Lateral Flow Tests

As you are aware keyworkers (including school staff) have had access to lateral flow tests for a while now.

The school staff complete lateral flow tests twice a week to ensure a quick identification of any positive cases, and that action can be taken.

This helps reduce the spread of the virus.

The lateral flow tests are easy to use and give you an indication of whether you are positive or negative. Positive results are always confirmed by the laboratory based PCR tests.

From today, if you have children in school or someone in the household works in a school, you are able to access lateral flow tests. If you follow the link, you can find out how to order the tests or where to collect them.

Households and bubbles of pupils, students and staff of schools and colleges: get rapid lateral flow tests - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Lateral flow tests are not compulsory, and it is individual choice. However, government guidelines suggest that testing twice a week, helps control the spread of the virus, helping to keep the community safe.

I fully understand that some parents may not wish to test their child, and it is their personal choice. Whether you do or not, will not impact on your child’s attendance at school. My personal view is that the more we test, the less likely we are to have a wide spread outbreak.

If you decide to test your household including the children, I would suggest testing them on Sunday, just before the expected return to school on Monday.

Hopefully, once the vaccination programme is complete, we will not need to test so much.

Any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me via my email: win-headteacher@win.jtmat.co.uk

Kind regards,

Miss Goodson