Parents FAQ’s

1. How is the situation in the UK with Coronavirus currently and specifically in the location where the is sited?

Ardingly is located in West Sussex. Despite our proximity to Gatwick, offering convenience for international travel, and London, the school is in a relatively isolated rural setting making the campus rather easier to contain than some other urban boarding .

The latest figures from the UK Government are available here: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/#category=utlas&map=rate

This link provides details on the number of cases in each country, county and voting constituency across the UK. It also offers charts tracking the decline in daily infections.

2. Is the school offering quarantine and is it free of charge?

Yes we will offer to quarantine pupils at Ardingly from 17th August and there will be no charge. At the moment there is already pressure on the Government to change its approach to the quarantine, with air bridges being discussed, and we think it is unlikely that the two week quarantine will still be in place for all arrivals in the UK by September.

3. What is the plan in the event of a pupil/ student or teacher becoming infected?

If a pupil displays symptoms of Covid 19 they will be isolated, at home or at school, and tested as soon as possible. The UK currently has a capacity to conduct 200,000 tests each day and anyone is entitled to request a test. If the test result is negative the pupil will be allowed to return to school as soon as they wish. If the test result is positive the pupil can only return to school after 7 days and if they are symptom free. All close contacts of the pupil will be informed and will need to isolate either at school or at home for 14 days. The UK Government’s Test and Trace App should help with this process. In any period of self-isolation pupils should be able to access taught classes online through Teams. The same protocol will apply to teachers if they develop symptoms. If any overseas boarding pupil contracts the virus, and does not have a willing guardian or family member in the UK, the College will look after that pupil in isolation at the school.

We have created two isolation facilities in preparation for September. The first will be used to look after pupils who are symptomatic until they can be collected from school. This location would also be used for any overseas boarding pupils who are symptomatic, cannot be collected from school and are awaiting a test result. Should such a boarder test positive they would then move to a different isolation unit, next to but separate from the current medical centre. This allows us to ensure that the usual medical care of pupils who are not symptomatic or positive can be conducted away from any Covid cases and also allows us to separate those who are merely showing symptoms from those who test positive. We have increased our nursing hours so that an additional nurse will be employed every weekday at school whose sole role will be to deal with any Covid cases.

4. Will students and staff be provided with necessary masks, gloves, sanitisers, and other essentials for safety purposes?

Hand sanitisers will be readily available all over the school campus (in the entrances to day and boarding houses, at reception, on entry to the dining hall etc.). This was the case in the final few weeks of the Lent Term 2020. Pupils and staff are welcome to wear gloves and face masks if they wish but the current UK guidance is that these do not need to be provided for all pupils and staff in schools. The school will stock the necessary PPE for any staff that need to care for pupils with Covid and who are not able to keep a safe distance whilst doing so. The school will stock a limited number of face masks for students who wish to wear them but who have run short and are in need of an urgent replacement but masks will otherwise be the responsibility of individual pupils and their parents to provide. If guidance changes on the use of masks, or the infection rate begins to rise in our area, we will, of course, reconsider this approach.

5. Is the UK government likely to lift quarantine measures or can the Boarding school Association call for an exception to the quarantine for international students?

The BSA is working very hard to lobby on behalf of all member schools in the UK and quarantine will be one of the issues that continues to be raised. Please see the answer to question 3 above. We do think that the quarantine measures will be eased by September but we cannot guarantee this. Testing may well be so readily available by September that it might be possible to end the period of quarantine as soon as a negative test result is received.

6. If all boarders are negative, or have been through quarantine, then the risk comes from day students, who have more contacts outside of the community. How are you going to deal with this?

