Headteacher has posted this to facebook

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The headteacher at my DCs school has posted this to Facebook. He says that social distancing is impossible and unless we would be happy to let our DC play in a supermarket for hours to 'not even think about' bringing them to school. I have 2 expected back on June 1st. AIBU to keep them off after this?

m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10222994594279008&id=1403891361

It’s not about challenging the government. All sectors have challenged the government. And they have listened and responded. Because we all need to contribute to a national crisis. Through every phase and that means change.

This man and the unions are not constructively challenging. They are refusing to engage and to even try. Being asked to organise a limited return with 3 weeks notice on top of a period of 9 weeks when they could have planned is far more scope than many sectors got. Those are sectors who worked through the crisis whilst changing operations and managing absences.

@LouisaMusgrove - Why stop at Autumn, why not wait a full year to see how other countries pan out?....

Whether one likes it or not, we are a capitalistic economy. Without people being able to work, run their businesses etc this country will implode and enter a depression like we have never seen.

What we are discussing here, is asking the group of society with virtually zero risk, going back to school. Freeing up parents to go back to work and try to retain some sense of normality and economic stability.

@lemonTT - So true, lots of small businesses adapted within a days notice. It is beggars belief how they have not spend the past few months, trying to put together logistics. Do they genuinely believe that it will just blow over like a hurricane, then back to normal?

@LolaSmiles

I agree, but unfortunately what most of us are hearing is "we expect to be 100% safe from the virus otherwise we can't go to work", which does look a bit out of place when others are going to work. And unrealistic if a vaccine never comes or (as is likely) will take a while to develop and then roll out.

Constructive engagement might look like "well 1 June looks challenging and getting all primary schools back before the summer looks unlikely for our particular school, but we will put forward some proposals as to what we CAN do taking into account the needs of our own individual school population."

@fromdownwest because they aren’t businesses and therein lies the problem.

There is no impetus to adapt or move quickly because they are all getting paid no matter what, and anything they need will ultimately be provided and paid for - while the unions push for more.

And meanwhile the taxpayers paying for it all will be scrabbling to get kids educated and looked after while they work harder than ever to keep their jobs and businesses alive.

Rob being a prime example of this attitude that it needs to be his perfect scenario, planned and facilitated by someone else, before he will lift his tools.

Autumn is not a sensible time to wait until. The need for the NHS increases from autumn until Feb/Mar every year. So a probable 2nd wave in the winter would be a catastrophe.

@Sadie789 agree with your post completely. Rob needs to step up, not whine that he needs to adapt things in some way. If his staff whined about his decisions on FB, they'd be getting disciplined

@LemonTT and @Kazzyhoward yes, yes, agree totally.

Where is the leadership?

My closest friend is CEO of a group of care homes. In February they ordered huge stocks of PPE, they contracted with local agencies for staff (anticipating a potential 10% absence), they implemented strict infection control regimes and updated all staff training in respect of this. This was 2 months before the government even noticed that care homes were vulnerable. That's about leadership - not waiting to be told what to do, but looking at your own circumstances and working out how to deal with it. Incidentally, to date in their care homes they have had 3 cases of COVID and no deaths directly related - despite the fact that the NHS tried to send a COVID positive person there in March (they refused to take them until the test was negative).

Well it’s just as well schools didn’t spend a fortune on PPE as they have been told they shouldn’t be using it!

Where is the imagination, the ideas, the innovation?

I saw a lovely clip of a Spanish family being 're-united' young children getting to meet with older relatives. They all ran towards each other, obviously desperate to embrace, but then they stopped, and they wrapped their arms around their own bodies, hugging themselves, and rocking, as if they were in a big hug. If we could teach our children to do that...

The exuberant self-hug keeps people's hand occupied and close to their own body, it provides self-comfort, it demonstrates a feeling...

@ineedaholidaynow why have they been told not to use it? If they do use it, will they be sacked??

This HT is hugely unprofessional. He’s scaremongering and guilt tripping parents (many of whom will be struggling and/or will not have the choice to keep their kids at home long-term). Rather than adopting a can-do attitude and looking at ways to try to get kids back, he’s expecting the government to micro manage everything for him. Obviously he can’t, in the space of 3 weeks (if that is indeed required) double the number of classrooms but he can try to introduce a rota, eg one week in, one week off. I’m in Germany and it looks like the schools will be doing that here. However he has closed his mind to any kind of creative thinking and prefers to get on his soapbox instead.

