to say that working parents need a Plan B (and all parents are responsible for their children's Covid-appropriate behaviour)?

[SaltyAndFresh]

We're kidding ourselves if we think we really have the data to say that opening schools with no social distancing, no PPE (not through choice, it's not allowed) and in many cases inadequately ventilated and crowded classrooms is safe. We can't possibly know. Secondary teachers will be in standing in front of around 300 pupils a week, and there isn't the space for a 2m distance at the front of the room.

Teachers are not saying they don't want schools to reopen (not that they were shut) which has been said and ignored multiple times. I'm both a working parent and a teacher.

AIBU to say that schools don't exist for parents' economic convenience and that if too many school staff become ill, it's up to parents to have a Plan B if schools have to scale back their opening? If in the coming months, we as parents end up having to reduce our hours to facilitate blended learning, it will mean difficult financial times ahead but that will not be the fault of schools and school staff.

Please note the 'if'.

Furthermore, AIBU to say that parents of mainstream pupils who want schools open, come what may, should be accountable for their DC's Covid-appropriate behaviour, whether or not they believe the virus is a hoax?

To me school is both education and childcare. It is childcare but also so much more than that. I think most parents and teachers could agree on that surely.

Your experience as a single parent is not the experience of every single parent. Not all of us have children with the worst outcomes or the hardest life. My life is fairly easy thank you.
I haven't said anything specific about MY experience as single mother at all. I am doing fine, as it happens. I am very lucky. Not everyone is as lucky.
You don't really understand class analysis do you?
Here's a clue-not everything is about you personally

@Blakes77

Your experience as a single parent is not the experience of every single parent. Not all of us have children with the worst outcomes or the hardest life. My life is fairly easy thank you. I haven't said anything specific about MY experience as single mother at all. I am doing fine, as it happens. I am very lucky. Not everyone is as lucky. You don't really understand class analysis do you? Here's a clue-not everything is about you personally

I didn't say it was, what I did say was to prove that you cannot make a sweeping generalisation and say that all single parents are living the hardest life and that all children of single parents have the worst outcome.

We weren't discussing class analysis.

I am a teacher I can't wait to be back to work and for my children to be back in school. What is really starting to p** s me off is the idea that school isn't childcare and the arguments around it. When my children we small I paid for them to go to nursery and for childcare so I could work. As a family we were still financially better off in this case. Once a child starts school you no longer use a nursery so of course school does provide some level of that childcare along with wrap around care.

If schools close i can't just put my child back in nursery. Unlike the OP I can't just reduce my hours as a teacher. Secondary timetables are very carefully planned and cant just drop hours. We have some level of plan B for short term closure (2 weeks ish) but if not I will be using CBeebies and an ipad!

Yabu...when applying for council nursery for my soon to be 3 year old they specifically ask if you are working parents. Of course we use it as childcare as well as for their education . Also nhs had safeguards are you joking? Ppe was non existent in most scottish hosptials unless in contact with suspected or comfirmed covid postive person and only changed at the end of the june. Teachers need to get on with it.

The alternative, of course, which I'm going to throw out there, is to give large cash sums to parents to help them cope. Let's say £4,000 for the first child, and then £2,000 per additional child. That should pay for quite a lot of childcare, tuition and educational resources in the event of schools shutting.

Yes, it would cost a lot but it would probably be cheaper in the long-run than dealing with the lost tax income, increased benefits bills and undesirable societal consequences that will come from not caring for and educating our children properly.

Even limited to lower tax band earners (so our family were not eligible), I would support this....because ultimately you're not helping the parents, you're supporting and looking after the children. I can think of worse things to waste money on.

@bbn81

I am a teacher I can't wait to be back to work and for my children to be back in school. What is really starting to p** s me off is the idea that school isn't childcare and the arguments around it. When my children we small I paid for them to go to nursery and for childcare so I could work. As a family we were still financially better off in this case. Once a child starts school you no longer use a nursery so of course school does provide some level of that childcare along with wrap around care.

