Parent Bulletin: 15.01.2021

Dear Parents and Carers

Remote Learning Survey

Thank you to everyone who has already completed our survey on remote learning. Please do respond to this by Monday at noon, if you haven’t already done so – your contributions are anonymous and will all be read and considered, alongside those of the students:

Lateral Flow Testing at Critical Worker School

You may be aware of some questions about Covid testing in schools, particularly around the tests being used to allow those pupils who are direct contacts of positive cases to attend school by having a daily test. We have not done this at school and the guidance has now changed: we will continue to carry out weekly testing to screen for asymptomatic cases of the virus, but pupils and staff who are known to be direct contacts of a positive case will be asked to self-isolate for 10 days as previously. This is because the tests are known to be only about 60-70% reliable at detecting positive cases. Even at this level of accuracy, routine testing is still thought to be helpful at identifying asymptomatic cases and we will continue with this general screening as another layer of virus prevention – while being very careful to maintain all our other measures of distancing, hand hygiene and face-coverings.

Help Support our Foster Care Service

Please see the message from the Local Authority later in this bulletin – there is a greater need than ever for people to come forward to foster a child.

Enrichment opportunities offered by the University of Cambridge

There’s a really exciting set of webinars and creative opportunities on offer this term for our students to access – see the later pages. Please encourage your child to investigate these and to discuss with a teacher if they need any support in applying.

Healthy Selfie Challenge

Message from the PE Department: We are relaunching the hugely successful “Healthy Selfie” challenge from last year in order to celebrate all the physical activity that students and families are doing. Getting out of the house, being active and raising your heart rate is so important, now more than ever. Not just for your physical health but also for your emotional wellbeing. It can help to reduce anxiety, increase self-esteem, improve your sleep and give you more energy to tackle the day.

We would like our students and their families, when out on daily walks or bike rides, completing their physical activity or CamVC PE challenges, to take a selfie (a Healthy Selfie) to show off how everyone is maintaining their physical activity in this difficult time.

To share these healthy selfies, please email them (from an adult’s email address) to cam-healthyselfie@cambournevc.org. By doing this, you are giving consent for us to celebrate and share your image on the school website and our social media. Please check out our PE Twitter page @CamVC_PE to find out more.

I hope that you all have relaxing - and healthy! – weekends.

With all good wishes and take care

Claire Coates