There have been several confirmed COVID 19 cases in various apartments and condominiums across Penang over the past few weeks. In these situations, parental support and cooperation have been very much appreciated. I acknowledge that it is frustrating for everyone involved, as children are kept away from school.

In these cases, the MOH has responded quickly, and so I have amended the guide to recognise this. The change enables those who may live in a different block, or are not contacted by the MOH, to return to school as soon as possible in consultation with the school.

Please see the update below.

Covid-19 Response Guide for Parents

What Happens …..

If someone in your condo/apartment block or a venue you or your family has visited is confirmed having Covid-19.

• • Do not bring your child to school

• • Notify the Deputy Principal by phone or email

• • Sufficient time is needed for information gathering and contact tracing to take place.

• • In consultation with the parents, it will be decided when it is safe to return. This is to protect the well-being of the children & parents involved

Returning To School

St. Christopher’s International Primary School – Returning to School information for parents

We received news this week from the Ministry of Education (MOE) that schools will be allowed to reopen to Secondary students in examination years from Wednesday 24th June. Yesterday we attended a meeting held by the Penang MOE, and they confirmed that only these older students would be able to return and that schools would be given two weeks notice if other years are allowed to return.

With this information and the two weeks notice period being so close to the end of our academic year, it means that we will not be able to welcome any students back into school and will finish Term 3 on the scheduled date of Friday 3rd July.

This is extremely sad and disappointing news for us all. However, I am sure we all understand the need to ensure the spread of COVID-19 is stopped and the safety of younger children is a priority.

With only 3 weeks to the end of the term, the teachers will continue to provide online home learning. During this time, there will also be opportunities for the different classes and year groups to celebrate their time together, as well as for us to say good luck and farewell to our Year 6 leaving students. The Heads of School will write directly to the parents about the arrangements for the end of the term, along with information about next year and moving up the school.

This term, we will issue the Term 3 Summary Report and with the continued closure of the school, we will be conducting our Parent Teacher Conferences online. More specific information on the dates and format of these important events will be sent out directly to parents.

As stated by the Government, the return to school for all students will be a gradual process and we will continue to inform you of developments as we prepare to open for the 2020/21 academic year. We look forward to the day when we can welcome all the children back into school and will focus our energy and resources on preparing for this to happen in August.

Throughout this difficult time, we have appreciated the support of the parents and will continue to communicate any further information or changes that are made, as and when we receive them.

Stay Safe – Stay Positive and Stay Connected

The Government Movement Control Order is still in effect until Tuesday 12th May, although on Friday 1st May an announcement was made regarding the relaxation to the restrictions called a Conditional MCO. In Penang,  these restrictions under the CMCO, are being brought in through Phases.

If you would like to see the complete statement from the Chief Minister, you can find it on the following link: Opening the Economy – CM May 3rd

With the anticipated relaxation of the CMCO, please continue to observe all the recommended social distancing and good hygiene practices as previously carried out. Penang has done so well to get to this stage and in order for us to return to school as soon as possible, we all need to adopt the same cautious and sensible approach even during and after the phased relaxation to the restrictions.

Stay Safe – Stay Positive and Stay Connected

The Government has now extended the Movement Control Order until Tuesday 28th April. It is not yet clear what this means for schools re-opening and the message from the government has been for schools to continue with learning from home. We will resume Term 3 with home learning on Monday 20th April.

Thank you for all the parental feedback and the responses to the recent Home Learning survey. We will be making a few simple changes to address the following points:

• • To introduce new learning

• • To reflect the need to assess the children’s learning

• • To provide more opportunities for the children to have face to face contact with their teachers

One important change will be the different types of learning tasks posted. These will be:

1. 1. Core Learning is the minimum we would expect the children to complete and submit to the teacher so that they can assess and feedback to the children, regarding their next steps.

1. 1. Extension Learning are activities that build on the core learning and provide more, or different, forms of practice. These are optional and do not need to be submitted.

1. 1. Enrichment Tasks enable children to explore, develop and challenge themselves independently. These are optional and do not need to be submitted.

We will communicate these new changes, along with the revised schedules, at the end of this week.

The Movement Control Order was extended until 14th April and at the end of this week, the school will break for the planned holiday, 6th -17th April.

We hope to be able to open as normal for the start of Term 3 on Monday 20th April. However, if this is not possible due to another extension of the MCO, we will resume our online learning programme.

If a further extension is announced, we want to be able to continue supporting the children’s learning and the needs of the parents. To do this we will be asking for parental feedback, regarding the current home learning provision, later this week.

