Parents FAQ's 1. How Is the Situation in the UK with Coronavirus Currently
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Parents FAQ’s 1. How is the situation in the UK with Coronavirus currently and specifically in the location where the school is sited? Ardingly College 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 schools. 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.