All pupils, day or boarding, will have their temperatures taken before coming into school each day. Pupils will not be allowed to attend school if they have an elevated temperature that would suggest Covid infection. Although one might consider the boarding community entirely isolated and illness free once all boarders have been through quarantine, it is not our intention, at present, to keep all boarders on campus for the entire term so it will not only be day pupils who may be interacting with people outside the school community. Flexi boarders will be allowed to return home each week and, with adequate permissions and following the appropriate government guidance, full boarders may also leave to stay with family and friends at the weekends if they wish. Teachers will also be interacting with people outside the school community as will all support staff. We have to accept that a school of 1000 pupils and 500 staff can never operate as one entirely isolated community but we will be doing all we can to mitigate risk.

7. Could we present a Coronavirus official test for our daughter dated 2-3 days before the School starts with negative result, so that we could avoid long Quarantine?

At present we would need to follow UK Government guidance on quarantine. Please see the answer to questions 3 and 5 above. We hope that by September an even wider testing regime may allow an early end to isolation but we presume the test would have to be taken in the UK as there is a risk of contracting the illness between departure from one country and arrival in another.

8. Are the school offering social distance measures and what are these?

We are looking at a number of different measures but experience has taught us that regular changes in Government guidance can often lead to much wasted planning time. For example, there is considerable debate at present as to whether the social distancing advice should be reduced from 2m to 1m which would have a significant, beneficial impact on the running of schools. Our intention is to wait until August, for the most up to date advice, before publicising the exact measures we will take. We will be taking any number of the following measures depending on the situation in September: ensuring an appropriate distance between all desks in classrooms, ensuring the pupils sit side-by-side or back-to-back but not face-to-face, operating one way systems in our busiest corridors, restricting or not running any large gatherings of pupils (assemblies, chapel services for example), extending our lunch serving time so that fewer pupils need to be in the dining hall at any one time, not allowing pupils to enter the study or bedroom of any other pupil, designating bathroom facilities to defined groups of pupils in day and boarding houses. As we are sure parents will understand, strict social distancing in a busy school is a big challenge but we will do all we can to minimise the chance of the infection spreading.

9. If parents are not comfortable to send our child abroad, would there be online live classes available throughout the term and will parents just be charged tuition fees?

Yes, online classes will be available in September for children who have not yet joined the school from overseas. We have made a great success of virtual learning for several weeks now and the staff are all familiar with how to deliver content in this fashion. Of course, there will be challenges in delivering lessons simultaneously for those in a class with the teacher and those in another country joining via Teams but we will be training our teachers to do just that. All lessons can be recorded which allows us to effectively deliver the content to pupils in different time zones that do not match the full UK school day.

Because the school will have many boarders back in September, and all of the additional staffing costs that come with this provision, we will not be able to waive the boarding fee entirely for any parents who make a personal choice not to send their children to board at this time. A boarding continuity fee will be charged. Details of these charges were outlined by the Headmaster in his Vimeo QandA session on Thursday 11th June and are available from the Admissions Department. We have allowed the option of returning after the weekend next term, after half-term or before the start of the Lent Term at the latest and there will be a sliding scale of reductions to the boarding fee depending on which option is chosen. Of course it is our preference that all boarders return for the start of next term but we appreciate this is a personal choice for parents and students and have shown as much flexibility as we can.

10. If resumes in September and boarders who continue to do online learning, could boarders be educationally penalized relative to day students?

Please see the answer to question 9. Online learning will still be taking place alongside the face-to-face teaching. has 300 boarders and it is not in our interest to offer a below standard education to any of our students and certainly not to such a large boarding contingent. We will do our very best to adapt lessons so that they are accessible to both day and boarding students in this scenario.

11. If we are still nervous to send our child abroad, when do we have to decide whether to withdraw from admission? (ie is there a deadline?)

Many parents will no doubt be aware that we had originally extended the date by which notice of withdrawal needed to be received until 1st June. Given that there is still uncertainty about the global pandemic we want to be as accommodating as we can on this issue and the school intends to extend the deadline for withdrawal of any overseas boarders until 1st August. We are hopeful that by this time parents will have full confidence that their children will be safe boarding in the UK. No fees would be charged in lieu if notice is given by this time.

