Schools closing for flu

[Busydoingsomething]

A school near me has partially closed due to staff shortages. Another has cancelled all performances. Some of the children will have been vaccinated but I suspect, lots of the staff won’t have been. I was listening to 2 people today, on the train, discussing whether school staff should be vaccinated, to prevent the staff being off and impacting on education. Wondering if this would be a good move.

Do you not think that there might be a bit of a benefit to you personally to be better protected from flu - which might be worth a small bit of your time and effort?!

In my school less than a quarter of parents gave consent for their chikdren to get the flu vaccine. Some may have had it outside of school but I doubt there would be many. As staff we used to get vaccinated in school but that stopped because schools don’t have the money any more. I’ve been trying to get mine but our local pharmacies either have trouble getting it or only run sessions during the working day!

That is fine for the teachers who are highly motivated to get the vaccine for their own reasons, but doesn’t work for the majority of us that aren’t interested in having vaccines for the sake of doing our employer a favour.

Oh I just tried again on Boots and have got a slot for next week.

I was given a Bupa voucher by my school, but the nearest pharmacy that would take it was 30min drive away. I paid for it myself.

Massive study on the flu vaccine from the Cleveland hospital. The participants were all medical staff. The vaccine made you MORE LIKELY to get the flu. Cognitive dissonance is real so people read this and still get it. The vaccine manufacturers are making a fortune so the gravy train rolls on, I have seen many, many posts on here saying I am dying with the flu but so happy I had the vaccine or I could have been so much worse.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.25321421v4

Im shocked the at the schools being so late with the jabs. My DS school did it the last week in September.

Sure, if you want to get flu then I guess that's up to you! As I said, I paid for my own vaccine so I guess I see this very differently - I've had flu previously and would inconvenience myself considerably to lessen my odds of going through that again. My point is that it's hardly a Herculean task for a teacher given a voucher to then sort out getting the vaccine.

If teachers being vaccinated was that important, we would all be given it for free and we would be given the time to get it done.

I certainly agree that teachers should get free vaccines, and possibly other essential workers too. In an ideal world, there would be mobile vaccination teams touring the country's schools and other large workplaces where there are lots of essential workers.

I'd be happy to do my own, if I could get the stuff!

There might be but there might not be. It’s one of those things where you’re just taking a chance, and honestly, I don’t think it is worth my time, money or effort. Even with the vaccine, I’m still going to get other illnesses from the children I work with. I spend enough already on the medication I need to get through the day with minor illness because taking sick days is so frowned upon for school staff. I do enough for my school without sourcing and paying for a vaccine that I don’t believe will have much benefit to me.

How big a task it is depends on location surely. It has already been acknowledged that it’s going to be easier to get a vaccine in a city than in the countryside.

My school didn’t have anywhere near enough vouchers for all
staff, so even if I’d wanted one I wouldn’t have taken it because I’d have felt guilty taking it away from staff who needed it more.

Vaccines should definitely be free for people in essential roles imo.

But they don't just benefit the vaccinated, they protect those who are vulnerable and can't be effectively vaccinated.

I don't think that is how it works. The vaccines only give immunity to the strains they contain. You might as well not be vaccinated when it comes to a strain that is not covered

Perhaps schools shouldn't be telling parents to send their kids in when they are unwell 🤷‍♀️

What’s wrong with what they’ve said?

If people would just:

• stay home when they have a cold or flu
• if they have to go out, avoid crowded places
• if they can't avoid crowded places, cover your coughing mouth & sneezing nose (germy fuckers)
• wear a mask
• get vaccinated

I’m no expert but I suspect you are right.
DH & I both had the vaccine several weeks ago. He has recently caught this flu virus and was bed ridden for 2 days and still recovering 2 weeks later. I’ve never seen him in bed during the day for the 15 years I’ve been with him including Covid infection. He is late 30s and super fit (triathlon type). I might be wrong but I find it hard to believe that without the vaccine he would have been worse than this?!

Who, the poster saying don't send your kids in when unwell or the schools saying do send your kids in unwell?

I've spent all week trying to get my hands on a private vaccine here in Guernsey, but it seems the entire island has run out without any more arriving until January. It's been clear that yesterday and today even more people have been calling and attempting to get their hands on one after seeing the news from the UK!

Recent UK peer reviewed evidence on flu vaccine effectiveness.
https://doi.org/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2025.30.46.2500854
In short, evidence suggests it reduces severe disease & hospital admissions.

Like living in a dictatorship? Whilst I am pro vaccines I certainly will not be FORCED to do anything as a teacher…except teach and care for my pupils. Just think about your statement for a little minute and think where a law like that would leave us headed. Our bodies our choice. Thanks

I wonder if fact lots of schools are academy trusts now has made a difference.
The local authority offers employees reimbursement if you can’t have an nhs flu vaccine and sends several reminders of the offer. So if you work for a LA school this includes you. Maybe not all trusts offer this reimbursement scheme or reminders.

That is a preprint. It hasn't been peer-reviewed or published in a reputable journal. The study also didn't adjust for health status of the vaccinated vs unvaccinated, or look at whether people working with certain patient populations/in certain wards or departments were more or less likely to get the vaccine.

It may well be that the most at risk chose to get vaccinated, and this study has just highlighted that. Its not a strong enough study to draw a causational link (which is probably why the researchers published a pre-print rather than waited for publication).

I haven't taught since I had my son (so 12 years) but we were absolutely encouraged to get flu jabs back then.

This was a large, inner city school. Maybe smaller town schools don't usually suffer as much?

Schools are forced to close if they don't have a minimum percentage of staff to kids and cannot rely on support staff to fully run a school.

Clearly supply agencies only have so many teachers and once they're taken, they're taken. They are likely to start going down, too.

I can understand parents being pissed off about unexpected additional childcare issues but they'd also be angry if there was a serious incident in a school due to poor staff/pupil ratios.

I'm astounded by the low uptake of flu vaccines in kids - why? What's wrong with parents? Covid jab hysteria? I just don't understand why we wouldn't want to protect our kids.

The government need to assess the pressures they put schools to have incredibly high attendance rates presently.

I get that they need to up data to pre-covid levels over time, but the demands from LEA's are very harshly felt in schools and the pressure absolutely starts at the top.

I agree that they are feeding flu season with demands to send sick kids into school.