Head Teacher update – 1st November 2021

Dear Parents and Carers 

I hope you have had a good week with your children and enjoyed the half term break. 

Parkside has continued to have some positive Covid cases reported to us throughout the week and today we continue to have vulnerable pupils and, unfortunately, a staff member was hospitalised through contracting Covid; they have fortunately made a full recovery now.  Therefore, we will be keeping some of the mitigations that we had put in place before the half term.  Staff will be wearing masks in communal areas, assemblies will be virtual and pupils will not be mixing in large groups.  All secondary pupils and all staff are strongly urged to do twice-weekly lateral flow device testing at home (school can supply these for pupils – please ask the class teacher if you need more sent home). We have returned to our ‘normal’ timetable, but wherever possible we have limited the mixing between pupils in an attempt to slow any transmission.  Enhanced hygiene measures remain in place.   

We will make a decision about the parents evening by tomorrow; we are aware that many parents have not had the opportunity to meet teachers and come into school since the start of the pandemic.  If we do go ahead with face-to-face parents evening we will require confirmation of a negative lateral flow test done on the day and there will be social distancing in place.  

Parkside is very pleased to be part of a pilot for LAMP testing, which is as accurate as PCR testing.  This should be in place over the next few weeks and we are pleased so many of you have said you would be interested in this and we would definitely be able to stop the spread of Covid further if we can have the whole school on board with it.  A further letter and more information about this will follow in the next few days. 

One way that we can very clearly and quickly limit the spread of Covid is by making sure that if a household member has tested positive for Covid, you keep your child at home.  We are requesting this as we have had several cases where family members have been positive, the pupil has continued to attend school and then became positive themselves.   

We continue to thank you for your support and positive messages, they are very much appreciated. 

Kind regards

Carolyn Ellis-Gage    (pronouns she/her)

Head Teacher