Behind The Scenes

Behind TheScenes

The St Peter’s School family includes around 400 full-time and part-time staff in both teaching and support roles. We are immensely grateful for everything our teaching and support staff do to ensure the smooth running of St Peter’s School.

Our support staff often work behind the scenes, so this edition of The Peterite celebrates their invaluable work over the last year which has helped us to navigate the unchartered waters of the coronavirus pandemic.

Our Catering Team Covid-19 restrictions and social distancing created new challenges for our Catering team, affecting the way they prepared and served meals.

Our Memorial Hall was transformed into a bespoke dining room, serving breakfast and lunch six days a week, and the menus were adapted to ensure that food could be served as quickly and safely as possible. Delicious and nutritious ‘one pot’ meals helped to speed up service and reduce queueing at meal times.

Craig Robinson, Head of Catering and Hospitality, said: “We truly hope that all pupils and colleagues have enjoyed our new menus this year and I would like to thank everyone for adapting so quickly and positively to our new lunchtime routine.”

Our Housekeepers The full reopening of the school campus and Boarding Houses in September 2020 saw various changes to routines and expectations for our Housekeeping team. Some staff took on additional hours to carry out extra tasks such as refilling sanitiser stations, wiping down surfaces in high traffic, high contact areas and generally responding to requests and expectations with good humour and a desire to help. Boarding House matrons and housekeepers have also responded with characteristic professionalism when faced with the uncertainty of new protocols and challenges of adapting to situations of pupils in self-isolation. Their desire to ensure that our boarders continue to have a full and settled boarding experience has been evident throughout.

Our Health Services Team The Health Services Team worked incredibly hard to support the school in reopening safely in September 2020, liaising with many departments across the school and Boarding Houses to enable them to operate safely. Advice and support have been provided to parents and carers whilst our nurses continue to help pupils with their day to day health needs.

St Peter’s School now has a central temporary medical centre, meaning the old medical centre can be free to see pupils with symptoms associated with Covid-19 – to keep everyone safe and separate!

We have also appointed a new mental health nurse to enhance our multidisciplinary health team.

Ashley Mason, Health Services Manager, said: “I am really pleased that we have been able to put in place the facilities to continue to deliver the high standard of care and health support our pupils are accustomed to, in a safe manner.”

Our Facilities Assistants The Facilities Assistants work in all corners of the School, from Boarding Houses to broom cupboards, to create a safe and secure learning environment for staff and pupils. In September 2020, they added ‘fogging’ to their list of duties and they named themselves ‘The Foggers’ in honour of their newly acquired role. ‘Fogging’ involves spraying an atomised spray of antiviral disinfectant into various spaces across the site from classrooms and meeting rooms to corridors and dining halls.

The Foggers have primarily been working out of school hours, on weekends and evenings, to ensure that all spaces are thoroughly disinfected. Occasionally, though, they have been asked to drop everything and do some fogging to ensure the smooth running of the school.

Fogging is carried out in addition to the cleaning done by the school’s Housekeeping team and provides an extra layer of antiviral protection. The team of Foggers includes Jack ‘The Machine’ Hopwood, Gary ‘The Legend’ Marshall, Mick ‘The Bandit’ Hagan and Dave ‘The Handyman’ Matterson.