To thinks something like this would be a good option for schools going forward?

[Notplannedforthis]

Like most on Mumsnet, the topic of Covid and schools has been on my mind recently.

Whilst suffering from another night of insomnia, I was musing about how we could reopen schools safely and came up with the below plan.

Have any of you been sat at home thinking "If I was in charge, this is how I'd do it" If so, what suggestions have you come up with?

My thoughts:

1. Schools don't go back until September.

1. All of the young and fit TAs and some of the teachers are allocated the job of providing childcare for key workers children that can’t manage with them at home, AND for people who will lose their jobs if not at work (they'll need to provide evidence for this). No rota system for staff. Their usual working hours.

1. Companies must be told that if their employees CAN work from home, they SHOULD get them the equipment to do so, and should allow FLEXIBLE WORKING where possible. It’s bloody hard trying to work from home with kids and allowances need to be made for this.

1. All teachers not working in the hubs are responsible for providing quality home learning for those at home. They can fit their hours in flexibly around their own children, but work their usual number of hours where possible, doing things such as:

-filming themselves teaching lessons (if more than one teacher for a year they should communicate and divide up lessons for the year rather than for the class)
-having a system where kids can submit work and have feedback
-posting work packs for children with no online access (with stamped addressed envelopes so work can be returned for marking)
-ringing children and parents to see if they’re managing to access work etc.

1. Parents will be advised that all work provided is optional. So kids have access to high quality home education, but there’s no pressure.

1. Senior leadership teams in schools have the time from now until September to come up with how they will manage a September return for ALL children with some degree of social distancing. This is likely to involve using playing fields or even land on different sites to put up porta cabin classrooms and hiring more staff. I appreciate this will be an extremely challenging task but having observed the mammoth effort and innovative solutions that NHS leaders have come up with to change their working over the past 3 months, I believe it can be done. Not perfect, but workable. The NHS have managed by doing things including: -people who have left the profession returning – staff changing their roles -students qualifying early. Needless to say this will require a large injection of cash from the government who will HAVE TO SUPPORT TEACHING LEADERS to do this.

1. When schools go back in September, children will go back to the year that they were already in.

1. New reception starters start in January, year 6 kids move up in January, new university entrants start in January.

1. The country changes permanently from a Sept-Aug school year to a Jan-Dec school year, but keeps the age cut off date as is. Meaning the age of reception children will change from ‘4-5’ to ‘4yrs4months to 5years4months’ which is much more sensible anyway as there's plenty of evidence that starting school at JUST turned 4 is detrimental.

10. Teachers who will need to shield for the long term work with Oak Academy to continue quality home learning for children who need to shield long term.

I will get absolutely flared for this (and my own cousin is a type 1 diabetic) but a lot (I know, not all) of the conditions that make you vulnerable to coronavirus are caused/worsened by poor lifestyle choices.

Yup. My family chose to have chronic asthma. My friend chose to have Cystic Fibrosis. Neither of these are down to lifestyle choices.

I'm also immunosuppressed because I've had cancer and am taking meds to keep me in remission.

How utterly tactless.

We have little choice but to remain shielded. What exactly do you mean by get on and keep the country going? Social distancing needs to be in place in workplaces. It really isn't that simple.

Or do you mean you want to go back to how things were and screw the rest of you?

I have all these musings too! What would work and what would not. I don't think we could cope with reception starting in January we would have no child care and couldn't work without it. I like the idea of additional classrooms.

But we all have to pay the price. Isolate those people. And let everyone else get on and keep the country going

Whatever the substance of your observations, those numbers will still include the people making food, delivering food; driving buses/trains; processing payroll; teaching; making sure water processing, electricity, gas, mobile communications are operating; running businesses; providing health care, and so on…They’re not a group you can just cordon off somewhere, not without the economy grinding to a halt if enough of them are sick at the same time. How do you propose to keep the country going then?

That’s why the discussions are hinging on lessening risk in all settings, such as social distancing at schools, protective measures including wearing masks, providing hygiene facilities and so on…One school I know of has one wash basin for every 60 students, I can’t imagine it’s the only one.

