Tuesday 13th October 2020
UPDATE FOR YEAR 10 STUDENTS AND PARENTS
Dear parent or carer,
Thank you for your support with the self-isolation of Year 10 on Monday 12/10/2020 and today Tuesday 13/10/2020, which was determined following our consultation with the DfE helpline on Saturday morning, and to those of you who engaged with us in dialogue to explore the worries and concerns we all felt as we worked through the processes schools need to follow. It is important for parents and carers to understand in the clearest terms that, in order to put health and safety of all first, it was imperative to follow the guidance read to us by this helpline in the first instance on Saturday - I have promised you that we will adhere to the guidance straightforwardly throughout the C-19 situation, and then work step by step through what we need to do, and we always will do so. We will not 'jump the gun' or anticipate decisions until we are as certain as we can be in these difficult situations.
We had to do that on Saturday morning, with no other helplines open over the weekend and the school community closed, in order to fine tune the type of close contact tracing it is left to Leadership Teams to do thoroughly and as accurately as humanly possible each and every time there is a confirmed case.
At the beginning of the new week, we consulted the local Public Health England South East helpline, who are not open on the weekends. We have also spent the weekend gathering information that is now as accurate as possible for you with respect to close contact - according to Government definitions of this - between the person who has tested positive and other students in the bubble throughout the correct days.
A reminder of Government definitions of close contact to which we must work
The criteria is set out below and has been taken directly from government documentation:
Who is a contact?
A ‘contact’ is a person who has been close to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 anytime from 2 days before the person was symptomatic up to 10 days from onset of symptoms (this is when they are infectious to others). For example, a contact can be:
- people who spend significant time in the same household as a person who has tested positive for COVID-19
- a person who has had face-to-face contact (within one metre), with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19, including:
- being coughed on
- having a face-to-face conversation within one metre
- having skin-to-skin physical contact, or
- contact within one metre for one minute or longer without face-to-face contact
- a person who has been within 2 metres of someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 for more than 15 minutes
- a person who has travelled in a small vehicle with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 or in a large vehicle or plane near someone who has tested positive for COVID-19
We are grateful to those parents and carers who contacted us over the weekend to say they understood that these definitions need careful working through with all of the correct bodies, and that therefore to self-isolate the year group first until all that work could be done was the safest way to proceed over the weekend.
RETURN FOR SOME STUDENTS - Wednesday 14/10/2020 who are not defined as a 'contact'
We are now in a position to contact those families whose Year 10 students had this type of contact to the best of our knowledge, and ask them to continue to self-isolate and to invite the rest of the year group back in to school to resume their learning with us in school from Wednesday October 14th 2020.
If we do not contact you about your child continuing to self-isolate, but your child knows of the person who has tested positive and they know or believe that they have been a close contact in accordance with the government criteria, or you have another reason to believe your child needs to continue to self-isolate with respect to this confirmed case, then please continue to keep them at home and contact us via health@noadswood.hants.sch.uk to explain their self-isolation.
If your child is asked to continue to self-isolate, we will be in touch with you - as we were over the weekend - with the remote learning offer that will be available to them.
I would like to end by reiterating my thanks to you for your forbearance over the weekend and into this week, that enabled us to work carefully through the decisions necessary. I would also like publicly to thank my Leadership Team colleagues for working alongside me throughout Saturday and Sunday, and my New Forest Headteacher colleagues for their time and sharing. We are part of a very strong and supportive community.
We will pass on everyone's best wishes to the family of the person with the confirmed case, as I know you would want.
Kathryn Marshall and the Noadswood Leadership Team