It has been so good to come back to school this year to what feels like a ‘normal’ September. Staff and children are in classrooms and new children have been joining us in Reception and Nursery as well as those who have moved into the area during the summer. All are very welcome and it’s good to see our existing families back too. We hope you all had a good holiday and are enjoying the sunshine this week. ?
Over the summer the guidance from central government has changed and we have seen the end, hopefully forever, of class and year group ‘bubbles’ at schools within the Trust. Schools are also no longer responsible for contact tracing and if a positive case is confirmed by PCR test those affected, as well as their contacts, will now be the responsibility of NHS track and trace. However, as part of the Trust’s health and safety obligations we have an ongoing duty to keep those on our premises safe and have to regularly assess the risk to staff and children and put in place proportionate measures to manage that risk. The responsibilities for schools to comply with Health and safety law are described here.
With our health and safety responsibilities in mind we still have a number of proportionate measures in place to keep everyone safe and these are described in our updated risk assessment. We would like to draw the attention of our parents and carers to section 11 in particular:
As you can see here we will ask those who we know have been in contact with a person with a confirmed case of COVID-19 to take a PCR test. In addition, in order to keep all parents and carers fully appraised of the situation, we will send a letter to those classes where a positive case, confirmed by PCR test, has been identified. This will allow families to then test their child using an LFD test for their own reassurance if they consider this necessary. Please keep your child’s school informed of any positive PCR tests so that we can monitor overall levels of COVID-19 within our school communities.
Apologies that this is such a dry news item; hopefully one day all this will pass.
Best wishes to you all
Jolyon Roberts
Executive Headteacher
Pegasus Academy Trust
