Welcome Back!

I’m aware that I wrote a blog last week saying a similar thing, but as it’s the end of the first week of term it feels like a better time to say ‘welcome back’!

It’s been lovely to have the whole school together these last three days, following the partial opening on Monday and Tuesday. Fingers crossed this is ‘it’ now and we stay fully open, with as many students here as possible, forever.

On Monday and Tuesday we conducted over 700 lateral flow tests and we know that many, many families also chose to test their children at home too. The positive test rate in school was just 0.99%, which I’ll admit was a lower rate than I had feared. Let’s hope that this is a great sign for the weeks to come.

In school of course we have had to bring back some additional covid measures. The Bradshaw one way system, the pausing of extra-curricular activities and of course the wearing of masks in lessons. I would like to thank the entire student body for the way that they are coping with these changes, especially the mask issue. We all know that wearing masks for the best part of 5 hours a day is a struggle and I am very proud of the way that students are handling the situation. No fuss, just getting on with it. Like all the current covid measures I hope that we can pull back from them asap, hopefully by the end of this month depending on the guidance from the Department of Education.

Of course the main covid protection is to ensure good ventilation. Our beloved 1960s building doesn’t always help us out, but it does when it comes to having lots and lots of windows to open, and we are insisting of this in every classroom to keep everyone safe and in school as long as possible. Please help your son or daughter to wear appropriate clothing to keep warm whilst not breaking uniform rules. Plain T-shirts under shirts, school jumpers and normal coats are all fine, but not non-school jumpers and not hoodies.

Finally, advance warning about the next opportunity to get a covid vaccine for 12-16 year olds in school. Students will be able to get their second (or first) vaccine in February. Parental consent is essential even if we had consent last time, and we will be starting the new consent process electronically on Friday 21^st January and closing it on Friday 28^th January. Details to follow next week.

I hope that Year 11 parents evening went well for you all,

Best wishes

Joe Barker

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