Good morning everyone,

We have had a busy weekend as Year 6 have a number of confirmed cases and others waiting for PCR results. Parents/Carers in Year 6 have been extremely sensible and have communicated well, you may also notice that many of them are wearing masks around school at drop off and pick up.

Hopefully we can contain the outbreak in Year 6 and this week will act as a 'firebreak' but we also ask that everyone is aware and extra cautious. The impact on school and staff is huge with time, capacity and how we operate affected, it won't take much for school to have to close if a few school adults are affected. School does not receive any extra funding for any Covid related costs now (we are funding toilets, masks, extra cleaning and all associated costs), we have funded toilets etc out of our current budgets.

A big 'thank you' to all the staff who step forward without issue and make everything work. They are 'juggling' times, roles and responsibilities and working hard.

Please could we ask all parents/carers:

- be aware of where you go and who you mix with.

- monitor any symptoms (even if you think it is a 'normal' bug and book a test if you are unsure).

Testing

There are a lot of asymptomatic (no symptoms) cases of covid and this is what lateral flows are designed for. To help detect those without symptoms who may have covid. It's important you do these regularly (at least twice a week) however:

If you have any symptoms: headache, sneezing, runny nose, sore throat, change in taste or smell, fever then you should arrange a PCR test

Lateral flows can/, often give false negative results and that's why it's important if any symptoms a PCR test should be undertaken.

Attendance last week (or survival with so many bugs around !) = 92.7% overall

Best survivors last week were Reception with 96.5%. Next were Year 5 with 94.3%.

It will be much lower this week !

Hopefully the week will calm down and we can work our way through things and get back to relative 'normality.'

Kind regards

Mr Batstone