Message to all Parents and Carers
Posted on: October 22nd 2021
Dear Parents and Carers,
Thank you for your continued support with ensuring that your child has attended school regularly this term. We know how important it is for you to be able to send your children to school.
This week, Headteachers of all schools in Slough and East Berkshire received communication from the Local Authority, the UK Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England), and East Berkshire NHS. Headteachers have been advised to implement additional measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 in our schools. This is in response to increasing rates of transmission in our local authority.
We know that young children are less likely to have a poor outcome after being affected by the virus, but they live in families within communities where there are others who may be more clinically vulnerable. Additionally, the potential harms from missing or disrupted education are significant. As such the objective of the advice is to maximise time spent in face-to-face education.
The following changes will be in place for all students at Baylis Court School from the return to school, after half term, on Monday, 1 November 2021:
• We expect face coverings to be worn in communal areas by all staff, students and visitors who are not exempt. Communal areas include corridors and areas for queuing in the Dining Room.
• Face-to-face assemblies will not take place.
• Access to the Dining Room at break time will be restricted. Two year-groups per day will be able to access the Dining Room to purchase food and drinks at break time. Students in each year group will be able to access the Dining Room at break time on two days per week. Parents and carers are therefore advised to provide children with their own snacks and a drink for breaktime. Drinking water will be available for students to use outside the Dining Room for those who choose to bring a water bottle to school.
• Access to the Dining Room at lunchtime will be staggered. This will reduce students from separate year groups mixing in the queue. Entrance times to the Dining Room for each year group will be rotated throughout the week. This will ensure that all year groups have equal access to the Dining Room and no year group is always entering the Dining Room last.
• Extra-curricular activities will be limited. This will ensure that students from different year groups can maintain a distance, in particular in shared indoor spaces. Full details of the revised extra-curricular programme will be communicated to students when we return to school.
• Sporting fixtures and public events will temporarily cease.
• Parents’ Evenings will be held online. Further details will be communicated with parents and carers closer to the time of calendared Parents’ Evenings.
• Visitors to site, including parents/carers will be asked to either take a LFD test on arrival and wait for the result before coming on to site, or show evidence of an LFD test taken within 24 hours.
These additional measures will offer extra protection from infection to students, staff and visitors to the school. The measures will be applied alongside existing control measures such as regular lateral flow tests, keeping indoor spaces well-ventilated, operating a one-way system inside the building and allocating the use of students’ toilets to separate year groups.
In line with other schools in the local area, these additional measures will remain in place until the end of the Autumn term 2021. However, they will be kept under regular review, including in the light of any change to Government guidance. Any decision to amend or remove the measures will be communicated to you promptly.
In order to support your child to comply with these measures, we ask that parents/carers ensure that girls are attending school each day with a clean face covering. In addition, all students will need to be wearing their school lanyard, which will be used to enable students to enter the Dining Room on their allocated day.
Lastly, I take this opportunity to remind you that the Baylis Court School blue jumper will be compulsory uniform from Monday, 1 November, as communicated with all parents this term.
Thank you, in advance, for your continued support in doing what we can to limit the spread of the virus in our community and keep our school open.
Yours sincerely,
Christine MacInnes