Welcome
Welcome to this week’s Heads Up.
As the situation around Covid-19 escalates nationally, we are preparing for the local situation to change and for more confirmed cases to be diagnosed. Should this happen, it is likely that there will be an impact on schools being able to stay open.
We are being guided by the experts at Public Health England who have established stringent criteria for if, and when, a school should close and for how long.
For now, we are trying to maintain business as usual and keep disruption to our children's learning to a minimum. However, the health and safety of the children, staff and wider community has to be our priority and we have to play our part in preventing the spread of the virus.
It is equally important that we are consistent in our messaging and in our response to any potential cases of the virus involving members of our communities. In order to ensure that we take the most appropriate advice from the same source, a dedicated contact number and email has been set up for school leaders (see separate emails).
It is imperative that this dedicated number is used by schools only so please do not give it to anyone outside of your establishment and please only use it for information specifically about your school.
Please do continue to signpost your school community to wider public health advice. The simple advice is to signpost people needing general information to the government website. There is also a dedicated public helpline (0800 0468687) and email (DfE.coronavirushelpline@education.gov.uk). These are open from 8am to 6pm (Monday to Friday).
Anything you can do to continue to publicise Catch it, Bin it, Kill It materials is also welcomed. Please read the article in this issue for further advice on how to help yourself and for downloadable copies of posters that should be displayed in your settings.
Thank you in advance for your co-operation. I appreciate how unsettling this is but I trust that everyone will follow the professional advice.
Thank you to those of you who contributed to the discussion regarding the Warwickshire Education Strategy at the heads conference last Thursday. There was plenty of interesting feedback which we will take on board when we refresh the strategy over the Easter period. We’ll be sure to share with you the changes made based on your feedback as we develop our priorities and objectives.
For those of you that missed the opportunity to contribute at the conference, we’re also releasing a survey to capture further feedback to support our analysis which you can respond to. We’ll be sharing this through various platforms as we feel its important to consider the views of all those with an interest in Warwickshire’s education system, so please feel free to share this with your colleagues, parents and pupils as appropriate.
Our strategy web pages have also been refreshed with the latest progress and results which will be useful information to consider when responding to the survey. We’ll continue to update these as we move forward.
Please find the survey on Ask Warwickshire here. The closing date for responses is 3 April.
With best wishes,
Ian Budd
Assistant Director for Education Services