COVID-19 update
We are so happy to welcome back our students to campus!
We are doing everything we can to support our students back to face-to-face learning and in readjusting to structured days at college. Our personal tutors, our wider student support team and our teachers are here to support our students. We have worked hard to make the campus safe, please refer to our updated risk assessment below.
Here’s some good news: we have completed nearly 5000 asymptomatic tests. We hope this gives parents, students and the greater public some reassurance that the campus is as safe as it can be. Below are our current LFD test stats.
LFD testing statistics
A few quick things that we have ask of our students:
Covid-19 risk assessment - March 2021
To ensure our campus can remain open and is a safe environment, we ask all staff and students to follow our protective control measures.
Key principles for a safe campus:
Please remember that we keep all safety and control measures under constant review and, therefore, our plans are subject to change.
When?
You should perform a test twice a week from 21 March. The best times would be Sunday evening and Wednesday evening. You need to keep testing every week through the Easter break.
How?
The instructions for how to conduct the test are in the booklet that we gave you with your kits. You should discard the instructions in the kits themselves. Please follow the steps carefully otherwise the test may be void.
Reporting results
You need to report the result to both the NHS and to the college – this is very important.
To report your result to the NHS go to https://www.gov.uk/report-covid19-result and the process is very similar to the registration you did for your tests in college.
To report your result to the college please use your college email account and send an email to studentcovidtesting@kedst.ac.uk with the subject title “Test result” and simply the word “positive” or “negative” in the body of the email. Do not use this email address for anything else – all queries should be directed to covid@kedst.ac.uk.
What if my test is positive?
If your test is positive:
For more information
The Department for Education has produced a handy information page on home testing which you can access here.
Please find below information detailing how we deal with positive cases of COVID-19.
The health and welfare of the college community is of paramount importance to us.
Students who test positive for COVID-19 must inform us as soon as possible by emailing us at covid@kedst.ac.uk. This notification kickstarts our processes.
What to do if you test positive for COVID-19:
For each confirmed case, we work closely with Public Health England (PHE) to respond as necessary to this situation. This includes the important step of identifying those people who have come into 'close contact' with the infected individual and who must, therefore, begin a period of self-isolation.
Only people who come into close contact with infected individuals will be advised to self-isolate and senior members of staff directly contact relevant individuals. In line with government and PHE guidance, our approach will seek to balance identifying everyone who has a genuine risk of developing infection while not asking any students or staff to self-isolate unnecessarily.
For those students who are identified as having come into close contact with an individual who has tested positive, we send a letter home to provide more detailed information (a copy can be found below).
What to do if you have been informed by the NHS that you must self-isolate:
Here is additional information from Public Health England:
Symptoms of COVID-19:
The most common symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are recent onset of:
What to do if you develop symptoms of COVID-19:
How to stop COVID-19 spreading:
There are things you can do to help reduce the risk of you and anyone you live with getting ill with COVID-19:
The government’s asymptomatic testing strategy will help to break the chains of transmission of coronavirus in education settings. The asymptomatic testing programme is offered at college for staff and students; this will help us to identify asymptomatic positive cases.
The weekly testing of the education workforce and the small number of students in attendance during the lockdown period has begun. Individuals in attendance will be contacted and invited to take a test, after consent by the individual has been obtained. Testing is voluntary. Please note: the asymptomatic testing programme does not replace the government’s current testing policy for those with symptoms. If you have symptoms, you should continue to book a test via the NHS website or by calling 119. The current risk assessment for our test centre is available to view below:
Local testing sites (Dudley Borough)
How to get tested (Dudley Borough)
Symptomatic student information sheet
Advice for those who are clinically vulnerable can be found in the guidance on staying alert and safe (social distancing).
Office for students: Student guide to coronavirus
Department for Education coronavirus (COVID-19) helpline: this helpline is available to answer questions about COVID-19 relating to education and children’s social care. Staff, parents and young people can contact this helpline by calling: 0800 046 8687
To ensure that those with coronavirus are identified, while avoiding a huge increase in demand for tests from people without coronavirus symptoms, students should only be tested if:
If a student develops one or more of the main coronavirus symptoms described above, only they should be tested. There is no need for the entire household to have a test, unless they are also symptomatic.
Students should not book a test if they do not have one of the symptoms detailed above, for example if they feel unwell with a sore throat, stomach upset or a headache. These students don’t need to book a test, although they may need to stay off college and seek medical advice through their GP or pharmacist as usual.
We welcomed all students back to college full-time from 7 September 2020.
To achieve this safely in accordance with government guidance, we have established a new timetable, with staggered starts and finishes for each year group. Whilst we deliver all core qualifications on site, tutorial sessions are delivered online. Personal tutors (PTs) conduct regular one-to-one meetings at college in their new office accommodation in Dr Johnson House.
All students using public or college transport will be required to wear face coverings.
As part of the college response to the pandemic, we have a dedicated section of our website, King Ed's Virtual . Please use this section of the website, if we ever have to move to online learning, for example during a lock-down period.
We will continue to update the archive below, which lists COVID-19 student and parent updates that we send out via email
Please find below two short videos from the Principal and one from the NHS, explaining updated protective COVID measures:
Online education provision: information for parents
Process for testing positive for covid-19 during lockdown
Updated COVID measures from 2 November
Letter to parents confirming cases of COVID-19
Public Health England - letter to parents and guardians
Parent/Guardian Update 7 October 2020
Parent/Guardian Update 25 September 2020
Student COVID safety update 10 September 2020
Parent/guardian testing update 4 September 2020
Year 12 student and parent/guardian update 10 July 2020
COVID-19 phased return risk assessment June 2020
Year 12 parent/guardian and student update - 10 June 2020
Year 12 parent/guardian update - 21 May 2020
Year 13 parent/guardian update - 21 May 2020
Year 13 Parent/guardian and student update 21 April 2020
Parent/guardian and student update 20 March 2020
Parent/guardian and student update 19 March 2020
Monday 22nd March 2021
Monday 8th February 2021
Ben
Wednesday 31st March 2021
Aspire Speaker Series 10:30am on 21st/28th April 2021 and 5th/12th/19th/26th May 2021 and 2nd/9th/16th/23rd/30th June 2021
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