If schools close i can't just put my child back in nursery. Unlike the OP I can't just reduce my hours as a teacher. Secondary timetables are very carefully planned and cant just drop hours. We have some level of plan B for short term closure (2 weeks ish) but if not I will be using CBeebies and an ipad!

Exactly. Honestly I don't think the "school isn't childcare" argument is even relevant, because nursery is childcare and those closed too. If there was a hypothetical business running paid childcare for school age children in term time (childminders closest?), they would have also closed. We were at a point, keyworkers excepted, where the only adults allowed to look after children were their parents.

Or carers, obviously. Their own household.

@Reluctantcavedweller

The alternative, of course, which I'm going to throw out there, is to give large cash sums to parents to help them cope. Let's say £4,000 for the first child, and then £2,000 per additional child. That should pay for quite a lot of childcare, tuition and educational resources in the event of schools shutting.

Yes, it would cost a lot but it would probably be cheaper in the long-run than dealing with the lost tax income, increased benefits bills and undesirable societal consequences that will come from not caring for and educating our children properly.

Even limited to lower tax band earners (so our family were not eligible), I would support this....because ultimately you're not helping the parents, you're supporting and looking after the children. I can think of worse things to waste money on.

They're aren't endless childcare providers though!

Our Plan B is will have to be for one of us to give up work, lose our income and possibly our home.

Unfortunately, we didn't plan for a pandemic, and we didn't plan for already using all our leave when childcare was closed, we also didn't plan for family not being able to enter our homes, never mind look after children who cannot be looked after whilst socially distancing, so yes we have monumentally f**d up as Parents, because our Plan B is far from ideal!!!

@TrustTheGeneGenie...No, but you can get ad hoc babysitting from online sites for £10-12 per hour which may enable you (if wfh) to do enough work to keep your job. We've used a sitter we found online quite a lot over the past few months to entertain our DS (wouldn't want them taking him out of the house, though, but means we can both work upstairs...)

It might also cover the mortgage payments for a few months if one parent has to drop out of the workforce.

Quite a few single parents ‘plan b‘ will be leaving the kids alone at home
I know of two families where this has happened already

Some people do not have a plan b

I don’t think you’re being entirely unreasonable, but equally I’m not sure what sort of Plan B you expect parents to have? If there’s no family or friend support available, surely the only option is to not work? Which is hardly sustainable if you have bills to pay.

[quote Reluctantcavedweller]@TrustTheGeneGenie...No, but you can get ad hoc babysitting from online sites for £10-12 per hour which may enable you (if wfh) to do enough work to keep your job. We've used a sitter we found online quite a lot over the past few months to entertain our DS (wouldn't want them taking him out of the house, though, but means we can both work upstairs...)

It might also cover the mortgage payments for a few months if one parent has to drop out of the workforce.[/quote]
Yes that's true! I wouldn't be giving my job up for a few grand though.

Realistically though if schools close again childcare will be banned again too I imagine. I mean like blanket closures not individual schools.

@TrustTheGeneGenie

But I think you were always allowed to go out to do your work, weren't you? So nannies were always allowed. I think babysitters/part-time nannies would probably fall into the same category if they argued it was their 'job'. So they'd still be allowed to come to your house. We looked into a temporary nanny and that seemed fine (eventually struggled through without, more fool us!).

No, I wouldn't give up my job for a few grand either. But it might provide struggling families with a bit of financial leeway so they're not so close to the edge.

Ultimately, the quickest and easiest way to alleviate child poverty is to give money to the parents. Unpalatable but true.

[quote Reluctantcavedweller]@TrustTheGeneGenie...No, but you can get ad hoc babysitting from online sites for £10-12 per hour which may enable you (if wfh) to do enough work to keep your job. We've used a sitter we found online quite a lot over the past few months to entertain our DS (wouldn't want them taking him out of the house, though, but means we can both work upstairs...)

It might also cover the mortgage payments for a few months if one parent has to drop out of the workforce.[/quote]
Are those services usually registered? Becasue as part of the local north west lockdown people are only permitted to enter your home if they are registered under part 3 of the childcare act.

