Dear Parents,

Over the weekend we have had a number of meetings with leaders across the College, as we worked through the implications of the new ‘heightened alert’ safety measures shared by the Council for Private Education (CPE). Our goal is to ensure that school remains open and that the community remains safe. However, there will be some impact on our operations and school will look a little different for our students. As we enter this new regulatory phase, we ask once more for your understanding, support and necessary action in advance of Monday.

Please speak to your children about compliance with the expected behaviours. This includes mask-wearing, temperature-taking and maintaining social distance while on and off campus. Groups are now limited to two (not five), including morning break and lunch. We are increasing the number of Safe Management Officers at the College to help support students in following the rules, but your support at home is equally important. As we mentioned on Friday, we have had complaints from members of the public about students congregating in large numbers or not wearing masks off campus. We take these complaints seriously, and we expect the authorities will do the same if they receive the complaints directly.

We are making adjustments to classroom learning and break times to comply with the new requirements, by ensuring that there is minimal contact between students and across cohorts. However, we have not yet been able to reorganise our Activities and Service programmes to avoid inter-mingling. Therefore, we are pausing the programmes for one week to work through implications. As such, there will be no Activities or Service from Sunday, 16 May – Sunday, 23 May inclusive. This includes the Home Languages Programme. The exception is the Instrumental Teaching Programme (ITP) one-to-one lessons, which will continue: string and percussion lessons can go ahead in person, while wind and brass lessons must be virtual. We will contact you towards the end of the week with our plans for the Activities and Service programmes going forward.

Graduation and High School exams will go ahead, in groups of 50 or less. There is quite a bit to reorganise here and High School Principals will be in touch with further information on Monday. Primary and Middle School Principals will also be writing to you with anything that is specific to their school section.

You can expect further communication from all of us in the coming weeks and we apologise in advance for the necessary flow of information from the school. As always, thank you for your positive support. Together, we can keep our community safe and healthy.

Warm regards,

Nick Alchin, Head of UWCSEA East
Elizabeth Bray, Head of UWCSEA Dover