In the third blog post for our series the Lockdown Diaries, we hear from Nicole Reynolds, our new Assistant Bursar, who has been involved in projects including rolling out testing for our on-site pupils and staff. In her blog she tells us more about setting up the testing and about the many support teams working behind the scenes to keep the school operating.
"If you’d have told me this time last year that during January 2021 I’d be working with a team of new colleagues testing pupils and staff for COVID-19, I’d never have believed you! We all knew what COVID-19 was a year ago (just about!), but I certainly didn’t think it would turn in to this. Least of all because I was working in manufacturing, not in education! I thought starting a new role during a Global Pandemic would bring a whole new set of challenges compared to those you’d normally face….and I was right!
Starting at Norwich School in mid-November 2020, the middle of Lockdown 2.0, means that I still haven’t met many of my colleagues at the school. Some I speak to weekly on Teams meetings, but have never met face to face, and I am yet to see what Norwich School life is like when all the co-curricular activities are in full flow with the pupils.
One of the main tasks since I arrived here has been setting up the testing centre for key worker children and staff on site to have their Lateral Flow Device tests. This has been incredibly rewarding for me and all the staff involved. Whilst everyone knows it doesn’t mean we can resume life as normal, it provides a tiny bit of extra comfort. Working alongside the Welfare team has been such a learning curve and their skills and expertise have been hugely valuable. It has been great getting to know them and spend time with them in such a way that wouldn’t have happened without this.
As I’m sure you can imagine, our IT team have been working incredibly hard to keep up with queries and providing assistance to all those who are relying on technology to stay in touch with the rest of their classmates and they have done such a marvellous job in staying on top of it all!
The Estates team are working flat out keeping all our buildings up and running and keeping on top of security whilst the school is operating in this new way, as well as adapting as the needs of the school change, sometimes on a daily basis. Finance have their work cut out continuing to manage working remotely alongside managing and monitoring all the budgets in this ever-changing environment. HR are still managing to provide an amazing service to all those staff working remotely and checking in on staff for both wellbeing and their physical health with workstation equipment that is required on an individual basis, all whilst the majority are working remotely themselves.
I can’t wait to see what life is like here at Norwich School when life returns to the new normal, whenever that may be…"
