Admiral Lord Nelson School released a statement this evening: It is with regret that we have had to take the decision to close the school to most students for the next two days and move to online remote education instead over this two day period. Over the last two weeks, we have had rising numbers of both students and staff having to isolate due to testing positive for COVID-19. To mitigate against this, we have increased hygiene and cleaning procedures, encouraged regular testing by all and brought back in the use of face masks in communal areas. However, these measures have not been as effective as we would have liked them to be and in the last three days cases of COVID-19 have risen rapidly. Today we have 17 education and teaching staff absent with the majority of these being due to COVID-19 and having to self-isolate, and we are now up to 161 students isolating due to testing positive for COVID-19. With half-term approaching, we had hoped that we would be able to manage through until Friday and that the break over half term would curb the outbreak within the school. However, due to the figures stated above that are still rising, we do not believe it is safe to keep students in the school with our reduced staffing that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain high standards of education and safety within our school. ▪️Remote education Over the next two days students should access their work for their normal timetabled lessons via Google classroom where they should find a work set for each lesson that will cover the same materials and content as if they had been in school. ▪️Emergency education provision We realise for parents how inconvenient this will be, due to your own work commitments so we have decided that we can stay open for students in the years 7 and 8 who cannot be safely looked after at home and for some students who receive extra support in years 9, 10 and 11. (For these students in years 9,10 and 11 you will receive a separate email this afternoon if this includes your child). For any students who need to come into school on Thursday and Friday, the students will be working in different classrooms than normal, using Chromebooks to access the same remote learning that is available to the students who are working from home. ▪️For every student we highly recommend that if your child can be at home and can access the work there, then that is the safest place for them to be as this will limit the chance of them contracting or spreading COVID-19 further. ▪️Free school meals Any student who is entitled to a free school meal, they are welcome to come and collect this from the school reception from 12.15 to 1 o’clock each day. We will need to know in advance if your child is intending to do this so please can you email the name of your child and their year group to [email protected] stating your child’s name. With these two days and the nine days over half term that should give plenty of time for this situation to resolve itself and for the people who are currently positive for COVID-19 to recover and therefore after half term, we should be able to get back to a much more normal way of working and providing a really high-quality education for all our students. Thank you as ever for all of your support, and we hope that you can understand why we have made this decision now in the safety interests of both our staff and our students.