Hello and welcome once again to Heads Up. 
Following on from Duane Chappell last week, who gave a very timely update on the SEND joint inspection, it is my turn this week and I can update on the situation around managing outbreaks in schools and, importantly, to reassure you that the county council remains committed to supporting you to do your jobs.
We now have an enhanced position in Warwickshire regarding school outbreaks. This position seeks to place the power of decision with head teachers based on their local context, but within a wider space where you have some assurance of support from Public Health and Education.
This was discussed at Tuesday’s call with head teachers but I am happy to recap for those unable to attend and as a refresher for those who were.
- Where there are a concerning number of positive cases in a class or year group (or equivalent level of risk such as an absence of staff), you may wish to enact time-limited attendance restrictions. (The length of the restriction may vary depending on a range of factors, such as time taken to receive a negative PCR test result, or longer, if short-term remote learning is not anticipated - based on risk assessment - to be effective in reducing the risk and transmission. Please note that a remote learning offer must accompany attendance restrictions).
- Where close contact (asymptomatic) children are awaiting the result of a PCR test, you may wish to actively promote daily home LFT testing. You might then decide that children testing negative at LFT can attend school that day. Following a negative PCR result, you might then decide to revert to promoting twice-weekly LFT testing.
In instances where you feel point 2 does not achieve notable disruption to transmission rates, you might want to consider an option to move to a third possible action:
3. School leaders experiencing elevated transmissions linked to household positives may wish to make the decision to ask parents to keep ‘child contacts’ at home, at least until a negative PCR result is returned. Public Health and Education will support this decision.
And finally:
4. School leaders have the support of Education and Public Health to enact these points independently, where they can evidence that other measures in the contingency framework have not had a notable impact on transmission.
In a nutshell, what all of this means is that we, at Warwickshire County Council, will support your actions. There are some very difficult decisions that some of you will have to make while we get on top of transmission rates again and start the rollout of the vaccination programme among our young people.
We know that there is no one size fits all approach and that you have the local knowledge that no guidance can have. That’s why it is called guidance. And while we try to align with other local authorities, we have to make the right decision for Warwickshire or, at least, our part of it. So, monitoring the local situation has to be at the heart of our decision-making.
Speaking of the vaccination programme, there will be more detail emerging in coming weeks but you should have been contacted regarding a scam that is going round. Indeed, there may be more than one. Please refer to the example that we sent from the CWPT. That is the only communication that you should receive regarding consents.
Apologies that this has been a bit heavy on Covid matters. We do intend to move to keeping this introduction free of anything related to the virus but, as they say, ‘we’re not quite there yet’.
I will close however with some good, totally unrelated news. Warwickshire County Cricket Club won the Championship last Friday. Although no longer in the boundaries of Warwickshire, the cricket club remains dear to many hearts in the county. It’s definitely something that we are celebrating at the county council and hope that the success has a legacy of inspiring our young people to take up a sport, whether that be cricket or something else.
Howzat for an introduction? Have a good weekend and I look forward to seeing you soon.
Matthew Biggs