Case at school - radio silence

[notroundthebend]

It appears we have a confirmed case at my ds school in his class in school last week 'poorly' Thursday / Friday who tested Friday PM and was confirmed Saturday. The mother is also now awaiting results and is unwell. Mother has tried to contact the school via email/phone and can get no response. Other concerned parents including myself have also tried to get a response from the school.. nothing!
Is there supposed to be some sort of guidelines (even in half term) about reporting confirmed cases to school? I can't help but wonder they are keeping quite deliberately. Worth noting the other local school which closed its doors midway through last week is having an extra week off because cases have risen sharply! I just feel like we need to be alerting people..🤷‍♀️

[THATbasicWITCH]

Our school have a special covid email address which is monitored frequently. You would think theyd all have a similar set up really

[Tomatoandbasil]

My council has said that positive cases should be dealt with by track and trace or whatever it’s called rather than school over half term.

[Notonthestairs]

I have children in primary and secondary and their schools have set up email addresses purely for reporting positive cases. We were told it would be monitored over half term.

[middleager]

Our schools have dedicated emails for reporting.

Are you in half term? Not saying this is tight, but emails might not be monitored in the holiday.

[middleager]

right

[MrsHamlet]

My school has a specific email address for this which routes to all of the senior team, and the office staff are also checking the generic email and the answer phone.
I cannot imagine it would be deliberate.

[HazeyJaneII]

I thought schools had to have a dedicated email/phone line for reporting cases. Both dds school and ds's do.

[Mamimawr]

I would phone the local education authority. Some children might be going to visit vunerable relatives over half term, someone must contact them all to ensure they self isolate.

[Mamimawr]

Have the family spoken ti Track and Trace (or whatever it's called!).

[RingPiece]

Schools only need to know if a child tests positive so they know which absence code to put down on the register. If it's half term, the children are off anyway, so reasons for absence are not needed. No school I know would inform anyone in the school community of cases. They see that as the job of track and trace.

[mamma2016]

Schools are responsible for informing PHE of cases and they then advise who needs to self isolate. The school then informs close contact of need to self isolate. They do the contacting, not track and trace! It is very much the school's responsibility to notify close contacts.

[THATbasicWITCH]

Schools only need to know if a child tests positive so they know which absence code to put down on the register. If it's half term, the children are off anyway, so reasons for absence are not needed. No school I know would inform anyone in the school community of cases. They see that as the job of track and trace.

This is not correcr

[THATbasicWITCH]

Correct

[FAQs]

Our school also has a dedicated email address and mobile number, half term doesn’t cover the isolation period. Good luck op, our school has had 14 cases so far. No huge issues as they have been pretty organised.

[HazeyJaneII]

@RingPiece

Schools only need to know if a child tests positive so they know which absence code to put down on the register. If it's half term, the children are off anyway, so reasons for absence are not needed. No school I know would inform anyone in the school community of cases. They see that as the job of track and trace.

No, this isn't correct, both schools our childten go to ate monitoring the emails throughout half term, and have specifically asked for school to be informed so they can tell PHE

[notroundthebend]

Thanks for your info and advice, I've asked the question about track and trace.

[MuttsNutts]

@RingPiece

Schools only need to know if a child tests positive so they know which absence code to put down on the register. If it's half term, the children are off anyway, so reasons for absence are not needed. No school I know would inform anyone in the school community of cases. They see that as the job of track and trace.

That is not the case.

When there is a positive case we speak to Public Health England and we then send out close contact letters to those identified from conversations with parents of the positive child and teachers and reference to class seating plans.

There is no requirement for a special Covid email address to be used but we do ask for all positive cases to be notified to the school via the usual email address. These have been monitored throughout the half term break and I spent Thursday evening (we finished on Wednesday) emailing close contacts of a child who tested positive that day.

In the OP’s case, it is very concerning that the mother of the child with the positive child has been unable to contact the school if, as it appears, the child was in school whilst infectious. School would certainly need to be involved in contacting close contacts as PHE/Track and Trace do not otherwise have access to the information they would need to identify them.

[Lindy2]

That's very poor of the school. The other children who are close contacts need to know they have potentially been exposed and need to self isolate for 14 days.

Before our school broke up our head stated that she will be monitoring her email address and needs to be notified of any positive tests during half term asap.

[RingPiece]

I spent Thursday evening (we finished on Wednesday) emailing close contacts of a child who tested positive that day.

Sorry, I am only aware of positive cases amongst school staff, not children, and they were told to contact track and trace, and that the school wouldn't notify the parents of children in their class (primary) during half term. Teacher parents with children in the school they teach were not informed they had to contact the school during half term, so I assume parents of children who aren't teachers there were also not told what to do.
It is possible that not every school is following the advice.

[ineedaholidaynow]

I assume if anyone shows symptoms midway through half term won’t impact the school as such as no-one will have contact in school, but this does not seem to be the case here.

A local school had a case notified Friday after everyone had gone home but relevant people were told to isolate over the holiday and the following week.

[Frazzled2207]

That's very worrying. Our HT told us that he would check emails on Monday morning but after that not until the following monday morning (working on the assumption that if there were no positive cases confirmed by monday morning then everyone was clear for half term - definitely not necessarily true!!!)

[Ilovemyhairbeingstroked]

That’s very poor of the school , I’m all for them having a break at half term- however times are different at the moment and to be uncontactable is shocking . I would contact the LEA and when school does go back - raise this issue with the head and governors. It’s only going to get worse over the next few weeks !

[Delatron]

We had an email a couple of days ago (it’s been half term from last Thursday) notifying us of a case in Yr5 and that the bubble has been contacted to isolate. I guess the timings are off and it must be frustrating for that class (being told a week after having the contact). However yes schools should still be reporting and communicating over half term and reporting to PHE.

[Toothsil]

We had an email from school at the end of last week saying if there were any positive tests over half term, the head would have the school mobile with him at home and we were to text that as soon as we found out.

[notroundthebend]

We have finally had a message to say all yr3 to stay home for another week.. due to positive case.. nothing else!! I'm absolutely livid as we've been trying all week to report this. Limited info and no advice as to what to do. Isolate, party hard .. what a shambles.