SEVERAL schools have been forced to close classes or ask students to work from home following a surge in Covid cases which one head teacher says has pushed staffing levels to ‘crisis point’.
Secondary schools have been particularly badly hit, with the total number of pupils absent fluctuating between 22% and 28% over the past fortnight.
Three secondary-school year groups were required to study from home yesterday, including Year 10 at Haute Vallée and Year 7 at Grainville. The latter will also be closed to Year 9 pupils today.
Grainville head teacher Sue Morris said the school was missing 16 staff, adding: ‘We have done everything we can to have the whole school back for the last four working days but we are at crisis point again with regards to staffing.’
In a letter, Haute Vallée head teacher Stuart Hughes apologised to parents but said he had been left with no alternative but to close year groups.
Eight classes in primary schools were closed during the first four days of this week, with the overall pupil absence rate being 12.7% yesterday.
After 1,050 new infections were reported across schools last week, the surge in cases has continued with a further 355 cases confirmed on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
The government has confirmed that a supply of carbon-dioxide monitors and air-filtration units was due to be delivered during the week of 14 February.
Children’s and Education Minister Scott Wickenden said the new equipment would be installed in areas where there was limited scope for opening windows and doors or achieving good ventilation.
‘We will work with teachers to ensure the installation of filters does not interrupt learning, especially for students who are taking exams,’ he said.
Current policy in schools states that children who are classed as direct contacts of a positive case are no longer required to isolate or take PCR tests but to take a daily lateral flow test at home before – if the result is negative – going to school.
Contact-tracing by the government and through schools is due to end next week as part of the de-escalation of Covid measures announced by ministers last week. An announcement about this move was expected today.
News about the latest position in schools came as recently-released minutes of the Island’s Scientific and Technical Advisory Cell meetings described the situation in schools a month before Christmas as ‘chaotic’.
At a STAC meeting on 22 November, associate medical director Dr Adrian Noon said that children were being repeatedly contact-traced and tested, with increasing absence rates resulting from children having to isolate after reporting coughs or colds.
STAC members pledged to look at new contact-tracing arrangements for schools after Dr Noon expressed concern about the effects of the situation on children, parents and grandparents.
The question of whether to delay the start of the current school term by a week was considered by STAC members at their meeting on 29 December.
It was noted that although an additional week’s closure might seem an attractive option, ‘the threshold for justifying the loss of face-to-face learning was necessarily high and it would have implications for working parents, especially at such short notice’.
The minutes note that one cell member suggested that reintroducing mask-wearing in schools could be desirable, while another expressed strong support for schools to reopen as planned [on 4 January], given that there were ‘no compelling reasons’ to justify a delay.
