To think that those people calling for the schools to shut should check their privilege

[berryfull]

It’s all very well and good to decide to keep your kids home or call for the schools to shut when you have enough space/have a garden/ have enough bedrooms/ have a home office/ can work from home/one parent doesn’t work/ you can work flexibly / your work can furlough you/ you have enough savings/ you have enough money/ you have WiFi / you have a device per child/ your children can read and write/ your children are independent/ your children are neurotypical/ your children don’t have disabilities/ you’re not scared of your partner/ you’re not scared of your children/ your mental health doesn’t make you a danger to your children/ yiu can cope with the stress/ your partner isn’t a danger to your children/ your health is good enough to allow you to look after your children/ your education level is sufficient for you to help educate your children you can feed your children throughout the day ..... etc etc

Stop presuming that all children will be safer at home. There are bigger and comparable dangers to the Covid that school keeps children safe from. And the vunerable ones are not being looked after.

Keep the schools open .... please!

Schools were given no significant additional resources by the government to help with social distancing and teachers were specifically told not to wear masks. We are not expecting any other professions to work with such poor COVID measures, and now with the new strain we really have no idea how risky keeping schools open is for school staff (and vulnerable parents of children). Schools have worked to become as COVID secure as possible, but there is a limit to what they can do when under resourced and trying to work within the government guidance.

Additionally if we allow cases to rise the NHS will become even more overwhelmed than it is. At the moment patients are being transferred from areas with high numbers of cases to other ITUs, but the NHS is completely overwhelemed. I am really sorry abour yoru situation OP, but we either act now or wait for the situation to get even worse and won't be any areas that patients xan be transferred to. Eventually schools will probably have to close again anway, so I would prefer we act as quickly as possible now before even more people die.

Also as we all know schools have not closed to vulnerable children or key workers. Vulnerable children should be accommodated, if your school is not doing this I would call them up and see if they can help. If they are now help contact your local authority. Actually if schools are kept open for all it is far more likely that your children will have contact with positive case and have to self isolate. At least at the moment they can be kept open for vulnerable children and key workers in a safer manner.

Serious OP, you are very arrogant in this! Most of us want our children to go to school as normal, but like as not, I am not going to send my dc to school whilst living in a hotspot! 1/4 of the people I know around me have had it in the past month! We are fortunate to WFH, though it does mean that one of us is taking care of dc with home schooling and activities. The staff at the school: Some of them have had the virus, we have been closed at times, personally we have had to test dc twice this year, negative, due to having "symptoms". But the numbers were far less and it was safer to send them in. Right now, after mingling Christmas/NY celebrations, I personally want more time for people to show symptoms then have us being exposed to those when they are spreading it before symptoms show.

If schools stay open as usual the chances are more staff will go off sick or have to isolate so there will be insufficient staff to run the school safely and it will have to close. If you reduce the number of children in the school by only offering places for KW and vulnerable children you should be able to increase the COVID secure restrictions and hopefully reduce the transmission of the virus, so the school can stay open. If the school has to close there will be no places for KW or vulnerable children.

Let's be absolutely clear - the UK coronavirus situation right now is truly, utterly fucked. We have 80,000 cases on 29th December alone, by specimen date. Those people won't even have been admitted to hospital yet. We're past the peak of the first wave with no lockdown. Patients in hospital have increased 41% since Christmas Day. Positivity in London has hit 27%. The climb from 17% to 27% has taken 5 days. In March it took 4.

People will know how fucked we are when critically ill patients - covid and otherwise - start being turned away from hospitals. At that point we will have a lockdown. We're probably about a week away.

Vulnerable children have suffered so much in this pandemic, I concede that. But unless there is a plan to draft in robots as teachers, banging on about school reopenings is useless. Levels of isolation and staff sickness will soon be too high for that to be viable. Just look at the positivity chart.

I blame the government for its ineptness, not teachers or unions or epidemiologists or anyone else witnessing this train wreck right now.

