School Update
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Be Safe
Dear families,
Thank you for your understanding and patience over the past couple of weeks.
This week we have experienced high levels of student and staff absence. Whilst we do not have any confirmed cases of Covid 19 in our school community, we do have many students, staff and families who are displaying symptoms or who are self-isolating as a precautionary measure. The government’s announcement yesterday instructing whole families to self-isolate if one member had symptoms, has had a significant effect on the amount of people in school today. We have also had several staff members who have indicated that they will self-isolate from tomorrow as a precautionary measure, due to underlying health issues for themselves and/or their families. The current government advice can be found here: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/
For this reason from Wednesday 18th March 2020 Preston School will only be open to students in Years 7, 10 and 11. Students in Years 8 & 9 should not come in to school. The only exceptions to this is for children in Years 8 & 9 whose parents work for the emergency services, who can attend if parents require them to. If this applies to you please email jaclyn.surrey@prestonschool.co.uk so that we can plan for their day in school. We may check work phone numbers and email addresses held for parents to verify this, if required.
Work for students in Years 8 & 9 will be set vis Google classroom. All students know how to access this.
Having 3 year groups in school is the minimum that we can safely and adequately look after, given the extraordinarily high levels of staff absence. We have prioritised students in Years 11 & 10 as they are closest to their GCSE exams. We have also prioritised Year 7 as they are our youngest students.
We will monitor the situation over the next 24 hours. If more staff are absent, we may be forced to ask Year 10 students to not come in to school from Thursday onwards. We will confirm this with you at approximately midday tomorrow.
We have also taken the decision to cancel school PE fixtures and visits this week, as well as the Year 10 Parents’ Evening scheduled for Thursday. We have provisionally rescheduled this for Thursday 14th May 2020 but will confirm this nearer the time.
I am sorry that we are in this position and have to enforce a partial closure. Many schools in Yeovil and Somerset are having to implement similar measures. As a parent of children in Years 8 and 9 I understand the knock-on effect that this can have upon families and for this I apologise. If there were any viable alternative we would do it but as I know you will be aware we look to be heading towards a situation where schools may close fully across the country. We do not have a time-scale for this and as soon as we do I will communicate this to you, as well as any other relevant information.
Thank you once again for your understanding and patience in these testing times. If you have any questions or issues on this please do direct them to attendance@prestonschool.co.uk . We will be communicating this to Years 8 & 9 at the end of the school day today so please can I ask that you do not contact them prior to 2.55pm.
Yours sincerely
Gregg Morrison
Principal
