Updates & Guidance
The Department for Education provides up to date information for parents and carers about attending school during the pandemic:
Here’s a summary of important information:
1. Mixing and ‘bubbles’
Keeping pupils or students in year group or classroom bubbles to reduce mixing is no longer a requirement.
2. Tracing close contacts
Close contacts will now be identified via NHS Test and Trace. Education settings are no longer expected to undertake contact tracing. However, we will inform you if there is a positive case in your child’s class.
3. Face coverings
Face coverings are not advised for pupils in classrooms or in communal areas. As a result of the Omicron variant, all adults are now required to wear a face covering while inside the building in communal areas. School staff do not need to wear a face covering in classrooms. We still request that you wear a face covering if invited in to Coopers Lane School for a face to face meeting with any school adult or for class assemblies and performances.
4. Safety Measures
Coronavirus hasn’t gone away so there will still be a need for us to follow basic measures to avoid the spread of the virus:
- Staff testing twice a week
- Ensuring good hygiene including frequent and thorough hand cleaning and the ‘catch it, bin it, kill it’ approach.
- Maintaining appropriate cleaning regimes.
- Keeping occupied spaces well ventilated.
- Following public health advice on testing, self-isolation and managing confirmed cases of COVID-19.
5. Self Isolation
Self-isolate straight away and get a PCR test as soon as possible if you have any of these 3 symptoms of COVID-19, even if they are mild:
- a high temperature
- a new, continuous cough
- a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste
- you’ve tested positive for COVID-19 – this means you have the virus
It remains important that you do not send your child to school if they have tested positive for, or have symptoms of, coronavirus. In the event of a positive test result, please contact the school office immediately:
020 8857 7680 info@cooperslane.lewisham.sch.uk
Changes to Self Isolation Rules
People who are self-isolating with COVID-19 have the option to reduce their isolation period after 5 full days if they test negative with an LFD test on both day 5 and day 6 and they do not have a temperature. For example, if they test negative on the morning of day 5 and the morning of day 6, they can return to their education or childcare setting immediately on day 6.
The first test must be taken no earlier than day 5 of the self-isolation period, and the second must be taken the following day. All test results should be reported to NHS Test and Trace.
If the result of either test is positive, they should continue to self-isolate until they get negative results from two LFD tests on consecutive days or until they have completed 10 full days of self-isolation, whichever is earliest.
The new rules also apply to people who are already isolating – so if someone was already isolating before Monday 17 January, they can take LFD tests on day 5 and 6 and if they are both negative and they have no temperature they can end their isolation.
Anyone who is unable to take LFD tests or anyone who continues to have a temperature will need to complete the full 10-day period of self-isolation.
Further information on self-isolation for those with COVID-19 is available.