As you will know, the Government introduced much tighter measures on Monday afternoon which will affect a lot of our lives.  Schools, as an essential service, remain open and St. Bart's will continue to do this for as long as is necessary and practicable.  We continue to monitor the developing situation and take all official advice for the safety and welfare of our children and staff.

To help minimise unnecessary contact, we have limited all but essential visitors to our school.  This means that any clubs that are not run by our own staff have been cancelled for the moment.  This includes judo, football, basketball, Son Seekers and peripatetic music lessons.  Curriculum activities continue, including swimming, as these have been thoroughly assessed in light of the latest advice.  Other visits out of school that involve public transport and spaces are being risk assessed once again and will potentially need postponing.  The Year 5 visit to Kielder has been postponed.  Please bear with us whilst we deal with the implications of these measures.

The advice as it stands is:

• all children should stay at home if they are unwell with a new, continuous cough or a high temperature to avoid spreading infection to others. Otherwise they should attend school as normal.
• if children become unwell in school with a new, continuous cough or a high temperature they will be sent home.
• we clean and disinfect regularly touched objects and surfaces more often than usual
• children are supervised to ensure they wash their hands for 20 seconds more often than usual with soap and water or hand sanitiser and catch coughs and sneezes in tissues
• once symptoms have been noticed, the whole household now should stay away from school for at least 14 days .  See this guidance.

If school must close, we have plans in place to share resources with families, mainly via our website.  More details of this will only be shared during partial or full closure of our school.  I understand that any families who are away from school whilst we remain open may need support.  Please contact us on our new, dedicated email address for these purposes: [email protected].  These messages will be monitored by senior leaders who will then respond appropriately.  Currently, teachers do not have the capacity to send individual work home but we will begin pointing classes towards helpful resources soon.

Thank you for your understanding and support.