Churchtown Primary temporarily shuts doors as 10% of teachers contract covid

Churchtown Primary School has shut until February after testing found 10% of its teachers had contracted coronavirus.

A statement on the school website said: “On Monday, we began the process of daily lateral flow tests (LFTs) in our school to test staff who may be asymptomatic, but Covid19 positive. This process is running really smoothly in our school and we have been able to test staff on a daily basis to improve on our already enhanced safety measures in school.

The Lateral Flow Testing for staff has been a successful step to identify asymptomatic cases and the commencement of immediate self-isolation. In the first week of lateral flow testing, 10% of the staff population have tested positive for Covid19. This has then been confirmed by a further test at one of the government testing centres. As we are currently unable to test the children we can only assume that this percentage may be the case for them as well. Therefore, to stop the potential spread of the virus we have made the difficult decision to close the school to all children and staff.

The school will close with immediate effect for 10 days. This will be classed as a circuit breaker and school will reopen on Tuesday 2nd February. We have taken advice from Infection Control, Public Health England and Department for Education, as well as thorough scrutiny of our Risk Assessment, which has led to this important and informed decision.

Remote learning will continue for all children.”