END OF TERM AND CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY ARRANGEMENTS – CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) TEST AND TRACE.
Dear Parents and Carers,
I write to remind you of our plans for the start of the Christmas holiday and how we will assist the Government, through the Department for Education and Public Health England, in continuing to support contact tracing. I also wish to update on what we know about the announcements you may have seen in the media around rapid testing for students and staff in schools, starting from January 2021.
As you will know, contact tracing is something that senior staff at The Canterbury Academy Trust are already very familiar with, alongside senior colleagues at other local schools, and have been doing it across weekends and holidays for many months.
In response to this request from the DfE and PHE, and to assist the national effort to limit the spread of COVID-19, we will continue to report any Test and Trace contacts for a six day period after our schools close on Friday, 18 December 2020. This means that it is possible you may receive a call from a senior member of staff, up to and including Christmas Eve, with notification that your child may need to self-isolate for 10 days (recently updated from 14 days) as a proximity contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case.
In an attempt to be clear as to how this service should be used, you will only need to contact us if your child has received a positive COVID-19 test result from the NHS. There will be no need to contact us before any symptoms have been confirmed by a positive NHS test result.
Staff, students (or their parents and carers) are asked to inform the school of any confirmed positive COVID-19 case (after NHS testing) where symptoms have occurred within 48 hours of the confirmed case being on any of our school sites.
Where a student or staff member tests positive for COVID-19, having developed symptoms more than 48 hours since being on any of our school sites, you do not need to contact us, but should instead follow the contact tracing instructions provided by NHS Test and Trace, available by following this link; https://www.gov.uk/guidance/nhs-test-and-trace-how-it-works
As a helpful reminder, taken directly from the NHS website, please find the main symptoms of Coronavirus (COVID-19) below. Most people with COVID-19 have at least one of these symptoms:
- a high temperature – this means you feel hot to touch on your chest or back (you do not need to measure your temperature)
- a 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)
- a 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
To further clarify when you should contact us, I have attempted to frame some potential scenarios for you:
- For example, if a student receives a positive COVID-19 NHS test result on Saturday, 19 December, and they had been in school on either Thursday, 17 December or Friday, 18 December, then we would ask that you contact us so that we can trace any possible proximity contacts and advise those parents about the need for their child, as a proximity contact of a confirmed COVID-19 case, to self-isolate for 10 days.
- As a further example, if a student or member of staff receives a positive COVID-19 NHS test result on Monday, 21 December, and they had no symptoms on or before Friday, 18 December, then you would not need to contact us. You would, in this case, need to contact NHS Test and Trace and follow their guidance.
- As you will already be aware, under current guidance, if a student or member of staff is confirmed as positive and showed symptoms on Thursday, 17 December and/or Friday, 18 December, they would need to self-isolate for a period of 10 days and anybody in their household would also need to isolate for 10 days, from the first day of the symptoms developing. In this particular example, the household (and any other identified proximity contacts from their school) would need to isolate until the end of December.
So, if your child receives a positive COVID-19 NHS test result, and they have had contact with others at school within 48 hours of developing symptoms, please could you do one of the following:
- Call The Canterbury Academy Trust COVID-19 Helpline on 01227 286167. This is an answerphone facility which will send a message immediately to key senior staff so action can be taken.
- If you would prefer to talk to someone directly, call 01227 463971, where the telephone will be manned between 10am and 12pm every day, up to and including Christmas Eve.
- Additionally, a dedicated email address has been set up for COVID-19 reporting purposes on; canterburyacademycovid@canterbury.kent.sch.uk
Please note, each of these three points of contact will be in place from 1pm on Friday, 18 December and will cease at 12pm on 24 December, Christmas Eve.
After which point and as we approach the start of term 3 on Monday, 4 January 2021, you should report your child’s absence, COVID-19 related or otherwise, through our normal channels.
When contacting us, please could you clearly provide the following information:
- Name of your child/children.
- The school and year group they are at/in.
- The date and approximate time the NHS test was taken.
- The date the positive NHS test result was received.
- The date that symptoms first developed and what they were.
- Contact details for us to respond to you as soon as possible including, if possible, a mobile telephone number.
Once received, these details will be sent directly to a team of senior staff drawn from across The Canterbury Academy, The Canterbury Primary School , City and Coastal College and our Youth, Community and Extended Service Team, working under my direction and in line with that of the Department for Education and Public Health England. That team will make sure that the necessary actions are taken swiftly and any further communications with proximity contacts and families are had as soon as possible.
Although I sincerely hope that nobody will need it, I trust you may find the service useful and thank you very much, in advance, for your support with it.
As regards the Government’s plans for rapid testing in schools from January, all we currently have access to is the same guidance that you may have seen, available here https://www.gov.uk/government/news/secondary-schools-and-colleges-to-get-weekly-coronavirus-testing
The operational guidance, training and details of this process, are yet to be released to schools. Accordingly, and as we have done throughout this pandemic, we shall wait for the specifics of the guidance and then apply them carefully to our context, ensuring that you are provided with accurate, detailed and credible information. In the meantime, please be assured that we have begun to prepare what we can from the outline information released so far.
We can also assure you that testing will not be mandatory, and will only take place in conjunction with parental consent.
Moreover, this access to testing will not change any of the actions we are already taking across our Trust, as we continually review our mitigations and risk assessments. We shall continue to encourage all our staff and students to socially distance wherever possible, to wear face coverings whenever appropriate, to follow our one way systems, wash hands and sanitise regularly, and maintain all of our additional cleaning measures.
We will be in touch again as soon as we are able to update you with a comprehensive outline of how rapid testing for students will work at our Trust.
Likewise, I shall continue to update you as necessary over the remaining 24 hours of this term on any further COVID-19 developments, as we hope to continue navigating our way calmly and carefully towards a happy, healthy and safe Christmas for all of our families and our communities.
My best regards,
Jon Watson
Executive Principal
The Canterbury Academy Trust