MHS update 19-11-2021

Our turn for the covid-19 vaccines came around this week, I believe the last of the schools in Stockport to be visited. Over the past few weeks I’ve been keen to express that as a school we don’t have an opinion on whether children should or should not be vaccinated. I believe it’s a matter purely for families and young people themselves to decide together. As will come of no surprise I am sure, I have received various letters and messages in the build up to this week arguing one way or another. In the interests of impartiality I have ignored pretty much all of them!

Therefore I am neither celebrating nor lamenting the fact that just over 50% of students at MHS have had or requested the vaccine. It isn’t my job to say if that figure is good, bad or indifferent. I do though believe that it is a higher proportion than in any other school in the authority, a fact that we put down to the use of an electronic consent process rather than the old pen-and-paper method used elsewhere. We had a huge response to the consent request whether to grant it or not grant it, and so we are confident that the vast majority of families were engaged and made a positive choice for themselves. I am therefore going to celebrate this, as setting up the electronic consent system was a big piece of work and one that fell to school staff. We’re blessed here with some very talented data and IT colleagues who are always looking for new ways to make communication with families as efficient as possible. The electronic consent process worked smoothly and gives us more ideas on what can be achieved in the future.

I will also celebrate the fantastic behaviour and attitude of the students who had the vaccine this week. It was, as you can imagine, a major operation far exceeding the scale of the other jabs that are commonplace in schools. A team of 25 professionals from the NHS were accommodated in the hall on each day and their feedback on the students has been universally positive. A lot of hard work from MHS colleagues went into setting up the days, and it’s been good to work together with other professionals to pull off so a big challenge with so little disruption to learning. From the NHS I’d like to thank Fran Jackson and her brilliant colleagues for everything that they did.

Case rates nationally have started to rise again in recent days. We’ve had a pretty quiet time at MHS following the large spike we had in October…fingers crossed we escape the worst of this wave and we can focus on our day jobs from now on.

Best wishes,

Joe Barker

Share!