We started this year with a Plan B. We knew we had to be ready to go to that Plan B at any time. We just didn’t realise that it would be three days after the start of term.
We’ve had two positive cases of Covid among our staff now. The hardest thing was that our first incident involved Year 7.
They’d been in for two days, obviously having had a very unsatisfying end to Year 6. Then we realised that we’d have to tell 45 of our new Year 7s that they couldn’t come into school for two weeks. It just felt awful.
The member of staff had been contacted by Track and Trace and asked to take a Covid test. I was informed at 9.30am on Friday that the test had come back positive.
‘Doing my best as I went along’
Immediately, I contacted Public Health England. PHE is very good when you get through to them, but they’re clearly overwhelmed, and struggling to get back to people. They didn’t get back to me until early afternoon, so I didn’t know what their guidance would be.
However, I knew that some of the members of staff who were potentially affected had been shielding. I decided that, if I didn’t hear from PHE, I would have to make my own call. I wasn’t going to keep them in school any longer.
At 1.45pm, I hadn’t heard anything, so I sent members of staff with vulnerable family members home. And I met the colleagues of the person who’d tested positive and told them to get a test.
I was trying to do my best as I went along. Because I hadn’t heard from PHE yet, I went by the guidelines used earlier during lockdown. My son had symptoms in May, and the rest of my family were unsymptomatic, but we were told to get tests. So that’s what I told my staff.
But that’s not the latest advice. Public Health England now says that you don’t need to get a test unless you’re symptomatic. So some staff went to try and get tested, and they were told they couldn’t get tests unless they were symptomatic. Some people sent off for postal tests. Other people went up to Gatwick to get tests. It’s all a bit inconsistent. One colleague was told to go to a test centre in Manchester - from Brighton.
Managing people’s anxieties
People began to worry and get anxious. When you hear that a colleague you might have been in close contact with has tested positive, that slightly sore throat you’ve had for a while suddenly becomes more worrying. You start thinking: can I taste this sandwich? Has my sense of smell been affected? That’s what you’ve got to manage: people’s emotions, people’s anxieties.
The member of staff affected was very distressed and stressed. They were mortified, feeling that they might have caused this. Obviously, they hadn’t, but you feel like that, don’t you?
We had colleagues come forward and say they’d been in contact with that member of staff. One of the people in the group then tested positive this week. In some ways, that didn’t feel quite as bad as the first positive case. It felt like an extension of the same situation. But this is also now classed as an outbreak. I don’t want us to have to use that language.
It was about 2.30pm when the final guidance came back from PHE. I was aware that I needed to get a message out to the staff. I needed to get communication out to the parents. It all takes a long time. You’ve got these template letters, which you have to personalise.
We’re suddenly in a stressful situation, up against the clock. I’m very aware that Year 7 children might need childcare arrangements for Monday. And then I’m having to read and redraft three different letters: one to staff, one to directly affected families, and one to the wider community. By the time these went out, it was nearly 5.30pm, because I wanted to get them right.
I ended up accidentally causing some confusion. The letter that went out to affected families had the same opening paragraphs as the first letter, which went out to all parents. Then I added extra paragraphs at the end to those directly affected.
With hindsight, I should have put those extra paragraphs at the beginning. Because some parents assumed it was the same letter. They just thought, “Oh, the school’s emailed me twice by mistake.”
Shock, frustration and confusion
Parents were very understanding: they know that this is the new world we’re in. But there was frustration on behalf of their children. A few parents who are shielding elderly grandparents or vulnerable family members did feel scared and concerned.
And I did get a few angry parents: “How has the school let this happen?” There were a few accusations: that the member of staff must have been engaged in some risky behaviour.
The staff member came into school asymptomatic. They’d done nothing wrong. I think people thought that it might be a 23-year-old, coming back from Ibiza - some kind of stereotype.
And then I had some lovely emails from parents, just getting in touch and saying: “So sorry you’ve had to deal with this. We think the school is handling this brilliantly.”
My favourite one was: “If school leadership were in government, then we might be better off.”
There have been more positive, lovely messages than difficult ones. The difficult ones were mainly shock, frustration and confusion.
Of course, our Year 7 students are really, really disappointed. We’re really trying hard to make their online learning the most positive experience we can.
And this may actually be a useful experience for some of the older students. Teenagers aren’t great at self-regulation or physical distancing particularly. So this is making some of them take it more seriously, and that’s no bad thing.
We’ve also made some adjustments to what we do in school. We’d been doing regular handwashing and wearing face masks, but these measures don’t compare with social distancing. So we’ve adjusted some of our guidance to teaching assistants: where they should stand to support children, that sort of thing.
We’d already marked off two metres at the front of the classroom, where teachers should stand. But suddenly the reality of why we should do that became really, really clear.
Claire Jarman is the principal of Cardinal Newman Catholic School in East Sussex
