I am sure we are all pleased to hear the Prime Minister’s announcement about the road map out of lockdown. He also announced the plan for all students to return to ‘face to face’ education. In reality this will mean that students will begin to return to the Academy during the week commencing 8thMarch.

We have spent this week planning for a safe return which, as far as possible, ensures the safety and protection of all our community.

The Government have set out their expectations for the return:

Lateral Flow Testing– all of our students will need to be tested three times over the first two weeks. This will be challenging and a significant undertaking for any school. As a consequence, the government announcement allows for a phased return to school which means that students will return at some pointduring the week commencing March 8th. We will potentially need to carry out over 3000 tests in a two-week period and by operating a phased return we will be able to implement this safely. If you have not yet completed our lateral flow consent form please follow the link (https://bit.ly/3qZgPw8). This only needs to be completed once. Thank you to all families who have responded so far.

Face coverings are now recommended to be worn at all times where social distancing cannot occur. This means that they will need to be worn in classrooms which is a significant change. We have a duty of care to all members of our academy community to support this. It is provisionally until Easter when hopefully this expectation will be removed, and I do hope that you will be supportive for this short period of time.

Attendance to school from their return date is mandatory and staff will be working extremely hard to support your child’s mental health and well-being as well as academic progress.

Other safety measures remain in place and we will continue to assess risk and implement measures to mitigate risk, including ventilating occupied spaces, enhanced cleaning and retaining bubbles of students. We ask everyone to continue to do everything they can to adhere to these measures, because it is vital that they are implemented consistently.

I look forward to welcoming all students safely back in school shortly.

Yours Sincerely

Ms K Dixon, Principal