When to come to school....

After having so much time by ourselves in our little bubbles last year – we have all lost a bit of our immunity to colds and flu this year. We are being warned by health professionals to be extra careful this year to keep the germs to ourselves and so I thought it was timely that I share this again with our MPS community.

As we all know, attending school is vitally important to all students, especially after the year we all had in 2020. However, it is also vitally important to know when your child is to not attend school due to illness. This can be very difficult at times for parents to judge.

As we are coming into the colder months, I thought I’d take this time to remind parents of a few reasons why students should not attend the school environment while they are unwell.

As we are aiming to build resilience with all of our students, we want them to learn to put up with minor health issues. We, as a school, have the responsibility to care for all students by preventing outbreaks of any contagious illness. In doing this, we need students to stay at home when the following has occurred;

If your child has vomited at home, please keep your child home from school for a full 24 hours from the last vomit. Many students are sent home again after coming to school due to vomiting in the classroom after they arrive. This spreads the germs and greatly disrupts the classroom and learning of other students.
If you need to administer Nurofen or Panadol to your child in the morning before school, then your child is not well enough for school. These drugs wear off around lunch time and the student starts to feel unwell again. These drugs camouflage underlining illnesses and the germs can still spread.
If your child has a persistent, hard cough this can disrupt other students in the classroom from learning and the teacher may not be heard by other students. If your child is coughing persistently, this will also tire your child and they will not be at their peak to learn due to being exhausted from coughing. Coughing spreads droplets of germs throughout the classroom and can be spread throughout the students and staff quickly. Obviously, coughs can linger after having a cold and it is reasonable for a student to come back to school with the occasional cough.
No student should be at school if they have had diarrhoea within the last 24 hours. Click on the link below from the Department of Health guidelines for the full fact sheet. http://www.health.vic.gov.au/edfactsheets/downloads/gastroenteritis-in-children.pdf
If your child has a temperature, 24 hours need to pass once the temperature stops before coming back to school.
If any other contagious disease or illness, please get your doctor's approval before attending school again.

To help reduce the spread of illness, please take time to discuss personal hygiene with your child. Please remind children to cover their mouth and nose when they cough or sneeze, dispose of any tissues in the bin and wash their hands properly and regularly.

If your child has been prescribed antibiotics that are to be administered three times per day, these can be administered at home.

The first dose can be administered between 7am – 8.30am, the following dose can be administered between 3.45pm – 4.30pm. Then the last dose can be given at 8pm or before bed.

Please be aware that the school is not allowed to provide Panadol to students.

If your child becomes unwell at school, you will be contacted and required to arrange for your child to be picked up within a reasonable timeframe.

Even though your child may still want to come to school, even though they are unwell, please be the parent and tell them that they can’t due to them being too unwell and because of the possibility of spreading germs to other students and staff. While a child may feel better at home, if they return to school too early, they will fall into a heap quickly due to going back into a classroom full of students in the room and it being noisy with bright lights, as well as being involved in extra activities outside at recess and lunch times, and moving around the school for different subjects.

Thank you for supporting these procedures and helping to contain illnesses within our school community.

Amanda Daemen

First Aid Officer