I don’t think parents should need to have a plan B. I think schools should have a plan B if staff go off sick. Supply teachers, cross-covering each other etc.

I’m a GP.
OP if some of our doctors, nurses and reception staff go off sick, are you happy for us to close for a few days? Or reduce our hours? You can use “blended” medicine - a mixture of talking to an actual doctor, and googling your symptoms on the days the surgery is closed. OK with you? Or would you prefer us to cover each other, work extra hours and employ locums, so we can continue to provide the same service as usual.

@Mintychoc1

I don’t think parents should need to have a plan B. I think schools should have a plan B if staff go off sick. Supply teachers, cross-covering each other etc.

I’m a GP.
OP if some of our doctors, nurses and reception staff go off sick, are you happy for us to close for a few days? Or reduce our hours? You can use “blended” medicine - a mixture of talking to an actual doctor, and googling your symptoms on the days the surgery is closed. OK with you? Or would you prefer us to cover each other, work extra hours and employ locums, so we can continue to provide the same service as usual.

^^^ This

We're kidding ourselves if we think we really have the data to say that opening schools with no social distancing, no PPE (not through choice, it's not allowed) and in many cases inadequately ventilated and crowded classrooms is safe. We can't possibly know

No, but what we 100% know is that having an uneducated workforce is A Very Bad Thing.

So we need to reopen schools.

And you need to check your local schools' extensive plans for a safer(r) reopening. Have a look at their websites to see what you find, you'll be surprised at how much sensible thought has been put into this.

@Umbridge34. We've used sites like childcare.co.uk and sitters.co.uk. I'm not sure if they're ofsted-registered, but that doesn't matter to us since we don't get vouchers or tax-free childcare. I'm not sure if they're registered under part 3 of the act (suspect not...) so there would probably be an issue if we had a local lockdown here...

Tbh, if DS's nursery shuts again, we'll go the temporary nanny route. We've saved a lot from not going out/on holiday the past 5-6 months which will cover it. Clearly not everyone can afford this, though, which is why I was thinking about what cheaper options might be available.

There's probably a lot of anger directed at the wrong people here.

OP is clearly being unreasonable in that for some people, there just isn't any slack in the system to handle childcare over and above the "week's worth of flu" level, because the current situation is unprecedented. No-one could have come up with a contingency plan for it. (I'm a single parent, and I'll be financially stuffed if schools don't go back in September - there is no plan B I could make which would alter that fact.)

But the anger should be directed at the government, who've been about as much use as a chocolate tea-pot. Other countries are sending children back to school - they're managing bubbles, social distancing, staggered learning with parts of year groups in alternate days. But apparently our government can't think of anything other than "close schools completely" or "expected already over-crowded schools to function exactly as usual."

@Mintychoc1

I don’t think parents should need to have a plan B. I think schools should have a plan B if staff go off sick. Supply teachers, cross-covering each other etc.

I’m a GP.
OP if some of our doctors, nurses and reception staff go off sick, are you happy for us to close for a few days? Or reduce our hours? You can use “blended” medicine - a mixture of talking to an actual doctor, and googling your symptoms on the days the surgery is closed. OK with you? Or would you prefer us to cover each other, work extra hours and employ locums, so we can continue to provide the same service as usual.

Blended medicine

@Mintychoc1

*I don’t think parents should need to have a plan B. I think schools should have a plan B if staff go off sick. Supply teachers, cross-covering each other etc.

I’m a GP.
OP if some of our doctors, nurses and reception staff go off sick, are you happy for us to close for a few days? Or reduce our hours? You can use “blended” medicine - a mixture of talking to an actual doctor, and googling your symptoms on the days the surgery is closed. OK with you? Or would you prefer us to cover each other, work extra hours and employ locums, so we can continue to provide the same service as usual.*

💯 spot on

If too many staff are off sick, the required staff are sick or in quarantine or the school closes due to local or larger issues, parents will need a plan B just in case.

I’m also confused about the “not that they were shut” comment about schools. They most definitely were shut. No pupils, no teachers, doors locked, gates locked, lights off, empty rooms - seems pretty shut to me!