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!

I home educate two children with medical conditions. This started prior to the pandemic, but I would have removed them from school in a pandemic due to my own underlying health issues. I don't need to 'check my privilege' as I am too busy trying to juggle the educational planning of two children; one with autism and dyspraxia, and the other has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome like myself. On top, I work part-time while awaiting major surgery for my own medical conditions. I also care for an elderly mother who has been nursed through cancer by myself twice in recent years. I don't live in a vast accommodation with a maid, nanny or any other domestic help. I have to squeeze in everything as I have sole custody of my children. There are no suitable and safe school options local to us. For those schools that are open, it should be parent free choice whether to send them in or do virtual school at home. Of course there are child protection concerns, as children not in full sight of school staff cannot be monitored for abuse or neglect. However, there are child protection checks on home educated children at the moment.

What’s disingenuous here is posters acting like they’re completely altruistic and not motivated by self-preservation and their families.

How ‘privileged’ you must be, to not be a cancer sufferer who’s about to have their urgent surgery cancelled because there are no ICU beds for them to recover in.

NHS England chiefs have said that this will be happening very shortly in London.

How is this fair? How is anything about this shitty situation fair for so many people?

@EvilEdna1

Maybe everyone who has no experience of working in a school should 'check their privilege'.

Good point.

Where’s the checking of privileges for the safety of teachers?

Also isn’t there a difference between vulnerable children from DV homes etc and vulnerable kids with actual illnesses? Surely if you child is considered vulnerable for health reasons then you wouldn’t be sending them to school during s global pandemic anyway right? Or is it just me that thinks like that? 🤨

Islockdownoveryet.

Typo: However, there are no child protection checks on home educated children at the moment.

It's not just about the children though, is it?? There are hundreds of thousands of adults in schools, too - most of whom have their own families!!

I'm a Teacher in a Primary School in Tier4 & have been at school throughout the entire Pandemic so far & have no option but to return again tomorrow, putting my own health & that of my OWN CHILD at risk, every single bloody day. There are more than 50 other adults in my school in exactly the same position.

Yet it would appear to the government & many ungrateful, selfish parents that we are irrelevant & just need to get on with it!!

I'm sick of it.

I’ll happily count my blessings but anyone telling me to check my privilege can do one.

We all have our buckets of shite to carry.

Licides. Well said

I have no idea what the right thing to do is but I'm absolutely terrified for schools to close again.
Ds5 has asd and during the last lockdown his mental health dramatically declined and now he can only actually attend his mainstream school for 1 hour a day. We are in the middle of the ehcp process and are waiting for him to move to a specialist school. Ds has violent meltdowns to the point where he fractured my ribs on Christmas day as he got too overwhelmed. I can't imagine how much worse his anxiety issues will get if they close again. Also extremely worried for Dd2 as nursery has been a huge life line for her to have a break away from ds sen issues. Dd needs nursery and it has made a huge difference to her happiness. They both are vunerable children but I doubt they'd be classed as such if another school closure happened again. I also am worried for their teachers and really believe teachers should be a priority alongside healthcare workers for a vaccine. There's no good solution.

[quote Cam77]You need better governments. The British governments of the past 50 years, two thirds of them Tory, have brought about a country which is vastly unequal and in which some regions of England are the very poorest regions in the entirety of Northern Europe, poorer than Poland and Romania.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2617938/Revealed-How-parts-Britain-poorer-POLAND-families-Wales-Cornwall-Europes-worst-off.html

In fact, most of Britain is poorer than the European average.
citymonitor.ai/economy/business/most-britain-poorer-european-average-and-other-things-we-learned-map-2721[/quote]
Couldn't agree with this more.
Too many parents with a voice and an internet connection claiming that vulnerable kids in abusive homes should be put into care when in reality we wouldn't have so much abuse if so much of the population didn't exit in abject poverty. Continue voting Tory though just to save a few bob for your organic carrots you wankwits.

The vulnerable child argument is such a farce.

When schools are all in, its kids from vulnerable backgrounds most likely to end up in isolation due to close contacts. That means being out of school.

Ironically when the schools are work from home the vulnerable kids have less contacts, so less chance of being sent home to isolate and more chance of being in school and having support from teachers.

Reality is that by taking kids from better home lives out of the equation you probably are not making the vulnerable kids life any worse.

These vulnerable kids are the kids who can afford least to transmit covid to their parents - who are likely to be in poorer health and have less secure incomes and often are from single parent households.

If the teachers are all sick or in isolation classes get sent home without key worker provision or vulnerable children provision. At least in an emergency situation there is less chance of this scenario and its less likely that there will be closures purely down to staff shortages.

Vulnerable kids are used as a human shield to justify parents who don't want to home school or care for their kids and theres very little thinking about how the dynamics have changed fundamentally with this new strain.

A policy based on low transmission in school children is now defunct because transmission is now at a much higher level which is problematic.

This is your bottom line.

WorrierorWarrior - that is exactly what I thought! excellent post - I don't really understand why some people have kids really? Its not a requirement to reproduce!

I'll happily count my blessings but anyone telling me to check my privilege can do one.

We all have our buckets of shite to carry
Very well said.

