NORHAM NEWS Welcome to our weekly edition of Norham News. As we aware not all of our wonderful parents & carers access social media including Facebook we thought our community would appreciate a weekly update on all aspects of school life, including of course, updates on COVID-19. As such, we will update you on whether COVID is affecting us and if so, how. We will also update you on how we manage and run the school to ensure children and staff are protected as far as possible despite this being a Global Pandemic.
Cases in our area:
How we manage your school:
As you will know there has been an increase in the number of cases around our region. This is of course affecting pupils and students from all educational settings, whether it be schools, nurseries or universities. We are fortunate that cases remain relatively low.
Please remember every year group has their very own section of the school. They have their own personal entry / exit doors, hand sanitising stations and area for socialising including their own break / lunch areas. We are fortunate to be able to run a “bubble” system where each year group learns and socialises without any mixing.
Back to business… laptop for every GCSE Pupil
Identify, verify, notify...
Despite “lockdown”, our pupils… your children made an exceptional return to school. They showed the determination they had to not let COVID stand in the way of their learning. As such, we rewarded every GCSE pupil in Year 10 & 11 with a FREE laptop or Chromebook. This is designed to help them catch up on studies and an essential tool to support learning during isolation. We are now looking at options for Year 7—9 pupils.
1. Following identification of a positive case, our in house Track and Trace system is implemented. This takes less than 1hr to complete from start to finish. However, even when we complete this process, we review it again, going back through all evidence to ensure no one has been missed. This ensures any child who has been a possible “close” contact of a positive case can isolate quickly and safely. 2. We analyse pupil timetables, seating plans, we establish friend groups and ensure a friendly reassuring face meets children before our Head Teacher takes time to talk to our children and explain the process, taking any questions. By doing this we verify all children who need to isolate are able to do so immediately and ensure children feel safe! 3. While this takes place, our team contacts parents and carers notifying them and offering any advice, help or guidance to reassure you and keep you safe. While we have had just a small number of cases we must work together—please notify us if unwell at all