Newsletter 2 Autumn 2020

Coughs and Colds
I know lots of you are concerned about when to keep children off school as we have received a lot of calls this week. Please refer to the guidance and if you are not sure please call 111. The main symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are:
 a high temperature 37.8 degrees or above
 a new, continuous cough – this means coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
 a loss or change to your sense of smell or taste – this means you've noticed you cannot smell or taste anything, or things smell or taste different to normal

If you, your child or anyone in your household has these symptom, please stay off school and seek advice on how to obtain a test. Do let us know if you or someone in the household is having a test.

More information from the BBC can be found here and from the NHS here.

An extremely informative poster for parents can be found here.

As always, if your child has sickness or diarrhoea please keep them off school until 48 hours after symptoms have passed. 

Whole School Celebration Assembly
​On Friday, we held our first socially distanced assembly on the playground. We were able to share the results of our team leader and student council elections, as well as celebrate achievements by awarding certificates to children from each class. Hopefully, the glorious weather will hold and we can have many more outdoors assemblies. It was wonderful to have the whole school together, even if we did have to maintain a 2m distance between class bubbles.

Class news
Please take a moment to visit each of the class blog pages and see what our pupils have been learning this week. 

Beware of Scams
The Dartmoor MAT have received reports of parents of being called on the phone, allegedly by their school, to say their child has been involved in an incident or taken ill. An example has been where a parent was called to say the child was ill and asked to dial 1 to be connected to right person to speak to. This child was at home that day so they knew it could not be correct so they attempted to ring the school but discovered the phone line had been held open reportedly to a high cost phone line. In another example the parents were asked to contact the school on the number provided, which again turned out to be a high cost phone line. If we call you, we will only ask you to call us back on our school number 01837 840242.

‘Test and trace’ scam
Devon County Council are warning everyone to be aware of scammers looking to exploit the NHS Test and Trace service. 
They are concerned that some people, particularly the vulnerable or elderly, could be susceptible to fake calls or messages from criminals looking to get access to personal information or trick them into handing over money.
Remember, the NHS Test and Trace service is completely free, so they will never ask you for any form of payment or financial information or to provide any passwords, bank account details or PIN numbers.
It's a good idea to familiarise yourself with how the system works and know what you will and won’t be asked by the contact tracers so you can spot these scams.

PTA 100 Club
A reminder for anyone wishing to be included in this year's PTA 100 Club, to please submit their sign up form and pay their subscription no later than Friday 25 September please.

Thank you all
On behalf of all the staff, I'd like to say a big thank you to all families who have made the return to school so successful and enjoyable. We have both sun and rain forecast for the coming week; please ensure that your children have their coats in school as we will be spending time outside whenever possible. Please check that your child's name is clearly written in all their clothing; if you have lost any items, please come and have a look in the lost property box in the porch outside the main office.

Best wishes,
Sarah Marvin