Ysgol Friars in Bangor is struggling to provide teaching cover for classes, due to the escalating number of Covid cases at the school.
Another 38 Covid cases were recorded today, Monday 21 March, including 7 staff, a new record at the school since the pandemic began. 11 members of staff now off sick with the virus, which means more than 10% of the teaching staff are currently unavailable.
An email from Deputy Headteacher David Healey to parents, read: “The rolling 7-day average for members of the school has reached 16 new cases per day. Some of our staff are still unwell from last week so that we currently have 11 staff off at the moment with Covid.
“This is more than one in ten of our teaching staff. We are struggling to cover classes, there are no more supply staff available, we presume this is because other schools are facing similar problems.
“As you may know, we were proactive in appointing additional cover staff for these sorts of eventualities, but the numbers now are such that today we have had to use ‘emergency cover’.
“This is a facility allowed in the regulations where we can call upon qualified staff, that would not normally be teaching, to cover classes. It would be very much a last resort, but we are coming very close to the point where we might have to send some children home because we don’t have staff to stand in front of them. We are aware of at least one local school that has already had to do this.
“We discovered and sent home two students last week and another two today that should not have been in school because it was less than 5 days since their positive Covid test and they had not had two negative tests 24 hours apart.”
“In Wales there is a legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test with a fixed penalty of up to £1920 or prosecution for anyone found not to be self-isolating correctly. The regulations are explained in detail along with a simple calendar to help identify day 0, day 5 etc. here: https://gov.wales/self-isolation
“We are very grateful that most students are continuing to test themselves regularly and we would like to thank you for helping us to get through this current surge of cases with minimum disruption to the education of your children. If your child needs a lateral flow test kit, they are available from the Heads of Year in school.”
