School illness rules

Five things spring to mind

1. School does not give a shiny shit about pupils or staff
2. School is irresponsible
3. School does not give a shit about learning, health or wellbeing
4. School has taken already batshit attending when ill policies and cranked the dial up until it is broken
5. There will be a lot more illness within family members

Agree. Sadly I think this is already happening with covid! Many children (est. 100k) are already chronically ill from repeated covid infections, add in the pressure from schools to attend even while poorly and I really feel for kids these days. Illness rates and absences due to illness in schools have been much higher the last few years than pre 2020, this kind of rule is only going to make this worse.

Also what about the risk to immunocompromised children and caregivers! I hoped we would have learnt not to spread illness all round after the last few years.

I wish people would stop talking about workplaces.

Childhood is not just traning for workplace exploitation with them being trained to do as much as possible to the benefit of their employers whilst neglecting their own health.

They have adulthood for that.

This is exactly why the guidance exists though.

your child may be well in themselves having vomited once but they will still shed virus which could infect others causing the illness to spread. The same virus can present very differently in different people.

It’s because people are taking the piss calling their kids in sick when they are on holidays. Just own up and take the fine or they wouldn’t have to go down this route.

Ours goes door knocking on day three even if you’ve phoned in sick. We all know it’s to make sure we aren’t in Benidorm.

If they are short staffed how are they managing to go out and knock on doors?

Silly rules, I'd not be bothering with them.

The poor attenders are not going to be those off school for a minor illness a day or two more than they would be otherwise.

Terrible!!

I have. An illness that means a sickness but will kill le. My kids don’t to school and are home ed because they were constantly getting sick and the risk was too high for me.

*Not acceptable at all. Many more children will be getting sick."

Have people not been paying attention the last few years? The government want kids in as much as possible and do not made decisions based on modelling or risk assessments. The COVID rules were made up government ministers without much input from scientists and knowingly intend for pupils to get repeatedly infected with COVID and other viruses and illnesses as part of " hybrid immunity".

Schools only need to abide by education department guidance and complains to Ofsted etc will achieve nothing.

At the end of the day you can keep your child off for illness and have no issues unless attendance drops below certain thresholds.

If my child is sick then she's got this funny thing where she's absolutely fine before she's sick and then she's sick and then she's absolutely fine after! It's she just needs to get something out!

(Not that she's sick often I should say)

It is rare that she's actually poorly with it. If she's poorly you can obviously tell because she's not fine before or after.

She had one of those times she was sick once but absolutely fine on residential morning. She carried on doing all the activities and was absolutely fine but I couldn't bring her in the next day cos they wouldn't let me. The teacher wouldn't let her eat a proper breakfast she said which annoyed her cos she needed one. I would have let her cos I know and know she would have been fine with one.

I would have brought her in to school on those days after she'd been sick cos she was fine. But couldn't

I am genuinely concerned that children are going to become more unwell whilst no-one notices.

Their symptoms will be suppressed by parents to get them into school, this will work for a while but simply hides symptoms whilst the illness progresses. The child will feel awful but will be ignored and by the time parents pick them up they will be more unwell.

This has implications for serious illnesses being seen in a delayed fashion, which has potential negative outcomes.

For what???? Attendance statistics looking better when nothing is actually being done to improve the attendance of children with serious attendance issues.

in case you don't want to click the link:

What was found?
Compared with SpotOn, all IR devices showed poor agreement in core-body temperature measurements, with poor accuracy and repeatability of their measurements.
What is the implication for practice now?
Hospitals and other sectors should not rely on IR gun thermometers to accurately screen for core-body temperature; if their use were to continue, ensuring that the device is used 3–5 cm away from a clean, dry forehead should be standard practice.

I don’t for a second think it’s going to the worlds most accurate but it’s a handy tool to help with a decision if we phone parents or wait and see a bit longer!

@Sirzy Those non touch thermometers are not accurate and are not always used correctly, increasing further the inaccuracy,

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11046542/

The rule absolutely does exist in some workplaces.

Ridiculous! Driven by the obsession with attendance data. 🤦🏻‍♀️
Your child, your rules.

Schools are allowed to check temperatures. We have one of the no touch forehead thermometers which we use if needed, although most of the time you can tell by a hand on the forehead anyway!

Parents should be very concerned about quite how much schools are interfering in things that are not down to them.

A parent is the right person to make decisions about their children.

If school has concerns around neglect of a child's needs, including school attendance or health needs they can make a safeguarding referral.

Making blanket rules around how parents manage sickness is beyond their remit.

The school I work in still asks for 48 hours post D and V and will send home any child if they have a temp.

We do do doorstep visits if a child is absent for more than one day and it hasn’t been reported to the school/we can’t get through on the phones. This year early years guidance has been update on the contact needed when a child is absent.

Our school say they will monitor sick children, but in reality never send a child home and you end up picking up a sweaty, glassy-eyed child at home time who is fit to drop. And has gained no benefit whatsoever from being in class. Who can learn when they are properly ill? Nobody.

So I have learnt to exercise my own judgement, and if I’m not sure she’ll be ok for the whole day she stays home. I don’t care if school don’t like it, their feelings are their own to manage, it’s not my responsibility to do so.

Schools are putting themselves into a dangerous position if they are suggesting they are capable of monitoring a sick child as well as everything else a teacher has to do. Young children particularly keep quiet at school when they feel unwell.

They don't have the knowledge, the training or the time to do this.

Sure, but the sensible way to handle exceptions like this is to handle them as exactly that - exceptions. So have a general 48 hour rule I place, and for the school to exercise discretion, on a case by case basis, to waive it in limited circumstances, eg cases like this where the vomiting is likely to be as a result of concussion instead of eg Noro (though it should be remembered that having concussion does not mean you automatically can’t catch a vomiting bug at the same time).

Just hand-waving away the rule entirely on a blanket basis is really silly when many times the vomiting child WILL be contagious for a couple of days after the event.

As pp says, it’s important to put the wellbeing of children first and foremost, not send them in sick to avoid pissing off unreasonable employers.

Bit daft getting rid of the 48 hour rule. My sons are now at college (17 and 20) and they still have this rule