Hartsdown year groups to self-isolate following positive Covid case

Hartsdown Academy

Year 9 and Year 11 students at Hartsdown Academy in Margate have been instructed to self-isolate until December 4 following  positive Covid cases.

Parents and carers were alerted to the latest bubble closure today (November 20). Year 8 and Year 10 Hartsdown Academy youngsters are already isolating. Year 7 students returned to school yesterday.

Head teacher Matt Tate said: “We are incredibly disappointed to be required by Public Health England to send further year groups home. We have organised the school into ‘year bubbles’ which means that if we have positive cases within a bubble that group has to go home.

“We miss our students and wish they were in school. Fortunately, we are able to offer a full-time virtual curriculum with lessons being delivered online in line with children’s normal timetable. We are pleased to report that the vast majority of our students are accessing these lessons.”

It comes on the heels of the closure of Year 10 and Year 8 at Royal Harbour Academy in Ramsgate where students have been asked to isolate until November 30 following positive Covid cases being confirmed at the school.

Parents and carers with children in Year 4 at Holy Trinity & St John’s Primary School in Margate have also been notified of a positive case in the year bubble.

The pupils from that group must now self-isolate until November 30. This week Ursuline College in Westgate put in place a full closure until December 1 due to Covid cases resulting in staff  and student absences. Full closures until December 1 are also in place at Sandwich Tech and Sir Roger Manwood.

Today at a Kent Public Health meeting, director for public health Andrew Scott-Clark said school closures are decisions made by principals rather then Public Health England and are mostly based not just on positive cases but also on staffing ratios.

He added: “Schools have done an amazing job under very trying circumstances.

“Letters have gone out to schools asking that they ensure at least key worker children are kept in education. Schools closing has an impact on parents, particularly care and healthcare workers and also police, fire and rescue, prisons and essential infrastructure.”

He added that work has taken place to make sure school cases are effectively managed.

9 Comments

    • Only year 7 and children of key workers are at Hartsdown at present. Year 7 came back yesterday, otherwise pretty much the whole school would be away supposedly self-isolating.

    • the government panicked because the first lockdown showed how totally unnecessary schools & universities are now as unlike in my day when it was all exercise books & KMP cards they have the last decade plus done away with that & made everything computer based.

      Seeing as the overwhelming majority of houses now have an internet connection & computers in the house & many of the schools provide laptops etc what purpose do they serve? There is very little need for physical schools & universities now as any support can be given remotely-so it is force everybody back no matter how many others the kids infect from mixing at school all day & then pass it on to their parents, grandparents etc.

      • I imagine that you haven’t been involved in Education recently, Steve.
        Most homes, equipped though they might be with internet access, do not have an art studio, a music room, a gymnasium with ropes, beams, vaulting horses, chemistry labs, physics labs, biology labs, CDT equipment.
        Not to mention the social development, so important for young people, that a school brings.
        Yes, there are excellent on line resources. But that’s only part of it.
        I did a degree with the Open University, via distance learning. But even then there were regular tutorials where students and lecturer could meet up face to face for a tutorial (and go down the pub after!). Many courses had week long residential summer schools, too.
        We need to keep our schools.

  1. DEEP DIVE.
    It’s Simple.many people, children, teenagers and yes school staff.indeed those who should know better.
    Are taking a heads in the sand approach, “it doesn’t affect me”.
    BRAINS AS RARE AS ROCKING HORSE sh#t
    UNTIL These Brain Dead people treat this disease seriously.
    Until they start dying it will go on on on.
    BEWARE!

Comments are closed.