Anyone else worried about school staff?

[Sibsmum]

I am sorting uniforms and other school things for September start and I am just thinking that I have heard a lot about children's safety but very little if anything about the safety of school staff.
It looks like they have no ppe and in secondary will be teaching lots of kids from lots of bubbles. Then there are the catering staff, exposed to everyone, TA's and other admin and support staff, cleaners and site staff. How are they being kept safe? Or are they just expendable because were desperate to get our Dc back ?
I feel a bit guilty that I hadn't considered that at all.

There was a report published yesterday. It looked at 13 countries, 9 of which have excellent track and trace. There has, been one case of transmission between teacher and pupil. There hasn't been one spike that resulted in medical attention being needed.

They know this because Covid has different strains of DNA. It hasn't gone through refugee camps and other settings that we were concerned about.

We need to follow the research on this. We know so much more than we did in April/May.

The government's scheme to have people 50+ recognised as more at risk and do individual risk assessments were criticised on here, but it was to protect those who needed it, in the workplace.

That should have been there hasn't been any cases of transmission to school staff.

Are you keeping up on the research? It was featured on the BBC yesterday.

In early years we've been back a couple of months. It's been fine.

Are you joking? You have not seen the 2435 threads on here from teachers complaining about their safety and lack of PPE? There are threads going now about it.

Why not have a look before becoming thread no. 2436 about the same issue

That should have been there hasn't been any cases of transmission to school staff

Not even logical, is it?

Not particularly. I think lots of people have it much worse and we will all have it much worse if the economy completely implodes. I'm much more worried about our lost generation of children if this carries on and on.

There have been cases of children and staff testing positive, @Ponoka7

There have been outbreaks in schools, despite operating at 0-5% capacity in the last few months.

There is no data to ever tell where cases were picked up, but when healthcare workers or bus drivers get ill, we don't think we ought not to assume they picked it up at work rather than elsewhere!

@Enoughnowstop

That should have been there hasn't been any cases of transmission to school staff

Not even logical, is it?

None!

Not when they say that the reason our spread was so random was all the people (including kids) coming back from ski resorts at the end of February.

Apparently they can spread it in the community.

But those magic walls surrounding schools ......

@WWRU

There have been cases of children and staff testing positive, *@Ponoka7*

There have been outbreaks in schools, despite operating at 0-5% capacity in the last few months.

There is no data to ever tell where cases were picked up, but when healthcare workers or bus drivers get ill, we don't think we ought not to assume they picked it up at work rather than elsewhere!

Yet absolutely NO rise in hospital admissions since all these out breaks ... weird isn’t it ..

I am school staff and my main worry is that I will be made to wear a mask.

@Enoughnowstop

That should have been there hasn't been any cases of transmission to school staff

Not even logical, is it?

I think you mean there been no reporting of cases like this in the media. Can't think why not? 😔

I am also school staff and worry more about being made to wear a mask. Think it’s the unions kicking up a fuss about schools returning than the actual staff. I have always been happy to go to work In school. It’s safer now than it ever was in March before lockdown. I wasn’t worried then so am most definitely not worried now. Can’t wait actually.

How are they being kept safe?

They aren’t

Or are they just expendable because were desperate to get our Dc back?

Yes, that’s it.

There are apparently no proven cases of a Teacher getting it from a child which is an interesting statistic. I don’t think there are any definitively proven cases of where anyone has caught it though, so it’s about as useless as saying that there’s been no cases of shoplifting in Woolworths recently.

Schools are opening in full in a few weeks, with massive numbers of staff and children, including many who are extremely vulnerable, with no masks, no hope for social distancing, no provision for extra soap or hand washing, poor ventilation and no additional funding for extra staff.

If the government was serious about opening schools and keeping them open, that wouldn’t be the plan.

Keep your receipts for the uniform.

@LizzieBlackwell Yet absolutely NO rise in hospital admissions since all these out breaks ... weird isn’t it ..

No, not really. If young children (not teens, whose bodies are basically like adults' in terms of the virus) suffer less seriously or are more likely to be asymptomatic, as we keep hearing, then they wouldn't push up hospital admissions, as this only happens in severe cases. Likewise with staff on duty when the majority were forced to work from home, none of the vulnerable were the ones exposed; the healthiest did the face to face contact.

It still means that community transmission was not low enough, and track and trace was not good enough, to prevent it coming in to schools.