We will communicate again, with any developments as we receive them.

We have now completed 3 days of learning at home and would like to thank teachers, parents and students for their support in ensuring a smooth start to accessing learning through Google Classroom.

We have received feedback from parents and teachers and so from Monday 23rd March we will make some small changes to the timings of our Google Meet conferences. These are as follow:

• • • • EY children will be invited to either the first half 0900 – 0930 or the second half 0930 – 1000 of the morning conference and a reduced 1345-1415 conference for the afternoon sessions. This is to reduce the number of children in the meet and make it more productive

• • • • Infants will now have a half hour open slot form 0930-1000

• • • • Juniors will now have a half an hour open slot from 1000 – 1030. 

• • • • For Juniors EAL children, Y3/4 slot with Ms Catherine will be from 1345 – 1415 and Y5/6 will be from 1415 – 1445

• • • • The afternoon specialist conference will be available only for the year groups that have a specialist task that day. They will be sent an invite to the meet on Google Classroom that day

As children across the globe are now spending more time online, the key messages about online safety are more important than ever. Please see below some reminders for parents in order to make sure their children remain safe online at home:

• • • • Ensure children are appropriately dressed, and ready in good time for the start of any conferencing. Your child needs to log out of Meet after any conferencing

• • • • Agree some ground rules about screen time, breaks and exercise – it’s much easier to do this in advance than argue about it later 

• • • • Children should always be in a public space in the house when using devices online

• • • • Use https://www.commonsensemedia.org/ to check ratings and reviews to check the age suitability of any games they want to play or films they want to watch

• • • • Talk about good digital behaviour, about being kind and thoughtful in their online interactions and how thoughtless behaviour can both damage their reputation and hurt others

See this article on how families can cope with self-isolating together

We have set up a “help desk” email address (kenneth.aeria@scips.org.my ). The link can help parents with their technical problems

We will communicate with parents as soon as we hear from the MOE regarding whether or not the school will open on April 1st.  

The Government has implemented the Movement Control Order which means all schools will be closed from Wed 18th – 31st March. 

This restricted movement order also includes new travel directives which include:

• • A full ban on overseas travel for Malaysians

• • Malaysians returning from overseas must undergo health screening and quarantine for 14 days

• • A full ban on tourists and foreign visitors entering Malaysia 

Google Classroom has now gone live and we are confident that this platform is now ready to provide optional tasks for your children to complete at home. It cannot replace normal school, but we hope that the children will still be able to participate in some engaging tasks that will support their learning.

The online learning through Google Classroom will begin on Wednesday 18th March so please make sure that you have logged into your child’s account and joined their year group so you can access the tasks.

During the closure, the teachers will not be in school but will be managing the Classrooms from home. They will be available to answer questions during school hours (0800 – 1500) and within this time there will be online conferencing slots for the children to talk to them. Please see previous flexibuzz message for guidelines.

A reminder that the guidelines for the online learning platform and tutorials showing how to access different aspects of Google Classroom and Hangouts Meet can be found on the COVID 19 page on our website.

As previously, if you have any further questions or concerns regarding the school closure please contact Mr Towse or Mr Lamb.

We understand that as a community we will all have a certain amount of anxiety and we should look to each other for support.

As a school, we are waiting on further decisions from the Ministry of Education and we will continue to operate as normal (with our existing measures in place) until we hear any more.

We understand that parents may be uncertain about sending their children to school at this time and we will support those parents making this choice.

Thank you to those parents who attended the workshops on online learning. You will receive the following documents:

• • • Guideline for Online Learning

• • • Schedule for Online Learning for Parents

• • • Sample daily schedule – how to organise your child’s routine

• • • Video tutorials for Online Learning 

Google Classroom will be open this evening. Please note that we will only move over fully to Google classroom in the event of school closure. During the period when we have children off school due to parental concerns, we will upload a bank of activities for them to work through at home. Please note that these are optional and will not be marked by the teachers. Until school closure, we will not be posting any daily tasks or conducting any video conferencing.

Over the past few days, further communication from various organisations and companies on the island have been shared, asking staff to work from home, or self isolate due to possible or confirmed cases of COVID-19. It is highly likely to become a common occurrence in the coming weeks and if you do receive this type of information, please let us know and act in a responsible manner, by following the advice given.

We would like to thank our school community for their support and feedback during the past week. The positive nature of communications on all levels has been noted by many and this is very much appreciated. 

