Are there likely to be blanket school closures?

[asblindasabat]

A person I work with today said that she wouldn’t be surprised if the government made the decision to close all schools in the UK because of the Strep A outbreak.

Are we really at that point? When they closed in March 2020 they were closed for months so I really hope not!

I could see individual class or school closures in some cases. It doesn’t feel so improbable to me that it could happen on a smaller scale. I was at university when there was a meningitis outbreak and they gave everyone in our halls antibiotics and I remember it feeling very scary as people kept disappearing to hospital. The university wasn’t shut down as such but sure our bar etc was closed and there were some restrictions.

DS had it many years ago (well before covid was a thing!), so did several kisd in his class/ school. You can say there was an outbreak of srep A & scarlet fever.

Nobody batterd an eyelid then.
It's just scaremongering by the press.

No. We're only just seeing the full impact the covid school closures had on children. There'd be strong opposition I think if it were to happen again.

I think the majority of people aim to give their children a warm, safe home and forget for the children who don't have that, school is the only constant source of safety. Taking that away is disastrous imo.

Just to add I know the unions were key in closing schools and this may differ from area to area but where I work nobody wanted that to happen. We didn't feel like the union had its members wishes at heart at all.

I don't know. I work in a school. We're debating closing two year groups because of it. My son's school is closed today because of heavy staff and student absence, possibly for the rest of the week. They have over half off.

It's press scaremongering and then people come on here and fuel it more

Nah its neat christmas holidays

They might say if its in your class then it closes or something

This is madness.MN should close down any scaremongering stuff like this. I wouldn't put it past Russia and other malign actors using SM to spread fear and hysteria.

Experts think that this situation was brought on by lockdowns/school closures because it has weakened kids' immune systems so I hope not. They might finish for Christmas early in the hopes the numbers of Strep A reduce, but I really hope they are not closing for lengthy periods

@Millana
Why is it concerning? Doing nothing when you actually can is concerning. Parents who don’t want the antibiotics would not be forced to give them to their children. My children had antibiotics maybe once in their life and the eldest is moving to secondary school soon. They are not being constantly over medicated. For me personally it’s much better to have a course of antibiotics if there are confirmed cases in school than wait and see if you win the lottery and have a milder case.

My school will not be affected by these...we can't get any teachers. We are relying on supply and that's hit and miss at the best of times.

We 'interviewed' this week for two teachers and a TA.

Number of applications for three permanent full time positions in a lovely school - one.
Number of applicants who cancelled when their private day nursery offered them more money to stay - one.
Number of interviews that took place - zero.

Interesting if you had made this same post in December 2020 you would have been accused of being a Covid denier, anti vaxxer, granny killing conspiracy theorist.

It's a forum, where people chat.

I was as fearful as anybody - indeed I discovered MN for the prepping threads back in the January when I first clocked it. But I'm done with fear now you can't live your whole life scared of your shadow. Strep A was called scarlet fever when I was a child in the 60s and it was pretty common. But we survived somehow.

stop trying to make it worse.

sorry, but I’m not. I should be allowed to ask a question