Thelwall Community Junior School

CURRENT GUIDANCE FOR COVID - LIVING WITH COVID

If your child has any symptoms, please keep them off school until test results are confirmed and inform school when you know them. 

If your child tests positive for Covid 19 they must stay at home and

self - isolate for at least 5 days. 

As you will be aware, on Monday 21^st February the Prime Minister set out the next phase of the government’s COVID-19 response ‘Living with COVID-19’. COVID-19 continues to be a virus that we learn to live with and the imperative to reduce the disruption to children and young people’s education remains. The latest COVID guidance states that as risks of severe illness from COVID-19 in most children and most fully vaccinated adults are very low, and the successful vaccination programme has achieved a high rate of take-up, other guidance can now be removed.

Changes to education settings:

From Monday 21 February

• the Government is removing the guidance for staff and children in most education and childcare settings to undertake twice-weekly asymptomatic testing
• Parents, staff and pupils are also able to access test kits from their local pharmacy or online

Changes to self-isolation and daily testing of close contacts

From Thursday 24 February

The Government will remove the legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test. However, all adults and children who test positive will continue to be advised to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for at least 5 full days, and then continue to follow the guidance until they have received 2 negative test results on consecutive days.

In addition, the Government will:

In most cases, parents and carers will agree that a pupil with the key symptoms of COVID-19 should not attend the school, given the potential risk to others.  However, if a parent or carer insists on a pupil attending school where they have a confirmed or suspected case of COVID-19, school can take the decision to refuse the pupil if, in their reasonable judgement, it is necessary to protect other pupils and staff from possible infection with COVID-19.

Our school will continue to exercise caution to this situation and would advise that measures are in place for good ventilation and hygiene. These will continue within our school setting until further notice. 

For all children who test positive the following guidelines still apply.

Self isolation should be for 10 days. People who are self-isolating with COVID-19 will have the option to reduce their isolation period after 5 full days if they test negative with a lateral flow device (LFD) test on both day 5 and day 6 and they do not have a temperature. For example, if they test negative on the morning of day 5 and the morning of day 6, they can return to their education or childcare setting on day 6.  

The first test must be taken no earlier than day 5 of the self-isolation period, and the second must be taken the following day. All test results should be reported to NHS Test and Trace. The first day of symptoms or testing positive is classed as Day 0. 

However, for a child to reduce the isolation period, school will need confirmation of the negative test results before a child is able to return. Please email this information to thelwall_junior@sch.warrington.gov.uk

This needs to be either in the form of photographs or NHS confirmations. 

If the result of either of their tests is positive, they should continue to self-isolate until they get negative results from two LFD tests on consecutive days or until they have completed 10 full days of self-isolation, whichever is earliest.

Anyone who is unable to take LFD tests or anyone who continues to have a temperature will need to complete the full 10 day period of self-isolation.

If your child is still unwell regardless of the test result, please keep them at home.

Please contact school directly if you are still in doubt if your child should attend school.

COVID guidance is continually updated and all specific guidance can be found on the government website which is updated regularly. 

Should you child display COVID symptoms please keep them off school and access a test.

If you need further advice please contact https://111.nhs.uk/covid-19.

Please inform school as soon as possible of your child's current test results by emailing the results to thelwall_junior@sch.warrington.gov.uk

 The remote learning offer for this school is attached above. We will continue to offer face to face teaching in school as a priority. However, if this becomes untenable for some groups or classes due to staff abscence as a last resort this school may have to provide some remote learning. 

Each school is different and the offer provided is what we feel as a school is best for our children.