To think schools just won’t be able to stay open in the medium term

[Schoolgrand]

In the medium term we are having thousands of people mixing from different households at a time of high community transmission and now we are hearing reports of an October lockdown. Aibu to think schools in their current form with no mitigation’s just can’t stay open in the medium term.

If there is another lockdown I'll be sending my daughter in. My husband works for the NHS (from home) so she would be a keyworker child. And she had covid in the summer anyway.

[quote HelloViroids]BBC is reporting that Oct lockdown won’t happen (at least not for schools) www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58474536[/quote]
They also said schools wouldn't close in January... Most schools went back for one day and boom, they were closed.

I’m amazed that some people still don’t seem to understand that covid is here now, taking its place amongst other illnesses, it’s not ever ‘going to be over’, everyone will get it more than once, vaccinated or not, some people will die. That’s it. It’s time to get on with it now, no more punishing children because adults can’t accept reality.

@ILoveAnOwl

10 percent of our staff team are off with covid. Once we're at 20 percent we'd need to start closing classes as we wouldn't have enough staff to cover. It's not as simple as 'schools have to keep open' if we literally don't have enough staff on the ground to do so.

@ILoveAnOwl sorry if stupid question but why can’t schools arrange cover teaching through agencies etc?

@Theluggage15

I’m amazed that some people still don’t seem to understand that covid is here now, taking its place amongst other illnesses, it’s not ever ‘going to be over’, everyone will get it more than once, vaccinated or not, some people will die. That’s it. It’s time to get on with it now, no more punishing children because adults can’t accept reality.

I think those of us who want to invest in things like better ventilation are accepting reality, we just want to improve things so that we can carry on with things like school despite the fact covid is here.

It is the people who want to treat covid as if it were flu who are off their tits struggling with reality.

@FfrothiCoffi

Our school have said you will be required to isolate as a close contact until negative PCR test is received

Ours has too.

And ours.

I challenged them because I know it’s not the DfE guidance. They said there is a child attending who is undergoing cancer treatment.

I mean, I can’t argue with that can I? So my child misses more school - no home learning - if anyone in her class (‘bubble’) tests positive.

Who is supposed to care for her while she’s at home? Am I supposed to take more unpaid leave? This situation isn’t sustainable.

We're meant to believe this CV child's risk has nothing whatsoever to do with his own mother's insistence that he absolutely must be in in-person education despite the known dangers to him.

Well apart from the government threatening to fine parents of CEV children who are kept off school to protect them, this has to be one of the most selfish and offensive posts I've read in a while.

Education is only for the fit and healthy kids? The others can stay at home their whole life just so that PurpleOkapi's kids don't have to suffer the slightest inconvenience?

Bloody hell.

@bendmeoverbackwards

a) only a small pool of supply teachers anyway, but now unprecedented need for cover teachers
b) many supply teachers found other work apparently as they got no furlough pay when schools were shut
c) would you be keen to work in a school that needed you because there was covid circulating widely?

I really don’t expect school closures again at national level unless there is a significant change in the situation with regards to vaccine escape or more deadly variants. Nobody wants to go back into another lockdown.

I think individual schools are likely to have closures (partial or full) due to outbreaks
of Covid (and Norovirus, flu etc) either because PHE tells them to close temporarily, or because they don’t have enough staff to run safely. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that our school will be fairly lucky again this year and avoid too much disruption.

Get a grip. Find something new to worry about. Stop penalising kids.

@TheRealMrsMorningstar

Do you have a link to October lockdown discussions? I very much doubt we will but curious to see what is being said and by whom.

It's only being discussed by the same few doom-mongers on the Covid boards. The ones who love nothing better than stoking up the fear for anxious people who are struggling. They appear to get off on making other people feel ill and worried.

Government has said there is no plan for an October lockdown.

'“Can’t be bothered with the inconvenience” or literally can’t fucking cope?'

