The weather this week has been great and it does make me feel like it is summer and not the beginning of autumn. As I mentioned last week this has made it particularly good for the Year 6 who have been doing their cycling proficiency this week. It was lovely having this activity in school because it gave me a reminder of how school used to be with lots of extra activities and sports taking place –let us hope that we can return to those again in the not-too-distant future.

As with everywhere, we cannot avoid the Covid conversation because it is dominating our lives at the moment (much as I wish it was not). You may have heard that there are some members of the school community who are or who have been self-isolating at home due to possible symptoms of the coronavirus (COVID-19). As you will be aware, many of the symptoms commonly associated with COVID-19 (cough, high temperature), are common in children and can occur in a variety of infections.  Therefore, as advised by Public Health England we will only ask a whole class to self-isolate at home if a child or staff member of their class has had a positive test confirming COVID-19 and we have had none of those in Little Heath so far. If this is the case, we will be informing parents of children within the class at the earliest opportunity, and will be advising them to self-isolate at home for 14 days.  The rest of the household of the contacts will not need to self-isolate, unless a member of their household is displaying symptoms (or has had a positive test result with or without symptoms). Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings .

As always, any child or staff member who has any symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 needs to: inform the school; arrange a test via www.nhs.uk/coronavirus and self-isolate at home whilst awaiting the results.  Symptoms suggestive of COVID-19 are a new continuous cough and/or high temperature and/or a loss of, or change in, normal sense of taste or smell. If you are unsure if the symptoms are Covid-related please contact 111 for guidance. I know there has been a massive backlog with the tests and we have had people complain to us about the wait which means that children cannot be in school. However, if a child needs to isolate for any reason the school will provide home learning for them so that their education does not get too disrupted.

Next week in school we have the photographer coming in on Friday to take individual pictures of the children so you may want to take extra care with their appearance on that day. Have a good weekend – the weather looks set to last so we should enjoy it while we can.