Dear Parents

Advent

We have been delighted this week to have started our school preparations for Advent – the first Sunday of Advent will be this coming weekend.  Children in Year 4 participated in an Advent Reflection and made Advent Wreaths with their adults in school – it was fantastic to see every child accompanied by an adult working together in the school hall and we were very glad of the space to do this safely!  Glue guns and greenery galore made it a very exciting afternoon for the children (and maybe also for the adults!) and the wreaths have gone home to form part of the family preparations for Christmas.  If you would like to follow Year 4’s Advent example, you can see some examples of the wreaths here.   We wish all of you a peaceful and blessed Advent.

Road Safety

During Road Safety Week this week, our children have been out and about, learning about how to keep themselves safe.  We began with Reception children learning how to cross their (playground) road safely using Stop Look and Listen and children in other year groups have been out on our local roads, building to Year 6 thinking about Rail Safety at Hersham station, as many of them will be travelling to secondary school independently by this time next year. 

Covid - staff

Happily our Covid cases in school are beginning to diminish and we will be releasing the Year 6 bubbles on Tuesday 30^th November, to return to business as usual next week.  Despite this, please be aware that there are a number of staff members who have tested positive for Covid – some have now returned to school but are still feeling the effects, while others are recovering at home.  Their continued absence places more pressure on those who are already doing their own busy jobs in school and we would ask parents to be very mindful of this when communicating to staff.  In particular, we have been very short staffed in the school office this week and would ask parents to be understanding of just how busy the school office is.  If your call is not urgent, or essential, please consider whether it could wait a few days.  Similarly if you don’t get a response within 24 hours (as is our normal policy), please be patient with that.  We will, of course, support any urgent requests as necessary!

Covid - families

Thank you to all families who have been working with us to minimise the amount of transmission of Covid in the school.  Almost all families have been very responsible about getting their children tested with a PCR test when requested and thank you too for those who have sent their positive result confirmation when requested – this information helps us to monitor transmission levels and to know when to expect children back into school.

We have had a few cases where children’s lateral flow test has been positive and the follow up PCR has been negative.  Government guidance on this says that the PCR is more accurate and so children can then come back into school.  We have been requesting a second PCR, just to maintain the safety bubble for our children, and we are happy for parents who have concerns following a positive lateral flow to keep their child at home if they feel that is the best course of action – this will be an authorised Covid absence due to the positive lateral flow.

Finally, we know many families will be out and about – maybe in busy places - this weekend.  If you have been testing your family using lateral flow tests, Monday evening before the return to school on Tuesday would be a good time to test your child.  This will help us to safeguard the children from bringing infection into school and thereby hopefully enable us to go ahead with the Christmas productions as we hope and plan.

Just to reiterate – the Christmas dates have been shared with parents below, but we CANNOT guarantee that these will be able to go ahead as planned.  At present, it looks feasible, but as we all know, there can be many twists and turns in the road ahead, so let’s hope and pray for the best outcomes for our children!

All best wishes for the long weekend ahead.

Catherine Burnham

Headteacher

Week ending 26^th November 2021