Today, the Director of Public Health for Somerset is advising schools to remain in an Amber warning state until the end of November. The request is as follows:
“Following the letter to each school dated 21.10.21, from the Director of Public Health for Somerset, we have again risk assessed schools in Somerset. Whilst infection rates are declining in some parts of the county overall, our rates remain high; our local rates remain significantly higher than the England rate. Based on the risk assessment, we are advising all schools to keep in place the previously recommended measures until the end of November 2021.”
My response to this is:
- Maintain our current guidelines including minimising visitors into the school building during the school day.
- Staff maintaining their face coverings whilst walking through school and down our narrow corridors and asking families to wear face coverings when picking up and dropping off on our site.
- Maintaining our high level of cleaning and sanitising around school before, during and after school hours.
- We WILL be bringing back after school clubs led by Mr Gunstone. Why now? I believe we can effectively risk assess our clubs in line with PH advice and deliver our clubs after school. I feel the assessment of risk and mitigations will show that the benefits of these clubs to the wellbeing of pupils will outweigh the potential risk of our outdoors provision. We know who is attending our clubs and what needs to be done should there be any cases. Stretching this club embargo any longer than we have, currently, risks undermining our work together in terms of patience and understanding. Therefore, clubs will begin on Monday of next week. If you have signed up, your child will be included in the register.
- We WILL be attending any outside sports events, for example the cross country re-scheduled for this Monday. Why? This is for very similar reasons to the above point.
I hope this shows our commitment to both the current guidelines but, also, to our pupils’ needs as a learning community.
