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

Well, he is right about most of it.

I have now read the Facebook post. I go to Sainsbury's twice a week so have rather more experience of a supermarket than he does.

I think he's writing on behalf of his union and sadly can't work out the statistics in relation to Covid-19. 40,000 ÷ 66,000,0000 = 0.08%. Interesting that he uses a capital for the word Headteacher but not for Teacher.

I'd be very worried if my DC attended a school led by him to be honest. Clearly he has not read the Government's guidelines and does not understand phrases such as "children will return on 1st June, at the earliest, and if it is safe to do so".

Good god the world has gone mad. So what does he think? Children will stay away from school indefinitely? We have to learn to live with this virus as other countries are doing so and the risk to children and otherwise healthy adults is extremely low.

My sons HT also posted that despite Boris so each, nothing at will be changing until they can be sure everyone will be safe. I 100% support the school, my child is more important than this corrupt Governments Wealth before Health strategy.

Well, he’s not wrong, is he?

*Using other evidence to decide on validity of somebody’s opinion is relevant. But whatever, I wasn’t looking for permission to comment.

Still irrelevant though. Though clearly you don't understand the difference between judgement and permission.

I blame the teachers.

He has a point though.

**This is a real headteacher at your child’s school.

How incredibly unprofessional.

How incredibly condescending. He sounds like someone at the end of his tether to me and rightly so.

If Boris sets unrealistic criteria for schools to meet so children can go back, and the schools can’t meet them, then it shifts the blame very neatly onto them for the fact your children can’t go back. It’s the same with the furlough scheme. How many businesses will be able to “contribute” (and haven’t been told how much yet!) with little or no trade - e.g. restaurants, cinemas, and pubs? But the government look incredibly generous, offering workers 80%, knowing full well the businesses won’t take it up and will be the villains of the peace. It’s all just blatant blame shifting. Just be honest - we can’t afford it anymore.

There is a man more interested in self promotion than then well being of the School.
If children begin to return on June 1st, then it is the job of the School to provide the safest environment that they can, not to try to scare parents away.
Some of us have to continue going to work and do not appreciate the extra stress caused by unprofessional and irresponsible social media attention seeking fro. People who should absolutely know better.

I think he has a valid point about the numbers in the classroom. If you have 15 to a class where previously you had 30 where are you going to get teachers and space. A PP said to use Portakabins - you do realise they have a finite number in their hire fleet. A significant number are not suitable for classrooms and many are currently on stalled building sites & cannot be retrieved until they re open, when they will be required again. A Kabin suitable for 16 people socially distanced is either the 38 foot (squash) or 48 foot. The need to be sited on foundation pads or hard standing. Good luck competing with all the other schools and building sites for the materials. To get them into place they need a crane...… how many primary school classrooms are we looking at nationwide?

Secondly, where is the doubling of teacher numbers going to come from - will you be happy for a non trained teacher who will not have been checked to be in charge of your child, while their normal teacher is teaching other kids in the next door classroom? Or are you advocating breaking the isolation guidelines and have the teacher come into contact with 30 kids by swapping during the day.

Thirdly as adults can barely manage to work out what 2m is how do you expect children to maintain that.

4th - the Head has a duty of care under the H&S act (section 44) to ensure worker safety at their place of work. How is that going to be done...teach behind a screen, daily testing of all students and staff, quarantining the whole school.

Lol at his comment people dont go into teaching for the holidays.... I have a real problem personally with people that speak for everyone.

The supermarket analogy doesn’t work for me because it’s an environment full of adults and cases amongst children are negligible with age being the largest risk factor.
So actually I wouldn’t take my child to supermarket because they may indeed spread it to a more vulnerable group if they were in there all day.
Staffing a controlled environment with the same children and adults is nothing like a supermarket full of ever changing strangers.

Why are you friends with teachers on Facebook? That’s crossing a line.

I went to work in an organisation with 1000 staff, 18 in my open plan office, meeting after meeting until 17 March. DS commuted into London, went to the gym daily and clubbing at weekends, dd was at uni until 15th March. DH commuted into London on busy trains using the tube often for meetings. We went to the opera twice betwren New Year and March, oh and DH went to Brussels at the beginning of Feb to speak at a conference.

We are aware of two people who have been hospitalised with Covid-19. Both recovering.

He is absolutely right.

There is no way that social distancing will happen and the advice from the government tells schools not to use PPE unless a child (or adult) displays symptoms.

I really feel for headteachers and senior leadership teams right now. I expect they are all trying to work out the (impossible) logistics of enough rooms, staff, staggered playtime, lunchtime, drop off and pick up times, sufficient cleaning, cleaning staff and supplies etc.