Agree. The lockdowns and isolations are destroying my family. My severely autistic/learning disabled/epileptic DC go berserk at being shut in and scream for 20 hours a day, literally fling shit and self harm. These things are not an inconvenience. I'm so very glad the new rules only apply to those with symptoms/ who test positive.

It sounds like the unnamed SAGE source isn’t reflecting many views anyway - scientist, didn’t catch name, said wouldn’t make sense for it to be schools

Why are people continually referring to the disruption, pause and lack of standards in children’s education in Covid times as “inconvenience”?

Inconvenience is something mildly irritating. DD sobbing in the middle of the night as she misses her friends and struggles to learn the online work as the person teaching her is not a qualified teacher and has to squeeze it into 3 hour stints so she doesn’t lose her job is not “inconvenient”. It is abusive.

@Theluggage15

I’m amazed that some people still don’t seem to understand that covid is here now, taking its place amongst other illnesses, it’s not ever ‘going to be over’, everyone will get it more than once, vaccinated or not, some people will die. That’s it. It’s time to get on with it now, no more punishing children because adults can’t accept reality.

We can however "get on with it" in different ways.

I am really glad that round here, adults are getting on with it, wearing masks indoors mostly, in shops etc. As that will help keep cases down and avoid a crisis.

I'm really glad that my young teenage child has now had a vaccine, as that will help him "get on with it".

and so on.

I think there will be individual school closures - possibly due to staffing issues. I hope there isn't another national closedown but with no or few mitigation measures in many schools it's almost feeling inevitable.

It is neither an inconvenience or abusive. What it was, IMO, was really really fucking hard. Hard on the kids, hard on the parents. And very unevenly spread due to myriad inequalities.

But during both lockdowns we had no alternative - the first was not the government's fault, the second was the government's fault IMO.

But neither time could we have let deaths and hospitalisations keep climbing.

This time if the government would just be sensible we should surely not need any protracted lockdown - but I can see how a circuit breaker longer holiday could be needed.

My littlest one lost a fuck of speech therapy progress with the loss of interaction first school closure - became so depressed she couldn't sleep, so withdrawn and we were really really concerned about her. Fuckers on here told me it was "a good opportunity for her to learn some resilience." That little child has more resilience in her little finger than some adults have in their entire body.

My eldest now, after a year and a half of this has expressed suicidal thoughts - she is 9 FUCKING YEARS OLD. Lockdowns led to such a deterioration in behaviour in her class after all the time on screens with pressured parents trying to work and home-school that she went back into her class to be physically assaulted by some of the boys (who had spent most of the time on Fortnite), told to "suck on my titties" by one of them and they'd also spent lockdown working up their racial slurs as well. This is a cohort who would always be "lively" - but because of all the time out of school - they've lost them completely. We've had to move schools to get them out of that group of kids.

Then you add in the students I've been working with with autism, who've spent months at home looking up their particular interests and the like online. A couple are very interested in military history, and WW2 and Nazi Germany in particular (not in a sinister sense - in terms of the military tactics and how they fucked up to the point of losing). Few months of them on YouTube and Internet forums googling up "Nazis" and you can see how terrifyingly easy it would be for some of these students to become radicalised while sat at home less supervised than they would be at school.

Then you've got the lads who've spent more time than they would have done exposed to some of the toxicity of the worst elements of the online gaming community - who've now developed really shocking attitudes towards girls - because they've had months at home with internet connections, cancelled exams and porn and gaming "banter" to fill in for social interaction.

Cyber bullying, demands to hand over your Robux (seems to be the 2021 equivalent of stealing dinner money) - it's all just so bloody horrendous what we've done to our kids.

Yeah - they've only given up a "tiny bit" of their childhood for the greater good - how much of YOUR childhood did YOU give up for the greater good or does this only work when it's making YOU feel safe? Feels like that to me.

I think it would be crazy to close schools again, covid is here to stay and we need to learn to live with it, we have vaccinations and testing so there’s no need for school closures or/and lockdowns.

