There’s now a strong chance schools will NOT go back full time in September

[Redolent]

Schools have been set up to fail by the careless summer relaxation of lockdown.

• No mandatory face masks in shops and indoors. The UK is an international outlier here.
• Reduction of 2m rule to 1m which is basically the normal distance people talk to each other. Factor in alcohol and social distancing is now non-existent in pubs and restaurants. Oh, and nobody cares about the 1m ‘plus’ bit. They just hear 1m.
• Reopening of too many indoor venues at once, including things like places of worship which are high-risk for transmission anyway.
• Bypassing the idea of social bubbles straight to unlimited two household meet-ups indoors. You can visit different pubs/restaurants over the weekend and go inside multiple households throughout the week. Zero attempt to break chain of transmission.
• No functioning app and poor test/trace system (see SAGE’s Stephen Reicher on the latter)
• ‘Pausing’ of shielding in August

All of the above will led to a rise in cases.

Meanwhile:

• Shit is absolutely hitting the fan in the United States, India, Pakistan, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, other parts of the Middle East. Our quarantine policy is so terrible it may well be scrapped anyway. Will see more imported cases.
• The weather will turn cooler and allow perfect conditions for the virus to thrive

So by end of August/early September, our cases and hospitalizations will be rising significantly. Flu season will kick in. The NHS is already groaning under the weight of its huge 10million waiting list - another shut down cannot happen. A full time return to school under those circumstances will be untenable. Blended learning will see a turn as will part-time schooling.

YABU: we need to get the economy going in all its forms as quickly as possible, and schools will also go back with no issues.
YANBU: you cannot have things both ways. This summer relaxation is setting us up for an autumn/winter spike and more part-time schooling.

It depends how you define dangerous. If you are under 50, and certainly under 40, it is a grotty but not dangerous illness in 99.5% of cases. For a 23 year old, arguably flu is more dangerous. No one would suggest closing schools for flu.

As I asked, what is the alternative? Would you want schools closed until we get a vaccine?

And would you like staff dying at your dc’s school? What would your alternative be?

Teachers over 50 will have no choice but to go back to work though. I may be one of them

I was never that worried about going in to school to work until Boris uttered the immortal words, "Schools are safe."

Emoji,

Of course I would not ‘like’ it, nor would I like my doctor dying or the person who delivers my post, or stacks the shelves at my supermarket.

No one wanted a pandemic. It is the worst thing that has happened in my life time. But we have one and have to deal with it.

And, if you think education is important, you have to see teachers on a parallel with all the other people who have to take risks. We should mitigate them as much as we can and make alternatives available for older or vulnerable teachers.

We should mitigate them as much as we can

But that's the problem. You read any threads on here, and there is a strong body of opinion that schools should just open up for all asap with zero social distancing or PPE, and if teachers (via their unions) object, then they're leftie lazy bastards who are solely responsible for Britain going down the pan.

There was something in the paper today about the rise of ME and CFS type illnesses . I am not sure we have had this virus long enough to know that for people who catch it and recover , it is just grotty.

There are lots of teachers over 50 including many headteachers.

@larrygrylls

It depends how you define dangerous. If you are under 50, and certainly under 40, it is a grotty but not dangerous illness in 99.5% of cases. For a 23 year old, arguably flu is more dangerous. No one would suggest closing schools for flu.

As I asked, what is the alternative? Would you want schools closed until we get a vaccine?

Where did you get that stat from? If you’re in your 50s, the chance of being hospitalized with covid is about 8%. And hospitalization, not just death, is crucial - because it’s that which leads to potential complications with the lungs, kidneys and blood vessels, or at best, recovery that takes months. That moves it away from simply a ‘grotty’ illness.

The minimising happens everywhere. I'm in Victoria where there are only two purely age-related exemptions for school staff, being 70+, or 50+ if an aboriginal person or Torres Strait Islander.

But every other occupation who has to take risks has PPE and social distancing. So why are teachers expected to take more risk?

And actually we went into teaching to teach, not to babysit.

I wouldn't want school closed til there is a vaccine, but apparently that is what they are doing in Mexico.

What I do want is proper protection for all employees, for children, and their families and proper, extensive peer assessed researched into the spread. To an extent , we do need schools open before we can draw conclusions but school based outbreaks are certainly on the rise.

We should mitigate them as much as we can

This is a bit of a sticking point though, isn’t it?

