Rising Sheffield Covid cases: Notre Dame school puts parents on ‘work-from-home’ alert

Notre Dame Catholic High School, near Ranmoor, has told parents it is seeing the virus impact on staff absence levels, and warned them they may have to cut the number of pupils attending day next week.

John Coats, director of school improvement at Notre Dame, said: “As you are probably aware, the numbers of Covid cases are rising again. We are unfortunately again seeing the impact of this in terms of higher levels of staff absence than normal. We are monitoring the situation daily to ensure that we are able to operate safely and minimise any negative impact on teaching and learning.

“The purpose of this communication is to alert you to the possibility that we may again need to put in place contingency measures next week.

“These measures would involve reducing the number of students in school by one year group each day. This would allow us to ensure quality teaching for year groups still attending school. Staff have prepared for this and have planned work for any students who have to work from home in this eventuality.

He said contingency plans prioritised keeping face to face teaching for students who are closest to their exams – year 11 and year 13. They would also avoid year nine and year 10 working from home on days when they would miss their GCSE option.

Should we need to put our contingency plans in place, we would be asking the following year groups to work from home.

He said that the school would be monitoring the situation closely over the weekend and on a daily basis throughout next week.

If contingency plans do have to be put in place, the school would tell parents the evening before at the latest.

Earlier this week, Sheffield NHS bosses revealed sickness levels due to the rise in coronavirus cases in the city had started to affect some family doctors' practices. Director of public health for the city, Greg Fell, is urging those who have not been vaccinated to have the jab.