Dear Parents,

On a day when we were hoping to be welcoming our students back on campus for the start of Term 3, we are instead writing to a community that is preparing for a very new ‘normal’. Some students and staff have been on campus briefly today collecting the final pieces that they need for home-based learning, and we can see everyone getting ready for a full home-based programme starting tomorrow, Tuesday.

Below is some important information to help us stay successful and connected in the coming weeks.

Home-based Learning

Please click here for some very important information from our IT team about accessing the online systems for home-based learning, and what to do if there are any issues. Please read it carefully. We will be sending it to Middle and High School students as well. Remember that itsupport@uwcsea.edu.sg is the main contact point for anyone experiencing technical issues.

Over the weekend, Principals and Heads of Grade wrote to students and parents about expectations for learning at home, along with instructions for where to go for their learning resources. You can visit this parent site for an overview of our approach. We are expecting some minor initial challenges, particularly for our younger students, and hope you will contact the teacher, Head of Grade or Principal with any ongoing concerns. Teachers will be monitoring student engagement with home-based learning, and will contact parents if they see any issues.

A reminder also, particularly to working parents, that it will not necessarily be easy to supervise child(ren)’s home-based learning. Be kind to yourselves. We have emphasised the importance of routine – but it is also important to sometimes break the routine to just stop and laugh, make some cookies, listen to music or read a good book. All of us will be stronger at the end of this if we give ourselves permission to slow down and perhaps enjoy the slower pace of life.

Community Health

Please continue to monitor your child(ren)’s health, taking temperatures daily and going to a doctor if they are unwell. Please note that in line with a recent advisory, anyone presenting at a doctor with respiratory symptoms (for example, runny nose, cough, sore throat) must be on a 5-day Medical Certificate (MC). 

It is very important that you continue to inform the College if your child is observing a Leave of Absence (LoA), Stay Home Notice (SHN) or Quarantine Order (QO) by completing the isolation order declaration in CIMS (log in here). Please 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, or will not be returning to Singapore, please ‘delete’ the current information and then click ‘submit’ to lodge a ‘NIL’ return declaration. We must have a travel declaration for all students.

As of Monday, 6 April at 3pm the College has:

• No cases of COVID-19 among the student community
• No cases of COVID-19 among the staff community
• 11 cases of COVID-19 among the wider family community

The 11 cases are outlined in the table here and according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) all are unrelated to each other and, with the exception of one, related to recent travel. None of the confirmed cases had recently been on campus and all families are on Quarantine Order (QO), with no student in the family attending school until that QO ends.

Across both campuses, we currently have 4 students on a Quarantine Order (QO); 8 students on a Stay-Home Notice (SHN); and 22 students on Leave of Absence (LoA). 

Over the coming weeks, we will continue to update you on cases in our community as follows:

A few resources that might be helpful to you in the coming weeks as you keep yourselves and your families healthy:

Communications

We will continue to write to you regularly over the coming period and Heads of Grade, Principals and others will use the weekly eBrief to maintain connections with parents. We also suggest you stay connected via our social media channels, where we hope to share stories of how our community is responding to our challenge. 

Behaving Responsibly

The Singapore Prime Minister has called on all of us to play our part by remaining at home as much as possible during the coming month. Students remain in our Boarding Houses, but we have limited their activity significantly. We ask you to follow their example by keeping students at home unless it is essential for you to leave the house. 

Thank all of you for your resilience and patience as we work through this together. We hope you and your families are remaining healthy and we look forward to the time when we can all be together again.

Yours sincerely,

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