School not re opening

[Onone]

Just that really,just had an email from my daughter’s school to say that they won’t be opening on 1st June, don’t know when it will either,Thanks to the mayor of our town,I’m quite upset for my daughter,Hardly any cases in my town

Isn't vectors just a scientific term for something/one that transmits a disease but doesn't suffer from it?

Yes, but PP's feelings don't care about your facts.

To be fair to the DfE, I don't think they have much input into this at all. Boris and his tiny circle of advisors decide what will be done, announce with great fanfare to the public, and the DfE has to scramble to make it happen in the same way as the schools are having to.

This.

They were bypassed.

The chief scientific officer at the DfE wasn't even involved in drawing up these nonsense guidelines.

We will know in a month which way it went.... There will either be a collective sigh of relief that spread of infection wasn't too bad, or a lot of bluster followed by a later 'Cheltenham races style' admission that maybe the wrong decision was made.

By which time they can drop all the stupid measures or there will be a massive public backlash.

I think a DfE-led re-opening might have looked rather different, because I think it would have focused on key year groups in terms of education (Y5,10 and 12) rather than those key for the economy in terms of childcare.

Had they focused on the educationally-important groups, old enough to comprehend social distancing, then the extremes that are having to be considered in terms of keeping very small children safe in a mass education setting (and reassure the protective parents of those small children) might never have come into play.

Not here either. Mines Yr1 in an infant and they can only fit in the keyworkers etc and Nursery no other year groups going back

As each class has to be split into ‘bubbles’ of 12-15 the school needs a room & at least one teacher for each bubble. Key worker/vulnerable children are still in a bubble of their own. Some staff are shielding or isolating so that uses up more resources.

@BeingATwatItsABingThing Asthma shouldnt stop people working with small children, especially if it’s controlled. I work in early years and get multiple colds/viruses every academic year, and they don’t usually make my asthma worse. But asthma affects your breathing, and Covid 19 sufferers have presented with severe breathing difficulties, so people with asthma have added risk.

My Dgd's school (she's in year 8) have also said that they are not reopening until September. The only pupils who will be going in are the new year 7s for their induction days (albeit in small groups) and year 10s,in order to see their teachers about coursework prior to the summer holidays.
My Dd received an email,a letter and a text telling her not to send her Dd back to school on the 1st June. Luckily my Dd is not too bothered about it,as she said she'd rather be 'safe than sorry'. (Although Dd's not in the shielding group,she and her Dh are somewhat higher risk than a lot of people).

I'd be interested to know what parts of the country that previous posters who have said that their children's school is also not reopening,are in. My Dgd is in West London.

The Mayor doesn't make that decision.

@BeingATwatItsABingThing Also education staff can’t wear masks. So a doctor with asthma can be PPE-d up to the hilt, but if you work in education, you can’t wear masks but have to socially distance. With (little) people who do the exact opposite of social distancing🙄.

why are they not opening. Lockdown's virtually over

@RedToothBrush

I don’t know about the CSA but DfE were definitely involved. They didn’t have the final say but they were involved and they did influence the outcome.

[quote CallmeBadJanet]@BeingATwatItsABingThing Asthma shouldnt stop people working with small children, especially if it’s controlled. I work in early years and get multiple colds/viruses every academic year, and they don’t usually make my asthma worse. But asthma affects your breathing, and Covid 19 sufferers have presented with severe breathing difficulties, so people with asthma have added risk.[/quote]
@CallmeBadJanet

I think you may be misunderstanding or quoting someone else. I’m a teacher myself and was saying that a teacher should 100% be able to work with children even if they have asthma but CV changes that because of the difficulties with breathing.

I also agree that social distancing with young children is completely impossible and PPE isn’t practical (or on offer).

*misunderstanding my comments

@sallyfox

why are they not opening. Lockdown's virtually over

Because schools are struggling to comply with the rules set down. As usual, government have said something without checking whether it can be implemented. So, they've said some children can go back to school from 1st June - great. Then they've set parameters - classes of a certain size, social distancing, certain staff excluded etc. Some schools don't have enough staff or enough classrooms or adequate buildings in order to comply.

Dammed if you do damned if you don’t mentality in this country is EXHAUSTING!!

Absolutely appalling treatment of children. Can’t understand how local council trumps government, SAGE, WHO, and example of all other countries in EUROPE. But surely some nobody in whatever council knows best. Shocking treatment of kids, parents and their future considering they will be paying for this mess in years to come

@BlondGirl4boys

Absolutely appalling treatment of children. Can’t understand how local council trumps government, SAGE, WHO, and example of all other countries in EUROPE. But surely some nobody in whatever council knows best. Shocking treatment of kids, parents and their future considering they will be paying for this mess in years to come

But it's not a nobody in the council deciding this (charming!)

It's local authorities and schools declaring whether they can comply with the government's rules - or not.

If there aren't enough staff or classrooms to comply with the government rules what are they meant to do? Just open the school anyway and not bother following the rules set by government?

It's very easy for a school not to have enough staff. My son's school has 7 classes, 3 teachers are pregnant/ on maternity leave and would normally be covered by shuffling around of senior staff and some temp staff. They also have quite a few staff who are shielding either for themselves eg post cancer, severe asthma or they have family members who they live with who are shielding. I think the number of staff shielding is around a third of the staff so to expect to at least double the number in rooms which were overcrowded before is damn near impossible. I don't think they can get more than 12 kids in a classroom 2 metres apart. We've only got R and Yr 1 going back.

Ours has had key worker children in from the Monday following lockdown and for the past few weeks we’ve had some of our vulnerable children attending (looked after, special needs, low ability.) Monday we have our year 6’s returning and around the 15th June depending on numbers wanting to return it’s opened to other year groups. Don’t have a clue where the bloody hell they are supposedly going to go as yr 6 will take up 7 classrooms ( 105 if they all come back) key worker children numbers have gone up in the last couple of weeks and we are using 3 classrooms15 in each. There’s only 14 classrooms only 7 have sinks in so most of the day the children are going to be queuing up to wash their hands. Not even going to think about staggered into/out of school times, plays and lunches 🙈

My 24 year old son has mild asthma & it was terrifying watching him struggling to breathe with this illness day & night. That is why asthmatics are entitled to the flu jab.

You might want to ask to see your school’s Risk Assessment, quite scary reading.

Our primary school has 124 key workers starting next week and then there's only room for 13 reception children and no one else so there's no chance of year 1 or 6 getting to go back or any of the other years either.

We sent ours out to all parents, all 17 pages of it! On top of that staff also had the response to the union questions, which covered another tree- worth of paper!

I'm confused, sorry if this has already been addressed on this thread.
For example if a Nurse lives with someone with a shielding condition, the Nurse is expected to move out (or the shielded does).
But no this thread pp have mentioned Teachers living with shielded are allowed not to work in a school, even if needed?
I don't understand the logic? Nurses & teachers are key workers and needed equally?

I'm a a former teacher and have lots of teacher friends - so I'm not teacher bashing btw

I think a nurse with the skills to work on a covid ward is more essential to society at the moment. I have read of this a few times and it seems those nurses were being put up in hotels or caravan sites. The risk of infection to those nurses and doctors' families is obviously very high.

I do know of a nurse who is not working in her hospital because her DD is shielded. I think that is right and proper. She is doing consultations online from home.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone.