Hello and welcome once more to Heads Up. 

It’s so critical to stay on top of what we need to be doing as we journey out of lockdown but it can be difficult when the guidance evolves so quickly. We must continue to be vigilant in social distancing and testing to stay ahead and minimise the risk of new local Covid waves. 

The following guidance has not changed: 

• While there is no longer the expectation that pupils will need to wear face coverings classrooms or communal areas in schools and settings, they do still need to wear them on school transport.  
• Anybody with a high temperature, loss or change in sense of smell, or a new persistent cough must isolate with their household and book a PCR test. 

Hopefully, the whistle stop tour of the latest guidance changes and their implications will be helpful for you whether in our Tuesday meetings or the Monday bulletin. The Education Helpline team remains available for any of those challenging or unusual questions or just to test the thinking behind a particular approach. A complexity that we will all have, is that local variations may be necessary to respond to public health need in responding to outbreaks. 

As we look forward to moving out of pandemic mode, the Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza has called for our help in gathering the thoughts, aspirations and concerns of our children and young people.  Your help in getting children and young people to participate in this would be hugely appreciated as we aim to make it the largest survey of children and young people of its kind ever to have been undertaken in England.  

It will help to inform and shape policy for children and young people.  The survey and resources available for primary schools to help them engage their pupils can be found here. It would be fantastic if Warwickshire had a great engagement rate so please do push this among your pupils. 

Once again, thank you for all of your efforts in keeping schools safe.  We are definitely starting to see light at the end of the tunnel, but will work through any headwinds or turbulence together. Have a good weekend and I look forward to seeing you next week. 

Kind regards 

Ian