Dear Parents,

We hope the past week of school holidays has given you all a chance to take a breath, despite the ongoing changes in our environment. We write in the middle of the term break with an update on the health of our community, as promised, and some important reminders and updates.

Community Health

As of Friday, 27 March at 5pm the College has:

• No cases of COVID-19 among the student community
• No cases of COVID-19 among the staff community 
• Four confirmed cases of COVID-19 among the parent community. We have communicated about three of these cases previously.

Of the three cases among the parent community already reported upon, we are glad to report that all three are doing well and that their children and family members all tested negative. This is wonderful news for all of us.

Case 4: This case was reported to us on Thursday, 19 March. The family has one child in the Primary School on East Campus and a spouse who is also a staff member. We are pleased to report that the parent is doing well and that their spouse (a staff member) and child both tested negative.

Travel Advisory and Leave of Absence (LoA) for Students

As a result of the latest travel advisories, please note that

• Any student staying in the same household with a person who has returned to Singapore from the UK, US or any ASEAN country on or after 14 March 2020 should be placed on a 14-day LoA.
• Any student staying in the same household who has returned to Singapore from any country on or after Wednesday, 25 March should be on a 14-day LoA (if they are not already on an SHN).

The student’s LoA begins from the day the person in the household returned to Singapore.The date of return is considered to be day 0. 

This is expected to impact quite a few students, so please check your household’s recent travel history and update the student declarations accordingly (see below).

Update Details

It is very important that you inform the College if your child is observing a Leave of Absence (LoA), Stay Home Notice (SHN) or Quarantine Order (QO) by completing the 'declare isolation order' form in the CIMS Family Portal (link below). Please also make sure you update the student travel declaration, as this is the information we are using to cross-check the impact of new travel advisories. If your child is no longer planning to travel, please ‘delete’ the current information and then click ‘submit’ to lodge a ‘NIL’ return declaration. We must have a travel declaration for all students.

You can do all of this by logging in here. If updating the 'student travel declaration', please note that the instructions at the top of the form have been updated based on the latest government advisories. To declare an LoA, SHN or QO for your child, please click ‘declare isolation order’.  

The table below outlines your and our obligations in terms of LoA, SHN and QO:

Term 3

We will be in touch with the community early next week to confirm our plans for the week of 6 April when school resumes, as well as the rest of Term 3. We are aware that our Grade 10 and Grade 12 classes are awaiting further news on how their (I)GCSEs and IBDP will be awarded without the formal external written exams. We are awaiting further news from the exam boards and will be in touch as soon as we know more.

We have received many kind messages of solidarity and support over the last week. Thank you to everyone who took the time to write; at times like this these small notes of appreciation mean a lot.

Yours sincerely,

Elizabeth Bray, Head of UWCSEA Dover
Graham Silverthorne, Head of UWCSEA East