Management Information Sheet

Promoting testing for your education settings community

We would like to thank those of you who are working hard to promote the use of testing in your setting's community. Testing is key to help break the links of transmission and helping to ensure education settings remain open to all students and staff.

We are pleased that the DfE have now made available new COVID-19 testing data that will be helpful for education settings to judge uptake of testing for their communities. This can now be accessed on the View Your Education Data' (VYED) portal'. You can access the user guide and FAQs for more information.

Public Health England have resources that can help you to promote testing for your community, and the DfE have also published a new blog post with examples of best practice. We would encourage you all to promote testing, as this will help our education communities to protect themselves, the wider community, and help us all get back to a more normal way of life.

Confirmatory PCR to take place within two days

All positive results from COVID-19 lateral flow test tests, whether conducted at home or at a school or college need to be confirmed with a PCR test within two days of the positive lateral flow test. Follow this link to understand the reasoning behind the re-introduction of confirmatory PCR tests.

Following a positive LFD test, a confirmatory PCR test should be booked immediately either online or by calling 119. Whilst awaiting the PCR result, the staff, pupil or student and their close contacts should continue to self-isolate in line with published guidance. Contact tracing will be triggered by a positive LFD result, but will be stopped automatically after receipt of a negative confirmatory PCR test, if the PCR was taken within two days of the positive LFD result.

However, the staff, pupil or student and their close contacts should continue to self-isolate if:

• this confirmatory PCR test result is positive
• you choose not to take a follow-up PCR test
• your follow-up PCR test was taken more than 2 days after the positive LFD test result

It is important to book your follow-up PCR test as soon as you can following your positive LFD test result.