By Richard Hall | Posted: Wednesday September 8, 2021
School returns to classroom based learning from tomorrow, and we are all looking forward to it.
School resumes on-site tomorrow at the normal time of 8.50am. We will be at alert level 2 and there are some important things you need to know.
Firstly we would like everyone to support the push for a safe community by asking our boys to wear masks to and from school. They are not compulsory once in school and in reality for a practical subject such as Physical Education, they may be restrictive.
Please be aware that we expect the mask to be in line with our uniform standards. I am not mandating a colour or style, but it needs to be acceptable. This means no unacceptable wording or pictures. If we believe it to be so, we will ask the student to remove it and we will issue them with a disposable one. As we all know they are compulsory on the town buses.
Learning will be classroom based. It is expected that students will return to school. The latest Ministry of Education guidelines states:
'The only exceptions are children or young people who are sick or have any COVID-19 symptoms, are in self-isolation, those who have been asked to stay at home by health authorities while awaiting for the result of a test, and those who choose to remain at home because they are at a higher risk of severe illness from COVID-19 and are not fully vaccinated.'
For those students, online learning will be available, but our staff will be concentrating on the classroom. If you are in this position, where your child needs to be at home, please contact me through the school.
There will be changes around the school, noticeably no assemblies and physical spacing in the canteen, but the rules for inside a school are different to the rules on the street. The boys will be communicated these tomorrow.
Common sense, safe hygiene practices and thinking before you act are all good rules of thumb.
I believe these are the important messages that you need to know before the school returns tomorrow, might pay to go and get him to see if he actually still has his uniform! There will be more updates later in the week.
Lastly my sincere thanks for the way in which you, as parents, supported your son, our learner, through this time. It is not easy juggling everything.