Letter to parents of Year 11 students – 9th October 2020

Dear parents and carers,

Following notification of a further case of Covid-19 in Year 11 we have asked all Year 11 students to study at home on Friday 9^th October.  This was to allow sufficient opportunity to carry out a full investigation to identify all the potential contacts.

Following the investigation, and on the basis of Public Health guidance, we have now identified the extent of the students who need to self-isolate.

We have sent individualised text messages to each family notifying them if their child needs to isolate and given the return to school date. If you have not received a text message that clearly states that your child needs to isolate they should attend school as normal on Monday 12^th October.  Additional, we have two group of students who were already isolating due to a previous cases.  Most of these students are unaffected by this new case and can return to school on Thursday 15^th October or Monday 19^th October.  Again, an individualised text message has been sent to the family of these students.

Where students need to self-isolate they will be sent a paper based work pack but many students will be aware of additional revision work that they can complete to supplement this.

It is important that we are all aware of the symptoms of Covid-19 and only well children attend school or childcare settings.

The main symptoms of coronavirus are:

• high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
• 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)
• 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

Most people with coronavirus have at least one of these symptoms. Information about Covid-19 symptoms and management of the virus can be found here, www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

If your child has been asked to isolate, please try not to worry. For most people Covid-19 is a mild illness.

If you or your child develops any of the above symptoms or become unwell please contact NHS 111 or your GP. Although Covid19 is circulating in the community, usual childhood illnesses are too and it is important that these are not missed.

If you have any questions or concerns please refer to the government website, www.gov.uk/coronavirus or you can contact me by emailing admin@theradclyffeschool.co.uk.

Best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

Mr J Cregg

Headteacher