The school will be stopping all off-site activities for the rest of this term as directed by the MOE yesterday. We are able to control access, screening and cleaning of our own campus but not those we use outside of school. The following activities and events will be cancelled or postponed. 

Juniors Cross Country Events (Monday 16th & Friday 20th March)

All Year 3 & 4 Swimming Lessons

Reception Entopia Trip (Thursday 26th March)

Primary Performing Arts Carnival (Friday 27th & Saturday 28th March)

Year 3 & 4 Swimming Gala (Thursday 2nd & Friday 3rd April) 

All of these measures are taken to ensure the learning in school can continue with as little disruption as possible.

The same MOE directive as above also instructed us to avoid large gatherings of people. We are looking at which of our school activities will be affected and we will communicate this shortly. 

We believe the Malaysian government has added travel restrictions to Denmark in light of the continued COVID-19 outbreak. This is as reported in numerous news feeds but has not yet been added to the official MOH Affected Countries list.

The list of affected countries at this time is as follows:

China (including Mainland China, SAR Hong Kong & SAR Macau), Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Iran, Italy and (Denmark)

At this time we are recommending that SCIPS families do not travel to these countries as travel for some has already resulted in self-isolation or quarantine.

We look forward to welcoming back the teachers and students who have been secondary screening over the past few weeks since returning from affected countries. We know that they have all been fit and healthy whilst away and are now eager to come back to school and see their friends and teachers. 

Over the past week, the school has been organising and preparing its online learning platform In the case of prolonged school closure. This would mean that the children will have access to online learning at home. In preparation, the school has prepared documents and videos, set up access codes as well as run training for staff and parents. More details will be sent to you early next week. 

On Monday 16th March, we will be running two further parent workshops at 0815 and 1510. These are open for all parents to attend.

The school has been made aware that there is one case of the COVID 19 virus confirmed at the Motorola factory, and the workforce has been asked to work from home for 14 days.  We appreciate the prompt and positive actions of our parents who work at the company in agreeing for their children to undergo a period of home supervision, thereby safeguarding the wellbeing of our school community. We are sure all parents understand the challenges that this causes them in making this decision.

We have made the decision to postpone the Early Years Sports Day. This will now take place later in the academic year. We will update you on other calendar events via Flexibuzz.

Parents will have all received usernames and passwords for a Google account. Please note that this is only in preparation for school closure and will support online learning. We have not been made aware of any closure so please be assured that school will continue to operate a normal programme. We will look at running some Google workshops for parents so they are familiar with the platform.

This morning we started temperature checking all students and, along with drop-offs over the past few days, this went very smoothly. As with our normal medical policy, if a child becomes sick or their reading at the temperature check is high, Nurse Karmen will contact parents to come and collect them immediately. 

We are still awaiting further updates from the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Education and when these are available we will share these with parents.

For all of us, these are testing times, and we welcome our community’s calm and reasoned response to the ever-changing situation.

We are continuing to closely monitor the changing conditions related to COVID-19. The support by the school community has been greatly appreciated in these difficult circumstances. Our first priority is safeguarding the wellbeing of our school community and we have added a few changes to our school procedures to promote this.

The Malaysian government has added travel restrictions to new areas in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. These travel restrictions are on top of the existing guidelines for entry point screenings for travellers from affected countries.

The list of affected countries at this time is as follows:

China (including Mainland China, SAR Hong Kong, SAR Taiwan & SAR Macau), South Korea, Japan, Iran & Italy

At this time we are recommending that SCIPS families do not travel to these countries as travel for some has already resulted in self-isolation or quarantine.

Here is a summary of the procedures that will be in place from Saturday 7th March

• • • • • Any adult (including all staff) entering the school must complete a travel declaration, temperature screening and sanitise hands

• • • • • Parents/Guardians are to drop off and pick up the children outside the white security gates

• • • • • Unknown visitors to the school require a prior appointment made 24 hrs in advance

• • • • • Calendared events may be postponed and parents will be notified

• • • • • Parent volunteers are still able to continue their activities. However, we ask them to complete the steps for adults entering the school

• • • • • We ask that parents and children who travel to MOH listed affected countries stay away from the school for 14 days from the date of return

• • • • • Parents who continue to travel or receive visitors from affected areas should share details of this with Mr. Lamb

• • • • • All updates will be sent via Flexibuzz and posted on our new COVID-19 update page on the website

The situation can change daily so please stay informed and use the information and links on the webpage to make the best decisions for your family. Please direct any concerns related to this matter to Mr. Towse or Mr. Lamb.