I suppose everyone goes by their own experience don't they. But closing schools does so much damage to children. After the first wave I saw kids with so much anxiety, self harming, eating disorders, mums at their wit ends. Special schools were closed with no respite provided for the parents or kids. Most children that are actually vulnerable are not labelled 'vulnerable'. A few times I've seen posted here that the children are still educated at home and will catch up as if that's the only trade off. I say have the debate regarding the spread of covid but not without understanding the massive damage to many thousands of kids from school closure. The acute wards in our trust have only seen children with covid positive tests that are in for another reason, I do understand that may be different in London. But the OP is right in that damage will be done and it needs to be acknowledged.

Haven’t RTFT so assume this has been posted already - it was well publicised in the media at the time:

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-nine-in-10-vulnerable-children-missed-school-during-lockdown-lords-report-says-12130808

Basically, the vast majority of vulnerable children were not in school during the last lockdown. I very much doubt that this time round things will be any different.

Speaking both as a teacher and a parent. Well said OP

Today 20:03 lunalucie

I agree with you OP. On my estate all the kids are out playing together and the teenagers are hanging around in gangs. It's not because parents don't care, it's because most of us on the estate are in jobs like supermarkets or caring and have to go to work so who looks after them if not our friends and family? Closing the schools has no impact around here, we've been in local lockdown since the end of last September and had a firebreak now another lockdown and cases are still increasing daily. I don't know what the answer is but as long as parents are still going out to work school closures won't benefit anyone in my area, we are already more disadvantaged than others and I fear for the kids futures around here because they are falling behind and being forgotten.

It sound like you live near me, I could have wrote this myself . Agree 👏👏

I agree O. P

You’re alive and clearly not had a bad experience with or loss from Covid.

Check YOUR privilege.

Spot on OP, spot on.

I also hope that those that have called for closures won’t be

• Going on more than the necessary 1 big shopping trip a week (without thee it children of course) and don’t use cash

• Don’t ‘pop’ to the bank to pay in their £10 cheque,

• Don’t pay at the kiosk when buying petrol

• Don’t go to fast food takeaway outlets

After all, each of the above examples are putting (other key) workers at risk. so I hope you consider that before putting other people in the same position you’ve been championing isn’t right

I’ll check my privilege:

I don’t want my teacher brother to die. CHECKED.

@Lucidas

Let's be absolutely clear - the UK coronavirus situation right now is truly, utterly fucked. We have 80,000 cases on 29th December alone, by specimen date. Those people won't even have been admitted to hospital yet. We're past the peak of the first wave with no lockdown. Patients in hospital have increased 41% since Christmas Day. Positivity in London has hit 27%. The climb from 17% to 27% has taken 5 days. In March it took 4.

People will know how fucked we are when critically ill patients - covid and otherwise - start being turned away from hospitals. At that point we will have a lockdown. We're probably about a week away.

Vulnerable children have suffered so much in this pandemic, I concede that. But unless there is a plan to draft in robots as teachers, banging on about school reopenings is useless. Levels of isolation and staff sickness will soon be too high for that to be viable. Just look at the positivity chart.

I blame the government for its ineptness, not teachers or unions or epidemiologists or anyone else witnessing this train wreck right now.

How anyone could look at that chart (which I posted on another thread) and think it's a good idea for schools to be open with 30 unmasked kids sharing a small poorly ventilated space, I don't know.

Forget what you think about teachers or unions. Do you REALLY want your child bringing home covid? Because a lot of them will.
Do you REALLY think that it's worth having schools open, when there are no ICU beds left ALREADY, and cancer operations have been cancelled ALREADY?

Stop thinking about schoosl themselves and think about hundreds of people in that building on your catchment area who would be defying all the guidelines that apply to the rest of us, at a time when the hospitals are in crisis, and that next person needing a non-existent ICU bed could be one of your family.

