So mostly the differences you see are personal level of risk HTs & Governors is willing to take on behalf of themselves and their staff. Because let’s be very clear ...... EVERY OTHER workplace in the country has to prove that they are ‘Covid secure’ before having their workforce return except schools. Where apparently all the Covid secure requirement ..... 2m or 1 m+ mitigation mysteriously and suddenly just doesn’t apply. If your workplace told you to work with 120 people a day at less than 1m apart, with no PPE or barrier or any other mitigation whatsoever other than wash your hands, they’d be closed down. So for hard teachers, the one tiny little thing they can do is try to make it the same 30 children without remixing them at afterschool club.
This argument ultimately doesn't work though because if one child in one class gets it, the chances are their sibling's already have it making the bubbles guidance farcial and this argument by Heads that they can somehow protect staff in this way utterly nonsensical. Especially if cross class bubbles outside school are permitted by the government.
For example I know of one parent at DS's school who has 5 kids in different classes and she's in a single parent bubble with another parent who has a child in a different class and works as a dinner lady at the school.
If any of them got it, it'd probably mean that 6 out of the 14 classes in the school would be affected and there would most likely be a full school shut down (two cases in 2 weeks triggers a school closure).
Whilst I appreciate the covid safe idea about the workplace, it only works to a point. The argument that staff in a school are less protected than other occupations doesn't work either. Schools have the point that they are being constantly monitored, and they know who is in the school and have the power to ask parents to take a child home. In other work places this can be more difficult especially if it's public facing or a worker is low paid. There's much more difficulty in have real recourse or ability to make a point about what Health and Safety is bring applied.
I personally don't have a beef with the teachers. I have a problem with the nonsensical guidelines themselves that give this false impression that if you follow the rules it'll protect everyone from an outbreak. It's just not true even though teachers appear to have bought into the idea. The problem is ultimately that by the time you know there's an outbreak it's already too late and the school is likely to have to shut down and there's a fair chance more than one bubble is already affected. You have to stop infected kids from coming to school in the first place.
And making it exceptionally difficult for working parents across the board means that employers will take a harder line meaning sick kids are more likely to be sent to school anyway as parents grow ever more desperate not to be forced to quit jobs or put themselves in the firing line for redundancies. It's completely counterproductive to put this level of pressure on parents as I think it perversely puts teachers more at risk as parents resort to any means necessary to keep their jobs.
The whole guidance needs to be ripped up. It doesn't help anyone. It just lulls parents into a false sense of security and teachers into this mentality that doesn't accurately reflect their risks in the workplace and in direct conflict with the interests of parents (to their own detriment).
If the school are open they have to be fully open. Otherwise they have to be closed to all by key worker kids. Forget all the faffing about in the middle. It's utterly utterly pointless nonsense.