It’s the equivalent of dealing with a phenomenon like a destructive hurricane or a tornado, it may be running at slow motion, and we may not be able to see it but the risks of it hitting us, and harder, are still there. The UK has not been helped by the slow reaction to the crisis, the laxity of lockdown measures, the lack of testing/tracing/quarantine measures. We need to keep measures going and get the testing/tracing systems running and widely accessible – far from the case at the moment – the countries that have done these things are now coming out of lockdown or at least living in a more recognisably normal environment. We’re still behind, numbers of infected may have been dropping in London but are still high in other regions. And that’s with lockdown.

We also need more information on recovery rates, percentages of people who’ve now been exposed/infected i.e. loads more reliable data.

We also need to buy time, not purely for a vaccine, but for better, more effective treatments. I’d also like to see more information on possible ways of dealing with the economy: for five years of WW2 half of the country were essentially employed by the government, yet the economic plans after the war led to recovery.

We’ve been comparatively fortunate in this part of the world for a long time and it’s a bloody tough adjustment. But it’s a slow, painstaking process, there’s no quick fix. And just saying fuck it, won’t cut it or make the problem go away either. However much we wish it would.

So what's your suggestion then?

1. When schools go back in September, children will go back to the year that they were already in.

1. New reception starters start in January, year 6 kids move up in January, new university entrants start in January.

I way also thinking the same regarding schools.

My concern about remote learning being the primary way that education is delivered over the long term, would be that it requires a lot of facilitation by parents.

Even if a child is older and independently works through their online provision and has a method to communicate remotely with their teacher if they don't understand a concept, their parents will still need to ensure they have the equipment to access it.

The most vulnerable children are unlikely to have this level of facilitation from parents. The "next tier up" for lack of a better term, on the vulnerability scale of children are unlikely to have this level of facilitation, but won't necessarily be on anyone's radar for extra support.

There will be thousands of children who have willing parents who don't have the technical know-how, or the financial ability to give their kids access. There will be families with multiple children needing to access the remote learning, maybe also with a parent or two working from home and only one family computer.

It is for these reasons that I think schools need to open in September, if DCs are to be provided with a fair education going forward.

I am aware that doing this safely is an absolute logistical nightmare!

@notplannedforthis What about kids who have parents who are just barely meeting their basic needs and can't be relied upon to teach them anything? I'm talking low-level neglect. I used to work in a deprived area where this was common eg parents not getting up in morning with kids, kids preparing their own food, without clean clothes, lots of infected toenails in my class because nails not being cut, lots of tooth decay from not brushing teeth etc. I think about these kids a lot at the moment. I worry about who is looking out for them. Their parents will not engage with online learning, or any learning for that matter. What about those kids?

What kind of mental gymnastics are you doing when you say things like this...

I will get absolutely flared for this (and my own cousin is a type 1 diabetic) but a lot (I know, not all) of the conditions that make you vulnerable to coronavirus are caused/worsened by poor lifestyle choices.
Smoking. Obesity. Poor diet.

And follow it with a paragraph like this...

But we all have to pay the price? Isolate those people. And let everyone else get on and keep the country going.

Because that last paragraph stands alone but the former tells us something about you. For instance, do you think there would be a better course of action if all those people who are shielding were able to demonstrate the modern virtue of clean living? Are you that person? Or are you the person who just spews a load of verbal diahorrea with no regard for logic?

Your plan doesn't mention children in the vunerable category - some of whom have not been offered places in school despite a lot of people assuming this.

That's both social services vulnerable and ehcp vulnerable.

Well said Phineyj
We need to be able to put together and plan a med term plan

New starters to nursery/reception being told to wait until January would be costly, inconvenient and difficult for parents. However, surely not any more inconvenient than the current situation where most children are at home anyway. Or the scenario of part-time school or starting school and then locking down again.
None of these are the perfect option, I'm just trying to think of a "best of a bad bunch option".

The same with trying to think of ways school could open. The current option, where schools were informed with 3 weeks notice that they're required to open and then sending out multiple conflicting sets of guidelines for them to follow, seems ludicrous to me. Saying they have from now until September seems not ideal, but preferable.

I didn't mention vulnerable children specifically in my OP, but they are in my mind and one of the main reasons I think we need to find a way for schools to be functioning by September.

