Swine flu: precautionary measures and keeping you informed

As you will be aware, the World Health Organisation has now put Swine Flu at phase 5. While we continue to hope that the disease will not take on serious pandemic proportions, it is obviously important that, as a school, we are as well prepared for all eventualities as we possibly can be.


Our approach is:

• to stay calm and maintain school life as normal
• to take common sense steps to encourage good hygiene practices so as to reduce the risk of the transmission of any kind of flu’ infection within the school community
• to ensure that we have in place clear procedures for dealing with any suspected or proven occurrences of the disease
• to keep parents, guardians, students and staff closely informed of any developments both externally and internally.

We will, of course, stay in contact with the College’s GP practice and track the latest guidance from the public health authorities.


How we will inform parents and guardians

In order to keep parents and guardians informed quickly and in real time, we have decided to add this section to our website (http://www.doverbroecks.com/health), which we will update daily, or at least as often as necessary. In it you will find information on what we are doing as a school as well as links to the latest information from the relevant national and local health departments.

If, in the next few days, your child should display flu like symptoms and you are in doubt about what to do, we recommend that:

• You keep your child at home in the first instance.
• You follow the latest government guidance. Currently, you are advised to ring NHS Direct.
• Telephone or email us to keep us informed.

Information will be displayed on this website from now on, so please do keep an eye on it on a regular basis.

In the meantime, I should just say that we have no particular reason to fear an outbreak of flu either in the College or in the Oxford area. These are all precautionary measures designed to ensure that, if things should change for the worse, we have procedures and channels of communication that we can put into use immediately.

With best regards,
Sami Cohen
Principal