Kids have been through enough despite them being very low risk from covid. Obviously there will be a rise in cases when all kids are back in education but that’s to be expected, as long as death rates remain low then there’s no need for more restrictions. Every year thousands die from flu but we don’t close things down, now suddenly no ones dying from flu but people are dying from covid and our reaction is to panic and close schools?

I spent most of the first lockdown finding any old tech we could and reformatting it and passing it around friends' kids so they could access online learning incidentally. I've bloody offered to go in, unpaid, DBS checked and qualified as a teacher (and an experienced supply teacher as well) if it'll help keep my kids' school open if needed.

We need these kids educated and well adjusted if we're going to have a future as a country - we can't keep putting them on the back burner like we have done or we are going to lose a hell of a lot of that generation. What I've seen with some of the boys in the cohort I've moved my kids away from in their old school is a terrifying decline in behaviour from boys who were always ones who needed close attention and directing, but were academically OK and would probably be turning the corner as they matured a bit - who've now just become completely out of control.

@Peteycat

05:06AlixandraTheGreat

"Peteycat

Finally! A thread where everyone (well most) are agreeing that this has to stop. Oh it definitely does. So happy the children are finally back to normal. We will keep it that way for them. Anyone who wants another load of restrictions and lockdowns do what you want. We can watch the children be happy and bright again"

Happy and bright ... and ill, quite possibly, unfortunately

As you know, covid is a very mild illness in children, so I'm not sure where you are getting that from.

Can you read, Peteycat? I didn't suggest that Covid is a horrific illness for children. I simply said it was an illness - implying it could have an effect on the happiness and brightness you felt all children should be feeling right now. You can't close your eyes, tap your heels twice and wish it away unfortunately.

“How do you feel about the three testable symptoms not being the main ones that children present with though?”

This is a real problem, and possibly why cases are rocketing despite parents doing their best to comply with the latest rules.

We have a child at our setting who has cold symptoms, a cough that is not as described in the guidance and no temperature.
She cannot have a PCR test because she has none of the three symptoms stated, even though these have not been updated for months.

She has a parent who tested positive. It’s likely that she has it, too, but the guidance says she can continue to attend. If any of our family tests positive we have to close for 10 days.
Her parents have wisely kept her at home, but she is entitled to attend and spread it to us and to the other children.

They need to do a proper overhaul of the guidance and the rules for testing, not test the water about another possible lockdown

@LadyOfLittleLeisure

'“Can’t be bothered with the inconvenience” or literally can’t fucking cope?'

Agree. The lockdowns and isolations are destroying my family. My severely autistic/learning disabled/epileptic DC go berserk at being shut in and scream for 20 hours a day, literally fling shit and self harm. These things are not an inconvenience. I'm so very glad the new rules only apply to those with symptoms/ who test positive.

A minor sacrifice though, apparently. A mere trifle. Heaven forbid we start thinking about those vulnerable people who lockdowns and school closures shit all over.

My kids both have Covid at the moment so are at home. To be honest it’s kind of a relief to be getting it over with - as I understand they can’t test after this for 90 days, which takes us almost to Christmas, unless they develop new symptoms. One of them tested positive before returning to school and the other had two days in to spread it around… The ‘warn and inform’ email from school said that ‘a number’ of kids in his year have tested positive.

One of them is a bit feverish and tired but the other has no symptoms at all (only tested in the first place due to being exposed to a friend who had it). So far DH and I are testing negative so the vaccines seem to be doing their job.

@PurpleOkapi

We're meant to believe this CV child's risk has nothing whatsoever to do with his own mother's insistence that he absolutely must be in in-person education despite the known dangers to him. Nope, when the obvious happens, it will be 100% everyone else's fault. All of those selfish people who didn't want to homeschool or arrange other childcare because it was "inconvenient." Never mind that doing those things herself would have protected her CV child much more effectively.

So only perfectly healthy children are entitled to face-to-face education? Isn't this discrimination? I'm certain, if the roles were reversed, many on here would claim just that. CV and CEV children deserve the same education, advantages and privileges as their healthy counterparts. End of story.