Are there any ways the general public could volunteer to get schools prepared and safe? Loads of people volunteered when the NHS asked for help.

Here's the thing that will happen. Class sizes will be 15 in September. Children will be in school half of the week. Boris and Michael's academy mates will see a great opportunity to charge for socially distanced childcare for the rest of the time. There will then be a mysterious resistance to ever changing the situation back.

The problem is the small size of classrooms and corridors. Much of the state sector in the UK has been running on fumes for the physical estate and the staffing, for ages, so there's not a lot of slack.

Certainly in the south east and London, if you could solve the public transport issues you'd have a chance of solving the other logistical issues.

7. When schools go back in September, children will go back to the year that they were already in.

So... one year in the future, we will be missing these people, they simply won't qualify because of a whole year's delay in education
7000 junior doctors
28,000 teachers
20,000 nurses
I dunno how many police officers, social workers, paramedics, midwives.

Do you still think it's fine to hold everyone at school back a year?
Would this scheme of OP's still allow apprenticeships to happen -- you know, so we could have engineers and trades people being created on time. Or do we delay all university students & apprentices getting on with their courses, too. Heck, why don't we have a 5 year pause in nursing degrees. What could possibly go wrong?

One of my issues is I am trying to support Secondary students, I am sending lessons for each of my lessons as per the timetable and answer all the questions. I am not delivering live lessons as my school has not requested it, we are doing powerpoints with spoken guidance but we do not have to be on screen.

However alongside this I am having to teach my own children who are 5 and 3 so not at all able to self teach. I like many others in all sorts of jobs can not be in two places at once.

My only option would be to stop working which financially would be tight, but also would reduce your teacher pool.

Most of this is happening in my school

lljkk the suggestion in the OP was not to hold everyone back for a whole year, just until January. So all the kids get one term back in their current year and a chance to level the playing field for all the vulnerable children who are not being home schooled right now.

I can't speak for other professions, but doctors could solve the 4 month delay by holding people in their current posts for 4 extra months (as many have done anyway, due to Covid), until the new medics are ready to start. Or qualifying med students early (again, as they have done to manage Covid) or a compromise between the 2. They wouldn't just leave loads of FY1 posts empty across the country for 4 months.

I'm sure other professions could find a workable solution to a 4 month delay in 3-5 years when newbies enter the workforce, in order to cope with the aftermath of a national pandemic.

What about the kids from dysfunctional homes whose parents can't be bothered to take them to school in normal times so won't bother homeschooling nor asking for a place at school. There's a major problem with this here.

What about the kids from dysfunctional homes whose parents can't be bothered to take them to school in normal times this is one of my concerns and one of the big reasons I think we need to find a way to get school buildings fit for purpose and enough staff before September.
Under the current plans for return in June, the children from dysfunctional homes could potentially slip through the net, especially those not already known to services, as many parents will not be sending their kids. If everyone is returning in September, it should be easier to spot those that aren't in the same manner as school did pre-Covid.

Why on earth won't the unions support video lesssons. The whole of the rest of the country is having to do stuff by video calls. I am astonished at how ridiculous the unions are being.

Literally all the other professions are doing video meetings. It is an astonishingly self destructive stance for the unions to take.

So they don't want teachers in schools but they don't want teachers to do any remote teaching either?

So basically they want to have their cake and eat it?

Three options.
Anything else is convoluted and energy wasting.

1. Home school forever. Works for many.
2. Send everyone back to school.
3. Don’t send everyone back to school.

holding people in their current posts for 4 extra months

Delaying retirement? Good luck with that one.
Gosh, if it was ok to qualify everyone 4 months early -- let's do that in general. Why did they ever bother with that extra 4 months of training.

So you're saying that an English child who was in yr3 in March 2020 would start in ... yr4 in September of 2020? That isn't what the words "children will go back to the year that they were already in" implied.

3. Companies must be told that if their employees CAN work from home, they SHOULD get them the equipment to do so

How will that work for people on 3-12 week zero hours contracts in the public sector.

The unions are against video lessons because they can be used as a stick with which to beat teachers. The threat of observation, leading to capability in proceedings for those whose face doesn't fit is huge.
They are against zoom meetings and the like because of safeguarding concerns.