made by Public Health, not by the school in isolation. If this decision is that a group of pupils, ‘a bubble’, must go home, we know how disappointing this will be for children and families. Nevertheless, it is also a sign that the plans are working as they were intended, prioritising safety as well as learning. I want to reassure you that we are very well prepared for this scenario and our schools have been working hard to set up remote learning where pupils have to remain at home for reasons associated with COVID-19. As you might expect, we are better prepared now than we were in March, with high quality online resources for learning and assistance with access to the work, including devices to support online learning.
As I write I am pleased to be able to report that the vast majority of the 12,000 children in the trust are in school. We have one bubble that had to close earlier this week, Year 8 at Bristol Brunel Academy, but the school remains open to pupils in all other year groups. We have not yet needed to close any other bubbles and all our schools are fully open.
As this term progresses, what happens to the infection rates locally in society will likely be reflected in schools and there may be more cases where bubbles move from being in school to remote learning. I want to reassure you that our utmost priorities remain safety and continuity of education.
Thank you for your ongoing support with your child’s safety, attendance and engagement in what continue to be challenging times.
Yours faithfully,
Mr S Taylor CEO
