Experiencing mass testing at Newcastle Sixth Form College

Mass Covid-19 testing has been mooted as one possible way to keep students in school and college safely. Gerard Garvey, principal of Newcastle Sixth Form College, explains his experience of being part of the Government's mass testing pilot.

Like every other sixth form college, this year began with a conundrum: how do we design our delivery model to balance the responsibility to educate with the responsibility to keep our students safe?

Our college is an inclusive sixth form offering A Levels and a small number of GCSEs to over 1,200 young people from across the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and beyond. Our success in recent years, with strong value added and progression, has been based on our ability to put expert teachers in the classroom who can inspire our students and successfully individualise learning. Whilst I accept that online delivery platforms have provided new opportunities to do things differently and may lead to permanent change to some of our practice, I am also firm in the belief that the best place for A Level students is in the classroom, with a talented and responsive teacher.

For this reason, since September we have been delivering 100% face-to-face teaching for all learners that can attend college and synchronous online delivery for those who cannot - using Microsoft Teams to broadcast the lesson live from the classroom. With Newcastle being an area of high Covid-19 cases since the summer, our plan was not without risk, but within the guidance we have been able to create a revised timetable which maintains a safe environment for all students and minimises lost learning.

Since the start of the academic year, I am happy to report that we have only had a small number of positive Covid-19 cases with just 23 students and 3 staff absent following a positive test. But I have been less comfortable with the 150+ close-contacts who have had to self-isolate for a fortnight as a result of this. For this reason, I was very keen when we were contacted by the Department for Education to see if we would be interested in participating in a mass testing pilot. Firstly, I thought this could provide reassurance to our college community through identifying asymptomatic cases, and secondly, I was keen to reduce the number of those having to self-isolate and learn from home.

Things moved quickly following our agreement to participate and we worked with the Department for Education, the Department for Health and Social Care, their delivery partner Deloitte and the Ministry of Defence who were supplying the testing team. There were some technical obstacles to overcome and on occasion the answers to our questions were not yet known, but the team at NSFC and indeed NCG (the college group we are part of) were committed to making it a success. We understood that complicated multi-agency tasks such as this are dynamic and we were able to draw upon colleagues across the group network to ensure the project could get up and running safely. Across a two-week period, we transformed an IT study space into a Covid-19 test centre. As the only post-16 provider in the country involved in the pilot, there was an element of having to adapt our internal plan and work fluidly as the guidance on mass testing in schools and colleges was still being developed. We embraced – and actually enjoyed - the challenge, and as a result were the first school/college in the country to begin testing.

Prior to the launch of testing, we did a lot of work with staff and students to raise awareness of the pilot, its purpose, and the direct benefit of testing on this scale. Following this, we wrote to all students and parents and staff to get them to consent to weekly testing between now and the Christmas break. We used online forms and videos from the senior team to ensure the process was efficient and well understood. I am happy to report that 100% of staff and 80% of students agreed to take part in the pilot.

On day one of testing, I was a little nervous that we could have hundreds of asymptomatic cases and college activity would grind to a halt, but as we got up and running, the rapid results from the Lateral Flow Tests made it clear that most were negative. By the end of the first day we had tested almost 400 students with only 2 positive cases emerging. At present, this number has barely increased with only 3 positive cases in total. This has provided huge reassurance that our college is safe and that our commitment to face-to-face delivery has not contributed to in-college transmission. Whilst there has been some criticism over the accuracy of Lateral Flow Testing in the media, by repeating the tests weekly and in some cases daily, we are confident that the pilot is allowing us to reduce the number of asymptomatic students who are in college and therefore maintain a safe environment.

For us, the key benefit of the pilot has been ‘test-to-enable’, which has meant that only those who test positive for Covid-19 are out of college. Consenting close contacts have been tested each day at 8am and allowed to attend college as long as they return a negative test. Put simply, this means that there are currently 15 students at NSFC who are in college instead of self-isolating at home.

We are now into the third week of testing and my view is that this has been a highly valuable experience. We are currently training up colleagues at NSFC to administer tests as we intend to continue close-contact testing in January with the support of the DHSC and DfE. We are also working with Deloitte on some user-friendly materials for senior leaders should the pilot be rolled out in the gap between now and mass vaccination.

The benefits of mass testing are now recognised and we are proud to have been part of the pilot. The roll-out of teacher testing and close-contact testing for all schools and colleges is manageable and will help to minimise the number of teachers and students who are unnecessarily out of college. This reduces workload for schools and colleges, promoting continuity of education for all young people.

Gerard Garvey is principal at Newcastle Sixth Form College, part of NCG college group.