Given that families are finding the pandemic difficult, it would be really good if we could have a united front of parents and teachers telling the government to sort itself out and get on with providing a clear strategy and proper funding to schools so they can open in a way that keeps staff, children and communities safe.

The more people are sticking the boot into the wrong people, the more the government knows they can use the media to whip up tensions between parents and teachers when really we are on the same side.

Original poster your post is possibly a bit contradictory. Your extensive list is enlightening but on balance it would suggest reference to the vulnerable children category. Therefore on balance should a child be disadvantaged and unduly suffer any detrimental impact by not attending school will be offered the justifiable option of a return to in person child care at school. My understanding being schools are still open to vulnerable socially disadvantaged children and those whose parents are critical key workers like health care professionals etc.
Schools are not closed but closed to the majority of pupils who are to borrow your terminology sufficiently "privileged". As many previous posters have noted "privilege" is a very emotive and unnecessary divisive misused term. What is privilege about staying away from a proven Covid incubation station? Schools can not guarantee your child's Covid safety so perhaps one should focus on pragmatic Covid security than advocating against an emergency schooling arrangement which is purposefully designed to also accommodate disadvantaged children as per some of your extensive list for which the school is still opening. That is not to say your obligatory parental responsibility continues as unless you normally send your children to full time boarding school (by fee or full scholarship etc), you will by necessity be required to care for your children at home when schools are always normally closed apart from after school clubs and the pre Covid occasional weekend activities etc.

Schools (subject to case specific rules and arrangements) are still technically open for a (“privilege”) few. Good luck and stay safe! Hopefully this will be temporary and not permanent unless the unchecked asymptomatic “inadvertent” super spreading continues. Wait for your two vaccination jabs and hopefully the sun will shine again! We just need to all stay out of trouble for now to ensure the NHS is not overwhelmed!

I made a point much earlier In the thread drew who have been exposed to domestic violence won’t necessarily be known to the school and so not regarded as vulnerable and thus be in school. Another poster said well surely the school knows. The truth is, the schools don’t know about every instance of abuse and domestic violence. Parents keep this covered and, as a PP said, when they were being abused as a child the bruises were kept hidden so no one knew.

In September I had training on the effect the lockdown had on children and I can’t remember the stats and figures now but I was genuinely shocked to realise how terrible the lockdown was for so many children due to abuse and DV. It really made me question whether the medicine is far more damaging than the illness.

Teenage mental health improved though. Less peer pressure.

I feel my children will be safer and better off in school but the parents who want them closed shout louder.

Ginger biscuit . I want to say thank you All the parents I know in real life are concerned for the safety of teachears and school staff. My sons school staff ta teachears ect care and not very pc but love the children.he goes to a special school but I’m sure mainstream teachears and staff feel the same. I won’t send my son in as I don’t want to make the spread worse tier4. I won’t his teachears to be safe I woul not forgive my self if one of his teachears became ill or worse. I know his teacher cares for an elderly family member and I would hate my son to pass the virus on to teacher and family. All teachears and teaching staff are amazing thank you for looking after and caring for our children

NRTFT but have you been using your so called 'privilege' to keep schools safe these past several months?

Using your voice, ability to write, access to the Internet etc to lobby MPs, contact journalists regarding the state of schools?

Calling for PPE, ventilation, rotas, vaccinations, investment, space, IT equipment and free WiFi, a coherent plan, heck, any plan, masks etc?

If you have done all that, then apologies. If not, then this thread is hypocritical.

I don’t need to check mine and all I have seen the last few days is how is with kids in private schools are this and that. I have a house you are right, I have 1 child on private school ( part bursary ) we have a garden ( not massive )
I can not work from home.
My Daughter has now been at home from school for nine months because she has a generic condition which causes multiple organ failures ( she has had a heart transplant ) she also has sensory probables as well as being delayed in learning / education / speech delay etc
I have had 0 respite from hospice / carers or nurses. I have had a baby.
I am education one secondary school child, one disabled primary school child and looking after a newborn.
I want schools to shut. It’s not about privilege that you speak off it’s because without doing something our daughter has even less chance of surviving this winter due to the pressure on the NHS / ambulance times and lack of beds.
I wouldn’t sit here and say oh well those who want schools to stay open and for their kids to go should check their privilege on having a child who needs the NHS to be semi running.

Very long list there OP and schools are and will remain open to vulnerable children.

I think that hideous phrase needs to disappear.

@happystone

Ginger biscuit . I want to say thank you All the parents I know in real life are concerned for the safety of teachears and school staff. My sons school staff ta teachears ect care and not very pc but love the children.he goes to a special school but I’m sure mainstream teachears and staff feel the same. I won’t send my son in as I don’t want to make the spread worse tier4. I won’t his teachears to be safe I woul not forgive my self if one of his teachears became ill or worse. I know his teacher cares for an elderly family member and I would hate my son to pass the virus on to teacher and family. All teachears and teaching staff are amazing thank you for looking after and caring for our children

💗💗💗

I’m a single parent
I had to repaint my bedroom this weekend as I cannot work in living room with kids any longer
I’m dreading it
I wish I could qualify as a key worker !
But there is NO ducking way they can open schools right now
No way
It would be immoral
I know it’s shit , I totally sympathise
But NHS will topple