12. Can you advise on any discussions and plans for school team sports within Ardingly and between schools?

At the moment we do not have all of the information that we need to answer this question. Given that the chance of infection is significantly reduced outdoors there may well be the opportunity for certain team sports to take place in something like normal fashion by September. At the time of writing, outdoor sports are allowed in the UK in groups of six and many sports will shortly be returning to larger group training with the expectation of beginning full training and matches again by September. Directors of Sport in all UK independent schools will be desperate to offer as much exercise and competition as possible next term but they will also follow all the latest guidance on which sports are safe, usually delivered by governing bodies for those sports. Ardingly is no different here. Before the lockdown began schools that were still running fixtures with one another had strict guidelines ensuring that each school was taking the same approach (no fixture if a positive case has been identified in a school, no pupils with any symptoms to play, no handshakes, etc.) and we would envisage any return to competitive sport involving similar, up to date, protocols.

13. For weekly boarders how would school transport work? Are you planning on running school buses?

We are aware that a number of our weekly boarders simply cannot get to and from school without the bus provision. If this mode of transport is allowed by the time school resumes in September, we will be running the buses as usually but we will need to consider taking steps for the safety of pupils and drivers alike. Numbers on each bus may be restricted and masks will need to be worn.

14. How many pupils will live in a room, and how would shared boarding spaces and bedrooms work?

We are very lucky at Ardingly that we have no facilities for boarders and the maximum number of pupils sharing a room is 2. In Shell and Remove boarders share with one other pupil. Some pupils in Vth will have individual rooms and others will share in pairs. All pupils in the LVIth and UVth have individual rooms and all UVITH rooms have en-suite bathrooms. Clearly, at this time, it is a great advantage not to have rooms shared by multiple pupils. The risk of infection is lower and the number of pupils needing to be isolated should any develop symptoms is also lower. Depending on the advice for boarding settings that the Government has issued by September we will also look at rotas during the day for different year groups to make use of the Common Room and other shared facilities, to reduce the number of pupils gathering in any one area at one time. Boarders will be placed into ‘bubbles’ with each ‘bubble’ making use of the same bathroom and kitchen facilities to reduce the chance of transmission. Boarders will not be allowed inside any bedrooms but their own. We will also be ensuring that all overseas boarders are evenly spread across each ‘bubble’ so that we reduce the chance of needing to isolate large groups of overseas pupils, without the support of family in the UK, at the school.

15. Will in house socials and weekend activities still happen?

Yes. We pride ourselves on the vibrant and engaging social programme that we offer to our boarders. Their integration is essential and we have already begun to adapt our programme so that we can make it as safe as possible whilst still providing all the usual social benefits for our pupils.

16. Would weekly boarders be able to return to London at the weekends?

Yes. Weekly boarders can return home but we will ask them to be responsible and respectful in the way in which they behave so that they can return safely to school after returning home.

17. How often would you be testing the students in house?

Temperature checks will be completed daily but tests for the virus itself will only be conducted if pupils develop symptoms. The school will arrange tests for any overseas boarders who have to isolate at school and parents would need to take responsibility for arranging tests for day pupils and UK boarders. This protocol will be reviewed if testing becomes so simple, efficient and widespread that it can be conducted by the school in all cases. We are currently in contact with a number of organisations who could offer testing of the whole school community on site but we are debating the value of testing that shows whether or not you are positive or negative at any one moment in time against antibody testing that would show whether you have already had the illness.

18. What happens to Flexi Boarders? Do they stay with the international boarders?

Yes. Flexi Boarders may well share with international boarders in age groups where pupils do not have single rooms.

19. How will music lessons and more practical lessons happen with social distancing?

Music lessons will be relatively easy to conduct as they are one-to-one classes with plenty of space for adequate social distancing in each room. Likewise, for subjects like Drama and DT we have strict caps on numbers and sufficient space for pupils because the nature of the work, regardless of the need for social distancing, means these subjects need more space per pupil than other taught lessons.