Secondary Teachers, what do you think about going back to school for the last term with social distancing?

[sunshineanddaffodils]

My year 8 and year 10 dc are in the best possible situation at this point. Both have their own computer, space to work, pretty good home learning from school and both are cooperating. However, I am so worried about the impact being off school until September will have on them socially, on their mental well-being let alone the academic side of things. When I think about dc who are less fortunate than mine I feel so anxious and concerned. I’d be so happy to see some sort of phased return to school as soon as possible really. Looking at the stats I’m not concerned about the health any of the dc or staff at the school although obviously wouldn’t expect anyone in the vulnerable categories or dc of the vulnerable to be expected to return (there’s only one teacher at at their school who is shielding because he’s diabetic). I think school should reopen and the vulnerable remain isolated so the virus cannot be passed on to them if dc fo pick it up at school.

@Stilllivinghere

Do you (or anyone for that matter) think schools are closed because teachers don’t want to go to work? / don’t want to be ‘creative’

Just so you know, it’s in relation to social distancing, to try reduce the R value. It’s not a teacher decision. We’re following instructions. We want you to go to work too.

@Mistressiggi great plan 👍

Fair enough, I know teachers are doing their best, I'm sure they're already getting creative and thinking through the logistics, a lot better than Matt Hancock or some twat, it's just that our whole society kind of depends on a large chunk of the day being spent in school/work. I don't want a future where mothers - and it'll be mainly mothers - are set back 50 years and stuck in the bloody house all the time because school isn't 'safe' - christ where will be from now on??

Mistress

Oooh, or we could hold a remote student talent show and the winning students get to come into school?

Sorry, Beebie2, you have to come up with your own creative plan, every teacher needs their own you know!

Im obviously very aware why schools are closed....but they can’t stay that way until/IF a vaccine is found.

You will have instructions to open, but there will be different logical issues for each school.

Im obviously very aware why schools are closed....but they can’t stay that way until/IF a vaccine is found.

Don't think anyone has suggested this

Oh crap -right

I will use a name generator to come up with 10 names. I will then buy inflatable suits for all of the kids, to ensure they don’t come into physical contact with each other (and for my own amusement, hard times and all that)

Can I count an idea that is a combination of two existing ideas?

A rigged name generator that LOOKS fair but is designed to never come up with a couple of particular ones?

Then tying the children to their chairs so they can't move about to interact.

I imagine there will be a big push from a weakly supervised inflated tranche of TeachFirst graduates.

New graduates across nearly all disciplines are going to face an almighty recession in September 2020. They have no childcare concerns and are the group least personally at risk from the virus. So they are a ready pool of new teaching staff, for better for worse.

You will have instructions to open, but there will be different logical issues for each school

That will not necessarily stop the govt demanding that all schools must do X. Let’s hope they take an approach that allows schools some nuance.

You will have instructions to open

Do you think we'll get any notice this time, or Government have the courtesy to tell us before it's announced on television?

Er, no, I thought not.... as you were.

And might those instructions, I don't know, be fully thought out and stay the same for a day or two?

The stress and uncertainty of that final week, already huge because of the context, was made so much worse by constantly-changing guidelines and instructions.

There are hundreds of jobs where social distancing isn’t possible but still they have to go on

The government advice is to apply this where possible

So Sunshine, you are proposing a full return to school with no social distancing?

What level of deaths amongst pupils and teachers (and also in the wider school community, as this means the TOTAL end of social distancing for the school community - ie every adult living with a school child would become part of a chain of transmission to every other) would you regard as acceptable collateral damage to this proposal?

@Sunshine1239

The government have quite specific guidelines on schools. Schools can’t interpret the guidance in a different way.

There are hundreds of jobs where social distancing isn’t possible but still they have to go on

There aren’t that many jobs where there are.1000 children milling around, then sitting in groups of 30 right next to each other for hours, then spilling out into the community with whatever they’ve picked up that day.

I wrote this on another thread:
"However, the main issue, it seems to me, are the implications for the wider school community. Teachers live with and care for vulnerable and shielded elderly or vulnerable young relatives. Pupils live with vulnerable or shielded parents. Children travel to school on crowded buses, driven by further adults, and, in many areas, also populated by standard commuters or key workers, on their way to or from nursing homes, hospitals etc. Grandparents, often elderly, are key to before and after school childcare.

The key implication of re-opening schools is a MASSIVE reduction in social distancing across the community of adults linked to that school. Adults walking their children to the school where the children will mix freely are highly unlikely to remain 2m from every other adult on the same errand, or to believe that they can see a friend on the school run but not go round for a coffee (before then perhaps going on to their workplace).

Essentially, in one step, we go from small socially-distanced households to, essentially, the entire community linked to a single school becoming, as far as virus transmission is concerned, a single household, linked by a route the virus is entirely capable of travelling. As many people have children in more than 1 school, each school-linked community then becomes linked, to an even larger network.

It is that, not the simple fact of children being in school, that worries me. Yes, (quite a few) teachers and (a few) children will die when schools re-open, through direct in-school transmission. However, many in the school linked community will ALSO die, and it is the latter numbers that should concern us all."

Name the 100s of jobs Sunshine, I'm genuinely interested. Some of them anyway.

Within my own family, we will be attending and working in four different schools. That's a really big (potential) chain of infection.

My DD is a reception aged child still in school. There are approx 6 other reception children in out of 90 in her school. The teachers aren't even attempting to socially distance with the reception children because it's impossible. I believe the older year groups are sat as far apart as possible but for year 1 and eyfs it just isn't possible.

Has anyone actually read the scientific I information coming out on this?

Children are not infected and do not spread in the way adults do.

No scientific evidence of high secondary transmission

It sounds as though teachers would be more likely to be infected by other staff members.

So why is it they've been saying that closing the schools didn't make as much difference to the curve or the spread or whatever as they thought it would? And that so few children get it or they get it so mildly that it's not really transmissible from them at all? Also a bit disingenuous to say 'school-linked community' I think - couldn't we equally talk about the local Tesco-linked community? But it's alright for that to be open, and all those links between people to carry on with all the risk of deaths because of those links, because Tesco's being open is important...like school.

Tesco is socially distanced.

Your local Tesco isn’t open anywhere near as normal.

So if you want to compare supermarkets to schools, they won’t be open anywhere near as normal either.