“I love seeing all of my friends again, I’m so happy to be back at school”. The words of a Primary student when I asked them how their day had gone. Their eyes gave away the undoubted smile that was radiating behind the mask. This sentiment has been replicated hundreds of times over as we have gradually reopened school to the point that we now have Nursery-Year 6 students attending for those who choose. Not only are the students delighted to return, but teachers and parents also have a sense of joy as our community reforms and comes back together. The final piece of this jigsaw will fall into place when we welcome Secondary students back on the 27th of this month.
For those of you who have dropped off or collected your child, you will see that we have well established entry and exit protocols ensuring the safety of everyone involved. There are many things we have needed to put into place to ensure our community remains safe and well at all times. Whilst we are able to manage many of these things, we are ultimately reliant upon your continued support as parents to ensure all Health and Safety measures are followed as our school becomes fully operational. Your support in dropping and collecting your child at the designated times ensures that entry and exit points are never crowded and parents are not standing around waiting in the limited spaces we have at the start and end of the day. Should you need to wait to collect your child, please do not enter through the gates until your designated pick up time; this ensures we comply to the 2m social distancing for adults. Your help in supporting us here is greatly appreciated.
I remember fondly when my own children were at school and on a day of a particular test, they would mysteriously develop headache or sickness symptoms that would undoubtedly end with “I’m sick and can’t go to school today”. That may well sound familiar to many of you reading this although I must confess at the time to not showing a great deal of sympathy to my own children. Times however are different now. Many of these common symptoms that students have used throughout time to try and miss a day off school can be early symptoms of the Covid-19 virus. As such, in order to protect our community, no student must come into school if they are in any way unwell. We cannot stress how important this is, one sick person could have the potential to close a section of the school or even the whole school.
The following tweet was shared by a government agency in the UAE that seems particularly apt in clarifying the above:
Parents, if your kids aren’t feeling well don’t send them to school.
If they say they are not well but you think they want to skip their test. Still don’t send them.
If you’re a healthy student with a test tomorrow, don’t get any ideas-go to school!
Thank you as ever for your support and we look forward to seeing more of you again soon.
Mike Wolfe,
Vice Principal
The British International School Abu Dhabi
