Par­ent home: Lat­est news

10th Decem­ber 2021

Dear Par­ents and Carers

We have so enjoyed hav­ing the stu­dents back to some ‘nor­mal­ity’ this year and it has been won­der­ful to be able to resume some extra cur­ric­u­lar clubs and activ­i­ties and to hold some well over­due face to face events and cel­e­bra­tions such as Pre­sen­ta­tion After­noon and KES Live, albeit with care­ful and detailed plan­ning to reduce risks with Covid. Con­grat­u­la­tions to our U16 Foot­ball Team who have reached the Kent Cup semi finals which is a huge achieve­ment — we wish them lots of luck in their big game on Sat­ur­day against Har­vey Gram­mar School. Do come along to KES (kick off 10am) and sup­port them if you are able!

Thank you for your on-​going sup­port. We have made some good head­way in recov­er­ing from lost learn­ing time and the dis­rup­tions due to lock­downs. Re-​establishing good learn­ing habits has been the most impor­tant fac­tor in this. Please con­tinue to work with us to:

• Ensure your child is attend­ing school well
• Ensure your child comes in to school in full uni­form but also with a warm coat to wear over their uni­form and blazer in the cold
• Remind­ing your child to come well equipped to school (pens, pen­cils, maths set, read­ing book, mask etc.)
• Ask­ing your child about home­work set and sup­port­ing them in com­plet­ing any inde­pen­dent work

The new vari­ant of the virus, Omi­cron, has meant that we are back to wear­ing masks in com­mu­nal areas around the school. Stu­dents have responded sen­si­bly to this (although a few need remind­ing and nag­ging!) and we expect this to con­tinue for now. We are con­cerned that there are still a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of stu­dents who are not reg­is­ter­ing their LFD results or not rou­tinely testing.

Please con­tinue to ensure your child does twice weekly LFD tests and reg­is­ters the result on the app: https://​testreg​is​ter​.co​.uk/​l​o​g​i​n. Please con­tact us if you have run out of tests and need more.

End of Term:

We fin­ish term on Fri­day 17th Decem­ber at 12.10pm. The last day is a non-​uniform day and we are ask­ing that stu­dents make a dona­tion towards the school house project this year, to cre­ate the school veg­etable garden.

Well done to all those stu­dents who have con­tributed to our annual Christ­mas com­mu­nity project, mak­ing and send­ing Christ­mas cards to the care homes in our com­mu­ni­ties. I know that the res­i­dents love receiv­ing them. Below are the care homes that the stu­dents have been writ­ing to:

Eagles– Gor­don Lodge

Fal­cons– Spencer Lodge

Hawks– St Michael’s Care Home

2/​…

Notice of School Clo­sure for a day in lieu of the Queen’s Jubilee dur­ing June half term:

In acknowl­edge­ment of the addi­tional Bank Hol­i­day for the Plat­inum Jubilee of Her Majesty the Queen on 3 June 2022 (which falls in the June half term), the DfE have laid reg­u­la­tions to reduce the min­i­mum num­ber of ses­sions that schools are required to meet in the aca­d­e­mic year 2021/​2022, in order to enable every­one to cel­e­brate. This means King Ethel­bert School will be closed on Mon­day 31st Jan­u­ary 2022.

Return in January:

The Gov­ern­ment has asked schools to accom­mo­date stu­dents car­ry­ing out 1 lat­eral flow device (LFD) test on site at the start of term, before return­ing. At King Ethel­bert we will be doing this through­out the day on Tues­day 4th Jan­u­ary — stu­dents will attend school to do their LFD test and then return home while we process these. Sub­ject to a neg­a­tive result, all stu­dents will return to school on Wednes­day 5th Jan­u­ary at the usual time.

The tests are the same nasal swab tests that stu­dents have been doing at home and stu­dents will do these them­selves here on site with the test­ing team. In order to process the whole school’s results within the day and reduce impact on learn­ing time, we will only reg­is­ter pos­i­tive results and so par­ents will only receive a text and a call if their child’s result shows as pos­i­tive. If we do not con­tact you, you can assume that your child can return to school on Wednesday.

We will be using the con­sent forms that par­ents have already returned so please do not com­plete another form if you have already returned a form giv­ing con­sent for your child to be tested. How­ever, if you have not pre­vi­ously returned a form to us giv­ing your con­sent, or if you pre­vi­ously did not give con­sent and you are now happy to do so, please com­plete and return the form at the end of this let­ter asap by email­ing it to This email address is being pro­tected from spam­bots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Stu­dents should arrive at the front entrance and enter the build­ing via the side door by M3, wear­ing a mask, dur­ing their allo­cated time slot below, sani­tise their hands and enter the Quad. Test­ing will take place in the Quad and stu­dents must leave the site imme­di­ately after their test.

The tim­ings for tests on Tues­day 4th Jan­u­ary are as follows:

Time	Year group
10:00 – 11:00	Yr 7 and Yr 12
11:00 – 12:00	Yr 8
12:00 – 13:00	Yr 9 and Yr 13
13:00 – 13:30	Staff break
13:30 – 14:30	Yr 10
14:30 – 15:30	Yr 11

I wish you all a safe, peace­ful and rest­ful Christ­mas with your fam­i­lies and friends and send my very best wishes for a happy, healthy and suc­cess­ful 2022.

Best wishes,

Vicky Willis

Head­teacher