@Iloveknockknockjokes

Amen to all of that. But I’ve been banging on about the detrimental effects of lockdown and school closures on kids/young people for months, on MN and irl. No one cares. There will be massive fallout from our response to Covid as this cohort of kids progresses through and graduates from the school system, and we will be wholly unprepared for it because we refuse to even acknowledge the harm that our blunt and heavy handed response to covid is doing to our kids.

Vulnerable children should be accommodated

ALL children are vulnerable. A lot are not known to social services, a lot are only made vulnerable by being at home during the pandemic. From those parents who are abusive or snap in these circumstances but aren't on record, to those who are single parents working back-to-back conference calls in an intense corporate role and have no support bubble, whose children are unsupervised and/or have no social contact from morning til night for weeks on end. It is foolish to assume all children who need it will be admitted to a school, or that there won't be a serious impact on those who aren't.

Teachers need to crack on like we all do they are not an elite.

What, like this you mean?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/01/retail-workers-at-amazon-and-whole-foods-coordinate-sick-out-to-protest-covid-19-conditions

www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/18627685.devizes-cake-factory-workers-strike-five-swindon-test-positive-coronavirus/

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/dhl-liverpool-delivery-staff-strike-19421530

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/14/medics-threaten-strike-action-pay-ahead-covid-winter-discontent/

www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/18858690.cumberland-infirmary-support-staff-may-strike-pay-row/

www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/edinburgh-news/nhs-scotland-staff-balloted-strike-19224215

@Grooticle

Everybody I know who wants schools to shut means what was meant to happen in the first lockdown- vulnerable children in school, the rest of us staying home to slow the spread and allow for some of the teachers to stay home too.

This ^^

Homeschooling is hard and the kids find it extremely hard, obviously some kids and some families more than others. But the cases are higher and the virus is more contagious than the first lockdown, the tiers aren’t working and schools are one of the main remaining drivers of transmission.

It is terrible, it really is, there are no winners. If anything, accepting the closing of schools is the opposite of privilege, it’s a massive pita but it’s a sacrifice my family can make for the greater good. Also, selfishly, if my family member got covid or my child got meningitis, I’d want there to be a hospital bed and clinical staff available to save their life. I want my kids to have an education but having a functioning nhs for the next couple of months has to take priority.

The chart again. It didn't appear in the quote

@berryfull

The vunerable children are all not in school! I have two kids with learning disabilities, they were not in school in the first lockdown.

Stop presuming that the vunerable children are being looked after, they are not!

Are you saying your children aren't looked after then?

spot on TableFlowerss the hypocrisy is deafening

No one worried about the disabled children valuable children before codv what did you do opp to help these children. I know nothing.

@samb80

All children are going to become vulnerable by their lack of education.

This and everything else. Not all children/ parents are academically gifted either and school is much needed.

Agreed. Why aren't teachers getting the vaccine though? They should. Especially secondary schools that seem to play more of a role in spreading it,

Also why can't they adapt better? Entire industries have changed and managed to do stuff online or outside or some other way to make it safer, I have one nephew at private school and one at state. During the first lockdown The private school has kept going, that nephew got up put his uniform and did his classes via zoom. Homework was submitted online.Now they are back they hsve half the school at home and the other half at home on alternating days to improve safety. Pe is outside, the state school my other nephew went to sent home a bunch of poorly photocopied lesson plans that made no sense and relied on parents home schooling. Presumably the teachers enjoyed a nice few months outside in the sun sending in the odd photocopy.

@CloseSchoolsProtecttheNHS

You’re alive and clearly not had a bad experience with or loss from Covid.

Check YOUR privilege.

That's not cool . Please feel free to explain to all the severely disabled children why schools are shut mine included. And to answer another post on the first lockdown my dc was told he can go in 2 days then he was told no then he got 1 day then 2 then 3 days for the last 3 weeks of term . Hopefully it will be better this time but it's really not true that all children with sen and the vulnerable are kept in school full time .

Check your privilege? Cringe.