Dear All
Happy New Year. I hope that you have had an enjoyable festive break.
As per my letter at the end of last term, please find below arrangements for the start of the new term.
As you know, term began for staff yesterday so that we could plan for the necessary changes needed at school to help mitigate against the threat posed by the Omicron variant. The purpose of these two planning days has been to allow schools time to assess available staffing, and make any necessary changes to our site and how we operate in light of the changing and challenging public health situation. We have been strongly advised to plan our mitigations at the ‘very high’ risk level in our risk assessment. As outlined in my last letter to you, this includes Lateral Flow Testing three times a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday), and reintroducing staggered start and finish times.
With the very high and rising positive case numbers locally and in our region, it is likely that we will face daily staff availability challenges over the coming weeks. We have been understandably instructed to prioritise exam year groups for onsite learning and will do all we can to do so. Many pupils will be sitting external GCSE exams over the coming week, and we will prioritise this first and foremost.
Arrangements for Thursday 6 January 2022 and Friday 7 January 2022
Lessons for all pupils will resume from Thursday 6 January 2022. However we have a significant number of staff who are currently unwell and not fit to attend school. We will not have sufficient staff to fully open the school site either tomorrow or Friday. It is likely that this will also be the case next week as well.
Therefore, Year 9 will learn from home tomorrow (Thursday 6 January 2022) and Year 7 will learn from home on Friday (Friday 7 January 2022). All other year groups should attend school as normal. This is subject to change should we face further staff availability pressures.
For those year groups learning from home over the coming weeks, they will access pre-planned work by our department staff. Arrangements for remote learning is detailed later in this letter.
Key things we can all do
Please support us in keeping our school site open by taking these key actions that prioritise the health of our staff, the wellbeing of our pupils, and our wider community.
- Do not send your child to school if they have any Covid symptoms or are unwell. Please keep them at home and book a PCR test if they have symptoms.
- Please ensure that your child completes a Lateral Flow Test on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning before attending school. This is an essential mitigation as LFTs detect positive cases who do not have any symptoms but can still infect other people. If you would like your child to collect LFT packs from school and haven’t signed up for this as yet, please do so.
- Please ensure that your child brings a face covering to school. All pupils will be strongly encouraged to wear a face covering in all indoor spaces unless they are exempt. Pupils are not socially distanced from one another in classrooms, and our staff work with large numbers of different pupils in indoor spaces every day. Please support our pupils and our staff with this important measure.
- Please have your child vaccinated and/or boosted as soon as they are eligible. This is another vitally important mitigation which supports the health and wellbeing of all within our school and community.
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In school we will be continuing to enforce key measures such as
- Ventilation – please ensure that your child is dressed appropriately in their school uniform, wearing additional layers such as a t shirt under their shirt, warm tights, and warm coat, gloves and a scarf each day as we will keep windows open in these colder months.
- Social distance – 2m will be maintained as far as possible between adults and children.
- Handwashing and hand hygiene – there are hand sanitisers available throughout the school. You may wish to provide your child with their own.
- Systems – one way systems in corridors and stairwells wherever possible and front facing teaching and learning.
Changes to school day timings
The Education Minister has announced that school day timings can change in the short term (to be reviewed 31 January 2022) to support safe school staggered operations. As you will be aware, we have a small hall and canteen area, and we are unable to space pupils and adults if all pupils are on break/lunch at the same time especially in winter weather.
We are reintroducing staggered breaks in the short term as part of our very high level risk assessment as we face the challenges of the transmissibility of the new variant. All children will have two breaks during the day as we did last year.
Therefore, with immediate effect, the school day will start at 0830 as normal, there will be two staggered breaks within the school day when pupils will have access to the main indoor canteen in smaller groups and can purchase their snacks and lunch as usual, and the school day will end at 1425. Teaching time (5 hours a day) remains the same and is not affected by these changes. Arrangements have been made with CCBC School Transport for these new timings for their buses and taxis.
Breakfast club will continue, and we will also continue to have practical lessons including PE. After school clubs and fixtures however will be considered on an essential only basis. Visitors are not allowed on school site other than by invitation, and this will be limited to out of school hours as far as possible.
We will review these arrangements at the end of January 2022 in line with Welsh Government guidance.
Remote learning arrangements
Remote learning work will be sent to pupil school Gmail accounts and will also be posted on year group Google Classrooms on the morning of the day they are working at home. Pupils will access a St Cenydd Google site where they will find video lessons from teachers in our school for every subject. Although a workbook is provided, pupils should complete their work in their exercise books, on Google Docs, or on paper.
Changes to testing and self-isolation
You will be aware that self-isolation for positive cases has been reduced to seven days as long as the person tests negative using a LFT on day 6 and day 7 (LFT tests to be conducted 24 hours apart).
You will also be aware that the rules have changed if you have been in contact with a positive case if you are a fully vaccinated adult or a secondary aged child. You will now be expected to complete a LFT for 7 days every morning before attending school. This is known as ‘Daily Contact Testing’ and your child can attend school if they have a negative LFT result each day. Pupils and staff should do this if they have had contact with a positive case, even if they themselves have tested positive in the last 90 days.
Spring 1 - Key dates in 2022
Y10 Parents’ Evening – Thursday 13 January using School Cloud (information to follow)
Y11 Transition Information – this will be delivered through videos and information pack
Y7 Parents’ Evening – Tuesday 25 January using School Cloud (information to follow nearer the time)
Mock Exams Y11-13 – these will take place during this half term
KS5 and Y9 Reports – these will take place during this half term
INSET Day – Friday 4 February
Y9 Transition Information – this will be delivered through PEL booklets, videos and information to parents
Half term break – Monday 21 - Friday 25 February 2022
As we can see in the daily national news, the next few weeks are likely to be some of the most challenging faced by us all during this pandemic. Please know that the staff of St Cenydd will do all we can to support your children during this time, and we seek your vital support in the four key mitigations outlined above.
Thank you for your support.
Miss Collins
Headteacher
