Hundreds of students are forced to self-isolate this week as covid continues to blight Brighton’s schools and colleges.
Whole year groups have been sent home from some schools, while at the city’s largest college, one in ten students are being required to self-isolate.
Heads say this means that instead of the end of the academic year being a celebration of what’s been achieved, schools are instead struggling to just keep going.
At Dorothy Stringer school, 84 students are currently off school in self-isolation – and 11 staff members, which has meant the school has had to bring in extra supply teachers.
Some self-isolating teachers have also been able to deliver lessons remotely from home.
Headteacher Matt Hillier said: “The end of the summer term is normally a time for musical concerts, drama performances and proms. But this year we are tracking and tracing, providing home testing kits and trying to teach up until the summer holidays.”
Brighton and Hove News understands that at Varndean High School, all of year 10 have been sent home and several students in year 8.
In a letter home to parents, head Shelley Baker said: “I recognise that receiving this letter may be upsetting and frustrating. Nobody is to blame – our students have done well to comply with the restrictions in place but the virus is such that simply coming into close contact with someone who has tested positive means that further action is required to stop the spread.”
Meanwhile many year 8s at King’s School have been made to self-isolate, as have numerous year 8s and 9s at Cardinal Newman School.
BHASVIC told Brighton and Hove News 180 students are currently in self-isolation – about one in ten – some as a result of close contact in college, and some through the wider community.
Donna-Marie Janson, principal of Varndean College, said: “As of today we have 28 students self-isolating. We have had more positive cases during this half term than for the year as a whole.”
The new Delta variant, dubbed the “fastest and fittest” by the WHO, is sweeping through the country, and rates are particularly high among school and college aged children.
The latest available figures for Brighton and Hove show that the rate amongst 15 to 19-year-olds in the city in the seven days to Friday 2 July was 798 per 100,000 people.
Only the rate for 10 to 14-year-olds was higher, at 1,002.2
The rate among 10 to 14-year-olds was 420.1 and 401.7 among five to nine-year-olds.
Although 79 per cent of the south east’s population have received at least one vaccine dose, vaccines have not yet been extended to everyone under the age of 18.
The Department for Education found that 8.5 per cent of the UK’s students had not attended school for covid-related reasons on Thursday 1 July. This is up from 3.3 per cent on Thursday 17 June.
The protocol at the moment has been for schools – but not colleges – to divide students into ‘bubbles’. If one student from a bubble tests positive for covid, the whole bubble self-isolates.
What constitutes a bubble is defined by a school – it may be a year-group, it may be a classroom.
Bubbles are prohibited from coming into contact with other bubble groups. This system is set to be overturned on Monday 19 July.
Contact tracing by NHS Test and Trace will replace the requirement for entire school bubbles to self-isolate after a positive covid contact.
