All coronavirus guidance for educational settings can be found in one place on GOV.​UK. We recommend that you sign up to receive updates.

COVID-19 continues to be a virus that we learn to live with, and the imperative is to reduce the disruption to children and young people’s education. DfE guidance, especially the contingency framework, outlines expectations for schools. It describes the principles of managing local outbreaks of coronavirus.  The LA will only produce supplementary guidance where it is needed, for example to add clarity or to provide a local context.

These key points continue to inform our approach when supporting local leaders:

• we continue to liaise with LA partners, Improvement Partners (IPs), chairs of headteacher groups and representative MATs to ask stakeholders what additional guidance or support they believe we need to provide - we continue to take their responses into account when shaping additional support
• where supplementary guidance is needed (to reflect the local context or to add further clarity to DfE guidance) the local authority will commission this and add it to the Covid-19 for Schools web pages – either on this page or the page most suitable to the theme of the supplementary guidance
• Improvement Partners and key education contacts continue to be schools’ first point of contact and are available via telephone or email to provide bespoke support to leaders, matched to the needs of each school’s unique context

Local outbreaks of Covid-19 and contingency planning

Central government asked all councils to produce a plan to outline how they intend to manage the spread of COVID-19. The MK Outbreak Control Plan is ours. It sets out some of our priorities to prevent local outbreaks and explains how we will respond to positive cases at speed. We’ve also set up an outbreak prevention group, made up of representatives from all ‘category one’ responders in MK, and will keep working closely with Public Health England.

As school leaders it’s important that you are aware of the MK outbreak control plan. You will want to refer to it when you’re thinking about contingency planning - to ensure continuity of education in the case of a local outbreak.

There is also some business continuity information for school settings under the Risk and Resilience section of the main MKC website. This includes some templates that have been designed to support you in formulating your own business continuity plans.