It's a massive task and the consequences of getting it wrong are extremely serious.

I would disagree that teachers are not in it for the holiday, I would say having 13 weeks holiday (even if some of it is spent planning) rather than the usual 4-6 weeks is a big perk of the job.

But I digress. He is being unprofessional as he's effectively trying to scare parents in to not letting their kids return to school, which makes his job easier if fewer children choose to go back.

The parents who will be most likely to be scared into keeping their kids off will be the less educated, the ones less able to assess risk - ie the kids that statistically will be the ones who get more behind.

Obviously if this head teaches in an covid hot-spot area, then that's potentially a different matter. But he doesn't use that in his argument.

My dc go to private school, we are lucky that class sizes are already small and we have more space so we don't have logistical problems this head does. But I'm willing to bet 95% of kids will be back on June 1st as parents at the school know how important education is to their child's future and have made an assessment over the risk.

Covid is not going away, we have to make assessment of the risk until a vaccination is available. I'm not keeping my children off school for a year until there's a vaccination available, the damage would be too great for the level of risk that there is.

I've read the head teachers post, and I've read the government guidelines issued to schools.

And I know which one makes sense to me.

Primary school buildings in the UK are staffed, designed and equippedfor 30 children in each room. With the best will in the world they can't magically be staffed, designed and equipped to serve the same number of children but with 15 children in each room. That is what he is saying. What is the problem with stating a simple fact.

The government advice was not written by someone who has much insight into how UK state schools operate. It talks for example about moving "desks" . I've been in hundreds of state primary schools and I can't actually recall one where the children sit at "desks", in the UK it is the norm for children to sit at tables, either arranged in pairs with two children together, or in pairs with six children. In most schools there simply isn't the basic furniture available to provide seating and working arrangements for children to sit at two metre distances.

It talks for example about staggering arrival and leaving times. Fine if you only have one child, pretty impossible if you have children in different year groups, and there is only one entrance gate.

I don't think the advice has been written by someone with experience of state schools, and certainly without taking advice from headteacher so.

I really can't see how state schools , who have already in the last couple of months made huge efforts in many cases to deal with new ways of teaching and new ways of supporting anxious parents and children , can now turn around and discover that they can after all, accommodate children in classes of 15, in comfort and safety, with adequate resources ,taught by competent and qualified adults, while also allowing space for children to play safely, eat lunch in a civilised way, wash their hands multiple times a day and be offered wrap around care. Surely if all this was possible state schools would already have been providing it?

Why would sending kids back in September be safer than June?
On that logic, did pp mean September 2020 or September 2021?

There seems to be a lot of these posts, they are unprofessional and negative. A headteacher shouldn't be making statements like this on fb. It's not helpful, it's scaremongering. There are some solutions such as split days or split weeks, stagger start/finish times, lunch in the classroom, open windows to lesson the chance of viral load for the short time before the holidays. I expect if the numbers are low enough it will be much closer to business as usual in September. As for senior schools a fairly simple fix is the teacher moves instead of the class, they have 4 months to put a plan in to place. Out in the real world businesses made changes overnight to continue trading.

My first thought was how horrifying that a headteacher can't spell "queued" or "trolley", but then I'm a spelling pedant.

Other than that, I agree with him. If I was a teacher, I'd be very unhappy about being expected to return to work in unsafe conditions.

She’s obviously wanting to stay on furlough

Sorry, that should have been tables arranged in rows with two children at each....

I won't out the school but it's in Manchester, which has not been worse hit than other areas as far as I know, it's not like he's working in inner London.

Clearly a lot of parents will be influenced by this, as they have on this thread. But think about this. Those of you who keep your kids off in June are doing the school a favour and the kids who's parents send them in a favour as there's then fewer kids to logistically sort out and fewer kids to teach. But your kids will be the ones who are so behind when you do decide to go back, and statistically they won't catch up.

The suggestion is that less than half the children return from 1st June. Therefore if there are 210 children in a school with 7 classrooms there will be 105 children in a school with 7 classrooms. 105 ÷ 15 = 7. I'd have thought teachers could use this as a jolly good argument to prove how much can be achieved in smaller classes and use that in a constructive way in an argument for smaller classes moving forward.

Only if the incidence of Covid-19 continues to fall and if it is safe will any children be going back on 1st June and rates will have to ease if more children join them.

I fully understand why teaching is so stressful for so many teachers when they can't work out basics such as these. But hey, if any of you want to have a shout at me as you did when I was a child and couldn't answer back then go right ahead.

I'm glad there are still brave people about like this headteacher who will speak up.