Covid-19
Covid Update Friday 15th January 2021
Thank you for your patience and understanding throughout this very difficult time for us all. We have been reviewing our risk assessment to ensure we can keep the children and staff as safe as we possibly can.
The safety of our children, families and staff is our utmost priority. It is a major concern that the new strain of the virus is spreading so quickly with case rates in the 0-5 age range seeing a 268% increase in the last month and coronavirus daily death rates being the highest since the start of the pandemic, with a daily death rate of 1,248 deaths announced yesterday. The infection rate in Birmingham continues to rise with the rate in the local area around our school currently being 798 cases per 100,000 people. This is double what it was before Christmas.
During this national lockdown we are all being told to stay at home as much as possible and only go out for essential journeys, with the primary and secondary schools being closed to most children. We appreciate that for most of you this means keeping your child off nursery and safe at home. We totally understand this and want to reassure you that your child’s nursery place remains secure for when you feel that it is safe for them to return. In fact, when asked about nurseries on BBC Breakfast on Monday, Professor Chris Whitty the Chief Medical Officer said ‘If you don’t need to use it, don’t use it.’ Having lower numbers of children attending nursery also helps to reduce the transmission risk to our staff and helps to keep them safe too. Please see our home learning page for a home learning booklet of activities to do with your child whilst they are off nursery or ask staff for a paper copy of this.
In line with government requirements, from next week nursery will be open to all children and your child can attend if you decide that the best place for them at this time is in nursery. However, we are currently having to self-isolate most of our staff due to having 5 positive covid cases over the last two weeks. Please contact the school office on 0121 675 1123 if you would like your child to attend nursery and we can inform you when your child’s bubble will re-open.
Due to on-going staffing shortages and the situations in each bubble (which are changing daily at the moment) your child’s session times may be temporarily different to usual to enable us to keep their group as small as possible.
Covid Update September 2020
We have completed an extensive risk assessment and made changes to our rooms, timetables and procedures to ensure that nursery is as safe as we can make it for children, parents and staff. We ask for your help in following our new rules and systems to enable everything to run smoothly when you return to nursery.
The school will do its best to:
- Provide an environment which has been risk assessed in response to the COVID-19 infection;
- Regularly clean all surfaces, toilets, touch points (e.g. door handles) and toys;
- Teach your child good hand washing techniques and ensure that they are supervised whilst regularly washing their hands
- Teach children to cough into a tissue or their elbow – the ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’ technique
- Ensure that children and staff are kept in their own ’bubbles’ and apart from other ‘bubbles’ in line with government guidance
- Provide a curriculum that meets the needs of your child’s well-being, mental health and academic needs;
- Contact parents/carers if your child displays symptoms of COVID-19;
- Inform you if staff or children in your child’s ‘bubble’ show symptoms of COVID-19 as this will mean you will all need to self-isolate for at least 14 days if a test comes back positive;
- Continue our clear and consistent approach as set out in the Behaviour Policy and its Covid-19 Addendum
- Communicate regularly between home and school through notices, Parent Mail (text), Tapestry, email and the school website.
We ask that to help your child at school, you do the following:
- If your child, or anyone in your household, shows symptoms of COVID-19 (high temperature, new continuous cough or loss or change of taste or smell), you will not send them to school. You will self-isolate for 14 days as a family. You will get them tested and you will let the school know the results as soon as possible via telephone.
- If your child shows symptoms of COVID-19 at school, you will collect them from school immediately.
- On your commute and when dropping your child off and picking them up, you will adhere to the current social distancing guidance.
- When dropping off and picking up, you will strictly adhere to the school timings for your child.
- Only one adult will attend Nursery with your child and you will only bring siblings if necessary.
- You will leave the premises promptly at the beginning and end of each day.
- Your child can only bring into Nursery a bag of spare clothes and they must not bring any toys or other items from home.
- You will talk to your child about social distancing but accept this is difficult to follow and that your child may not always do this successfully.
- You will help teach your child good hand and toilet hygiene and also how to cough into their elbow or a tissue.
- You will not be allowed into the school building without a pre- arranged appointment. You will need to make appointments via telephone. You will contact school by telephone if you have any concerns about your child and/or your family.
- Read all letters/messages/emails that are sent home.
- You need to inform the school immediately of any changes to parents/carer and emergency contacts details.
- Your child will wear clean clothes each day if at all possible.
- You will wear a face covering if you need to come into the school building, unless exempt from doing so.
- You will support the staff in their efforts to create ‘as safe as possible’ environment during this crisis.
- You will access home learning on Tapestry for your child when appropriate, for example if your family are self-isolating but well.
Please see government guidance for further details
Our current full covid risk assessment:
