Dear Parents and Carers,

I am delighted to be able to write to you with details of our plan to return all students to school during the week beginning 8 March. I apologise for the length of this letter, but there is a lot to cover.

As you’ll have heard in the news, we need to test all students once before they re-enter the classroom and then twice more before we move to home testing. Testing 1250 students three times over a week and a half is a huge logistical challenge but we are confident that we can ensure that all students are back in school very swiftly without compromising any of our safety.

We will invite students to come into school a year group at a time to be tested. Students will be given a specific time to arrive at school for their first test and it is important that they stick to that. Each year group will be tested over two periods. We will continue to provide remote education for students until it is their turn to come into school, including periods one and two for students who are due to be tested periods three and four. Clearly, students will not be criticised for missing a lesson in order to travel to school. There will be no formal lessons for students during their two-period testing window, though they will be provided with work to do while they are waiting to be tested and afterwards for their result.

Once a student’s first test is confirmed as negative they will go to lessons and will officially be back in school.  Their second and third test over the next week and a half will require only a brief interruption to ongoing lessons. 

Students who travel to school by bus and cannot arrive at their allocated time should arrive at the start of the day as they normally would. We will prioritise their tests to avoid them having to wait until their allocated time.

If you have already given consent for your child to take tests at school then you don’t need to do so again. If you haven’t, the consent form is here:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=flzQy2QFTEapyFTpF1Os7hsdvorm5d9IpG6J35gaqU5UQTNENEVIMFRDRk5CT0JNT1NZMldSTUpORy4u

For the health and peace of mind of the whole school community, it is important that we all participate in this cycle of tests. Attendance at school is once again a legal requirement from 8 March unless a student is awaiting a test.

Students’ experience in school will be very similar to the autumn term, with all the same controls and precautions in place. In addition, the government have added the requirement that all students, and staff where they cannot maintain social distance, wear masks in lessons.

Catering will be available as usual from the start of that week.

Over one hundred and fifty children have been attending mini-school each week since the new year. To continue with that provision from the 8th would mean that our resources would be split between teaching online, carrying out large scale testing and running the mini-school. We simply don’t have the staff to do that.  We could give them all a first test at the end of the preceding week, but that would then mean that their next two tests would be at different times from the rest of their year groups, leading to yet more disruption.  For those reasons, where it is at all possible that those children can learn from home that week until they have had their test, we ask that they should do that.  If we absolutely have to have those children on site, we will prioritise the youngest.

The following table outlines what happens for each year group over the first week.  We will send out the specific times that each student should arrive in a separate letter once we have finalised those details.

Year

Monday 8th

Tuesday 9th

Wednesday 10th

Thursday 9th onward

Y7

Online learning

Online learning

Testing periods 1 and 2.

All students in lessons. 

A further two tests will be taken, 3-5 days apart.  

Y8

Online learning

Online learning

Online learning periods 1 and 2. Testing periods 3 and 4.

Y9

Online learning

Online learning periods 1 and 2. Testing periods 3 and 4.

In lessons at school

Y10

Online learning

Testing periods 1 and 2.

In lessons at school

Y11

Testing periods 1 and 2.

In lessons at school

In lessons at school

Y12/Y13

Online learning periods 1 and 2.  Testing periods 3 and 4.

In lessons at HC6

In lessons at HC6

We will be in touch again soon to share details of specific arrival times and how to access the online training that we will provide for students who have not taken a lateral flow test before. We will also share with you the arrangements the government are putting in place for home testing for all students once the initial three school-based tests have been completed.

If you have any queries, please contact Dr Geall at the school.

I know I speak for all the staff at SWA when I say that we are looking forward to seeing all of the students again soon.

Andy Hunter

Headteacher