If it does this again when operating at 100% capacity (and I can't think of any other type of workplace operating fully yet in terms of workers or numbers accessing the service face to face), it will be more difficult to control.

I'm a teacher. I'm not worried about going back. Looking forward to it in fact.

I will be thoroughly pissed off if I have to wear a mask though.

What data, or even logic are people using to justify their conviction that kids cannot carry and/or transmit Covid?

I cannot find anything that even hints at this. Logically it makes no sense that schools are somehow magically exempt from Covid and no one anywhere in the world has ever caught Covid in a school?

@cassgate

I am also school staff and worry more about being made to wear a mask. Think it’s the unions kicking up a fuss about schools returning than the actual staff. I have always been happy to go to work In school. It’s safer now than it ever was in March before lockdown. I wasn’t worried then so am most definitely not worried now. Can’t wait actually.

Is protecting their members ' safety in the workplace "kicking up a fuss"?

Obviously feeling is very divided. I work in schools and would hate to try to do my job in a mask.
I’m happy to go back and not worried at all.

The unions should be working to protect their members (and the children in the schools). If they aren't doing this then they aren't doing what I pay them for.

@Pinkflipflop85

I'm a teacher. I'm not worried about going back. Looking forward to it in fact.

I will be thoroughly pissed off if I have to wear a mask though.

Don't think you will have to wear a mask.

Guidance seems to be that you have to wear one in every other public space due to airborne transmission whilst keeping 2m.

But school walls have magic powers and within them there's no need to SD or worry about airborne transmission.

I'm thinking of training to be a teacher. I need some of this magic air in my life

In England at least, it was impossible to get tested unless you met an incredibly specific set of cirumstances and locations. After that, you could only be tested if you were admitted to hospital with severe breathing difficulties.

By the time testing became available, any of the significant number of staff who were off sick by the end of March or sick over April were beyond the point at which testing was reliable. and to be counted as pupil-staff transmission, the child would also have had to qualify for testing under those incredibly narrow requirements.

We had kids after half term coughing their guts up after a sibling or parent had come back from about 3 miles outside the geographical range for testing. After they'd been sent home, there was no confirmation of infection, as the person who had gave it them hadn't been tested. And then more kids got ill. And staff. Still no testing as they hadn't been to Italy. And then more got ill. Still no testing as they weren't in Intensive Care. And then everything closed down in the NHS and you couldn't get seen at all unless you were turning blue.

The structure made it impossible to say that anybody had caught it at school. Which is why, even before people say, 'Ah, but you must have bought food or passed somebody in the street/used a petrol pump, it doesn't have to be the coughing, feeling sick, blistery fingered, high temperature kids you were in the same building as for 8 hours a day that gave 'something' to you', it's impossible to say they did - and it's equally impossible to say with any accuracy that they didn't.

The structure made it impossible to say that anybody had caught it at school. Which is why, even before people say, 'Ah, but you must have bought food or passed somebody in the street/used a petrol pump, it doesn't have to be the coughing, feeling sick, blistery fingered, high temperature kids you were in the same building as for 8 hours a day that gave 'something' to you', it's impossible to say they did - and it's equally impossible to say with any accuracy that they didn't.

I equally find it shocking people think there's a greater chance the teachers for it from their mail than whilst in school with coughing pupils for 7/8 hours!

I really feel for teachers.

I reckon even if a child case in to school with a temp and cough, it transpires that the whole family have symptoms and a latent works in a workplace that has an outbreak.

And 3 days later the teacher caught it.

The teacher would be blamed for having it first and passing it all the way along and being responsible for the factory outbreak.

I work in a massive school. In fact I have done throughout the lockdown. No, I'm not worried. I have read, and seen the risk assessment implemented and in action.

Everyone in the school must do their bit, I've seen children as young as 4 get what's needed.

We should have gone back in July in my opinion, even for 1 month, this dragging out is increasing concern.

I work in a school I’m not too worried about my own health but I am worried about my colleagues as many of them are 50+

I am worried if they come in they may get ill but if they don’t come in we won’t be able to cope especially as there are many younger people in my department who have health problems who may also not come in.

I'm another teacher who is looking forward to being back with my whole class and school ( unusual for September!!) and not worried about it At All. I think it will be a tricky 2 terms, there will be changes along the way but I want to teach, properly teach and not set distance learning.