Some seem to think we have to stop catching the virus at any cost and that any parent who lets their kid within 2m of another person should be burnt at the stake. What we need to do is protect the vulnerable and stop everybody getting it at once. If the R rate goes up, they’ll pull the hand brake again. But it’s ridiculous to think any economy can sustain a long term lockdown. And that’s forgetting the health costs as well. There was a chief pediatrician here who recently called for childcare facilities to be re-opened - in one week his hospital had seen 3 children who had fallen out of windows, something previously never encountered. That’s a real danger of parents having to juggle WFH with childcare.

He had removed the post...

*has

Is there a link to this video that works?

Not quite sure you can argue that schools haven't been doing anything. They were given 24 hours notice that they were 'closing'. Over that first weekend they had to find out which children would be eligible to come in as key workers' children, vulnerable etc. They then had to sort out which schools would open or whether a hub school would be used. They then had to get a staff rota in place, bearing in mind a large number of staff were self isolating or ill. So everything would be ready for the Monday morning.They also had to work out getting food to families eligible for Free School meals. They also then had to work out how to get work to children at home to start their remote learning.

Schools were open over Easter Holidays.

After the Easter Holidays many schools have stepped up the level of remote learning being available.

They have also been stepping up their welfare checks, visiting vulnerable families etc.

Schools have not been sitting on their backsides, they have been incredibly busy. But whilst doing all this they have been considering how they can 'reopen'.

venusandmars

There’s a huge difference between care homes full of elderly people and schools full of children who touch everything and everyone and are full of energy. Teachers won’t be using PPE as far as I’ve heard, unlike care home staff so no point in them having purchased it. They can ‘train’ staff and use the building as safely and efficiently as possible but there’s no solution to the fact that children will basically forget things, and touch everyone and everything, not forgetting that some kids will be silly about things and deliberately spit for example and enjoy the panic it causes.

@SpanishFly that is one of the things the teachers are asking the Government. Also schools have no money to spare, many schools have deficit budgets there is no spare money for PPE.

I think it's easier for small businesses to adapt than larger ones. I work in both. You just have smaller premises/fewer sets of needs to take into account.

Though I think it might also have been easier for schools to plan in the days when there was the expertise of educational authorities to draw on. But they have been weakened now. Academies are more like businesses which are thinking about funding all the time. So I suppose you might get a chief executive of a big academy chain who was keen for everything to be 'business as usual', not wanting to listen to a head teacher who actually knows the children and the difficuities that will arise in terms of keeping them safe.

If the school cleaner posted similar, would it have the same authority?
Head teachers have no special knowledge on virology or epidemiology. Him posting this is unnecessary fear mongering, and will unfortunately be seen by many as an informed opinion, which it doesn’t appear to be.

Luckily I screenshot his post before he deleted it

Oh dear.

Teachers are not going to want to return to work for a long time.

Supermarkets with lots and lots of different people arriving throughout the day from all age groups is not the same as a school.

Denmark - shown again this morning on the BBC - very positive about education - managing well with social distancing and having small groups of children together. A very positive outlook looking at solutions versus the UK negative outlook looking for reasons not to return to school.

The majority of transmission is now in hospital or care homes...the R in the community is not published but is certainly far lower as a poster on another thread said. Mass hysteria in some sectors whilst others just get on with it. Friends that are key workers and have just kept on working look at teachers in bewilderment. Is there any surprise lots of people have no respect for teachers. Shield the very vulnerable teachers and children and make changes and adapt as other countries are doing.

EveryLifeHasASoundtrack of course the situations are different, but that's the point. The professionals in each area, and their staff, and those who are involved (parents, carers, supporters etc) need to get their heads together, to think ahead, to plan innovative solutions that work for them.

This
"Kazzyhoward Wed 13-May-20 11:56:05
On TV the other morning they had a UK primary headteacher who basically looked terrified and seemed to be only able to think about why it wouldn't work and a Danish teacher who explained what they were doing to work around the issues having reopened their schools a few weeks ago - solutions like primary and secondary schools swapping teachers so primary teachers who were vulnerable switch to teaching secondary students online and lower risk secondary school teachers teaching in primary schools in person.
Of course, in the UK, with the negativity and "can't do" attitude common sense changes like that won't happen.
UK teachers seem to think that if they wait long enough, we can get back to how things were 6 months ago, and seem utterly incapable of imagining that things are going to have to change."

There were lots of comments this morning from UK parents about how positive the teachers in Denmark are. Solutions to problems... They had fantastic attitudes and not negative mindsets

Shield the very vulnerable teachers and children and make changes and adapt as other countries are doing.

I bet lots of English teachers would happily return to work in the same scenario.

That is not what’s being proposed though.