To despise school policy of going in when sick

Yeah we don’t have all of these attendence policies in Ireland. If the kiss’s are sick then they are sick and you keep them home, no one bats an eye. Funnily enough my dc haven’t had a sick day yet this year…and I can’t remember the last time they were ill. This getting colds etc from my kids is pretty much alien to me…

Plenty of people took the view with COVID that illness is part of life just get on with it, trust your immune system etc.

it is literally government policy that everyone gets reinfected with illness repeatedly to maintain "hybrid" immunity.

Schools are under massive pressure to improve attendance, and lots of kids fake illness to stay home.
This is the policy you end up with.

The school policy is ridiculous and if my 4 kids are too poorly to go into school then that is my decision as there parent to make, regardless what the school says.

Most of the time the school seems to think you have gone on a cheeky holiday abroad, which is most irritating.

Even if you take meds it dose not stop you spreading the infection to others, when you go to the toilet or the shops any one that walks passed you could catch it depending on their immune system.

But you are doing the same as the selfish parent by going into work if you are as sick as you describe!
You will pass on this illness to your colleagues & families.

You can't have it both ways! Anyone who needs to lie down on the bathroom floor while at work/school should be at home!!

DD1 is off today with a cold. It's an absolute shitter of a cold (I've had it linger for 3 weeks cos my sinuses are like a luxury hotel for any germs who refuse to fucking leave) and I was absolutely in tears trying to work through it at its peak (just WFH doing reports - nothing majorly effortful or client-facing).

Surprisingly no phone call from attendance - I've found that if you give them details they'll ring you to hassle you about how you need to bring them in - but if I just say "X is unwell and won't be in" - much less likely.

Well I’ve seen then. For long standing medical conditions which cause repeated absence. Heck I’ve had one for my self before

I agree OP. It's so weird how we have gone backwards since 2018. Policies pretending it's in kids best interests to make their friends and teachers sick or be punished for falling ill after sitting in a germ pit all day is fucked up. The level of illness in schools needs to be addressed - but we need kids and education to be valued (with actions, not meaningless words) for that to happen. Teacher absence has also increased.

Out of work sickness in general is rocketing - instead of addressing the cause, it's implied people are milking it. Same for schools.

I agree with you. All this hand ringing about what the school thinks and says is something I find a bit odd.

DS primary school tried to tell parents that kids should be sent in and they'd make the decision whether they were too ill to be there! I was very clear with the Head that I'm his mother and I'll be making that decision. If parents stand up to this nonsense the schools will soon pack it in irrespective of whether it's pushed by Ofsted or DfE.

I agree that some parents are far too soft - DS had to be properly ill for me to let him stay home. But if I thought so then that was final - the schools view of the matter was irrelevant.

I imagine it's quite disruptive for teachers to have an unwell child at school: crying, hacking cough or the dreaded vomiting. My DC had a friend throw-up in the classroom - covered two desks, the worsheets and another child's shoes! Created chaos and derailed the whole morning.

I shovelled DS1 off to school on Tuesday even though he was complaining of not feeling well, because very often he comes home later and can't seem to remember he was supposed to be unwell. Hmm. But this time I got a phone call from the school nurse telling me he was very unwell and asking if I could pick him up. Oops. He's been off ever since. Two Covid tests have been negative (his brother is immunosuppressed so we like to keep track.) He doesn't have a fever, but he's clearly not well enough to be in school. I felt bad for sending him in but the nurse said she'd have done the same!

I had the school attendance officer on the phone demanding I sent DD1 in with a vomiting bug last year. I was like, "no, I'm not in the business of unnecessarily infecting teachers leading to staff absence and even more lost learning"... more talking down to me and I lost my patience with them, told them that if they were medically qualified fine, but otherwise I was going to take responsibility as a parent and if they had issues with a child who had previously had 100% attendance being off puking... ring social services.

My kids are very high attenders - I'm not prepared to be grilled when they ARE ill.

I think we need to man/woman up a bit to be honest. Covid taught us that children are disadvantaged if they miss too much school, so of course they’re going to try and fix that issue.

The show must go on, kiddos.

You HAD to go in. So, they HAVE to go in too. Why can't you see it's the same thing?

As a previous poster said how does sending a sick child into school help? They will be too unwell to learn and just spreading their germs.

Children get on average about 8 colds a year. If they missed two or three days for each, they would lose the equivalent of a month's worth of school days. Its a huge amount of learning.

Most children are not "too unwell to learn" with a cold.

With many bugs/viruses children have spread them to peers before all their symptoms have full appeared, so exclusion does little to limit the spread.

Do you really get so poorly with a cold?

Most people aren't that wiped out, do you have poor immune systems? DD and have both had a heavy cold this week, but have been okay for school and work with paracetamol & some early nights

I don't know anyone who keeps their kids off school for a cold, or takes time off work themselves. D&V is a bit different and I agree with the 48 hour exclusion but it's surely pretty uncommon to be so unwell with a cold that you can't go to school/work? Take some paracetamol and snot spray and crack on.

My eldest has been at school 4 years and has had one 48 hour period off following a single vomit, youngest only in his second year but had one day off last year, again following a Thursday night single vomit.

Other than that, they've had coughs and sniffles but nothing that I would say needs a day at home. Maybe I'm just mean!

Children who are unwell don’t learn as well because they feel rubbish and that is a huge distraction. It’s about time schools applied common sense and looked at cases individually rather than this ‘ the expectation is 97% for everyone ‘ or whatever threshold they set

YABU

Because despite your outrage you have still gone in. You will end up passing it on too.

Personally I would also ignore any school rule that says send children in when they are too ill.

This seems like an inevitable consequence of the collapse in school attendance. Too many kids allowed off for minor or fake illness so now we all pay the price.

Why blindly follow "the rules" when you or your dc are sick? Do you know you are actually able to think for yourself and make an informed choices? If your son is too ill to attend school, tell school the truth or he's vomiting if you prefer. As for you, that's disgusting going into work and spreading your germs around. If you are so ill you've had to lie down in the - shared - staff toilets then I don't see how you are even able to work. Stay at home with sick family members for a few days. It's not rocket science.

Have you done a covid test?

I have the same symptoms as you and mine is covid (probably the new XEC variant).

Do you appreciate the irony of condemning school whilst going into your job? And more so with the "if I don't I'll lose my job"

Schools ideally don't want sick kids there, but government policy states unless it is deemed by Public Health England to be a transmissible illness then it is not a reason to be off school.

I understand why many people come to work etc with a bug - many workplaces (like mine) won't pay for a sick day and people can't afford to lose their wages.

What does annoy me however is the people who come in and then proceed to cough and sneeze all over the place without properly covering their faces or washing their hands. It amazes me that we've come through the pandemic and people apparently still don't know how to cough and sneeze in a way that is considerate to other people. Just "keeping away" from others isn't enough - we all have to touch the same door handles, kettles, etc etc.

This isn't aimed at you by the way OP - just a general rant. There's a reason why viruses spread so easily.

DH is a GP - they do not give doctors letters for schools.