How do you mitigate risk in schools?

These posts generally come down to people absolutely frothing to get schools back to normal ASAP with no social distancing, no reduction in numbers, no additional money for additional sinks/sanitiser and if we’re lucky, someone slings out a ‘well, if they are that precious, they can wear their own masks if they must’.

Appus,

But schools are slowly opening with mitigation. It is not easy and depends upon rearranged classrooms, packed lunches and distancing. Temperatures are checked on admission and the bubble concept is used.

People are very keen on talking about the risks but most won’t say they don’t want schools to open.

Or, there's Scotland's approach in 6 weeks time, everyone back in, no bubbles, no social distancing, no PPE.

Those mitigations you suggest are all about to be thrown out.

Temperature checking is being done by a handful of schools. It's not in the guidelines .

So will parents sign a waiver to state that if their child contacts the virus and dies they won’t go after the school for not following Covid secure practises- as mandated by the government.

Because every head knows that all it takes is one child to cause a mass panic in a school community. Not many heads are going to be keen to open without any virus procedures.

Belle,

Has anyone successfully sued a school about their child getting an infectious disease from another pupil?

What I don’t get is why they are opening pubs and allowing overcrowding of public spaces. They need to keep infection rates at a low level so schools can reopen successfully with low but non zero risk.

There is no point reopening schools if bubbles keep having to close due to repeated infections.

After this no school will presumably ever be able to fine a family for going on holiday in term time. Evidently missing school has a tremendous impact on the child's academic performance .

Public Health advice in all countries views schools as high transmission hubs, because they are community hubs. It is misleading to just focus on the child aspect. At the beginning of the pandemic all advice was school shout early, reopen latest : it is only public pressure and economic pressure that decides to ignore this : it is not public health thinking. That's why on Germany's localised outbreak they have shut the schools down but not restaurants.

Pubs are going to be outdoors and very limited really.

When a child has an infectious disease normally (eg shingles, chickenpox) every teacher is informed and pregnant women have measures put in place to keep them away entirely from that child and the spaces they have been in are cleaned. Children who are immunocompromised have very strict care plans : I remember once a child who had to sit at a certain desk in every room so we could track everything efficiently and tell parents if any other child sat at their desk got a contagious illness : the family almost certainly would have sued someone if this had not been done (more likely the school or LA). My DH tutored a boy with leukaemia and there were all sorts of regs about that ,too.

We do have a public health duty to protect staff and children. If this was a much rarer infectious disease with a school outbreak, no one would tell anyone they were being silly, 'hysterical' or to 'crack on'. The fact that it is so widespread is the headache of course. But there is still a moral imperative to protect employees, and that seems to have been lost in this bunfight. There was some very dodgy legal advice being sent to some private school heads a couple of months ago that said 'don't worry what you do : they will never be able to collar you for it anyway'.

Tbh (and I hope to God this does not happen) if there are spikes in cases , leading to students ,or school staff, becoming very ill and needing moths of care , or ,worse, dying, after September, the DfE may face legal challenges if their plans don't afford the level of Covid secure protection other companies and businesses have to. I am sure this is why their plans take so long and keep being changed!! Some families of NHS workers are already suing the government (with full MN support, she notes wryly)

roses, that old chestnut. Of course two weeks holiday makes a difference : any educationalist will tell you that - this is because all the other children are in school!

It is another thing that is blamed on teachers routinely on MN that comes from government.

Piggy,

Pubs will not be ‘limited’, no more than Bournemouth beach was ‘limited’ yesterday. Hot weather plus alcohol plus maybe a sports event on a big outdoor screen and social distancing will be gone in a flash....and for what?

When we are in trouble (and we are) and can only have a certain number of exposures, we have to weigh the risks vs the benefits. Schools vs pubs is, for me, a no brained.

OhTheRoses
After this no school will presumably ever be able to fine a family for going on holiday in term time. Evidently missing school has a tremendous impact on the child's academic performance grin.

Schools have never fined families for going on holiday.

After this no school will presumably ever be able to fine a family for going on holiday in term time. Evidently missing school has a tremendous impact on the child's academic performance grin

It wasn’t heads that closed the Schools.
It wasn’t heads that introduced fines.

HTH.

Yeah, l would absolutely sue the government, absolutely agree with that. Except l could be dead, so my dh would have to do it.

But he would.