To think this class should be closed?

[Jenster03]

I'm a part time primary teacher and in the space of two weeks, 14 children have tested positive out of 30 in my class.
We've had 2 or 3 return in that time, but more and more are testing positive. Now my teaching assistant has it.
AIBU to think we should be sending the class home and remote learning? How would you feel if you were a parent of a child in my class?
Oh, and I'm pretty anxious about my level of exposure too!

My employer will not be happy for me to be off work with a child at home who does not have Covid, when the government has said no more bubbles in schools/no more isolating for contacts. My boss would be reasonable but that's because I can wfh. What happens if all the nurses and doctors who can't wfh have to be off work because their children get sent home?

This sort of thinking exacerbates the problem. We cannot go back to closing schools to healthy children. Lots of health and other essential workers would end up trapped at home.

School is not childcare

Of course it is. That's the why the government mandated the provision of wrap around care - to make it even more effective as childcare by ensuring it covered the full working day.

[quote ImUninsultable]@montysma1

Yes. But it still isnt going away. This is life now.

It isnt just for a few months. It wont be fixed by having a lockdown every few months. It isnt going away. This is just it now. We have to live in a world were young, healthy people may die from a virus as well as the old or vulnerable.

But it still isnt going away. It is temporary. We cant fix it by wrecking education, mental health, the economy etc. We would wreck all that... and then still be right where we are now.

It isnt going away. We need to live with it. We might see that after a few years it becomes less virulent, we might not. But we cant shut down for years and years.[/quote]
Well said - totally agree!
(I work in a school)

Schools are not the only places with close mixing or high case numbers

Go on. List all the other places with 30+ unvaccinated people (the schools programme has stalled) in poorly ventilated spaces and in very close physical proximity, unmasked, for an hour at a time, interspersed with close mixing with others from a wide catchment area between lessons, and in groups that may differ over the day so as to maximise exposure. Add to that crowded transport, mixing with children from other schools. Add to that shouting, singing, playfighting, hugging, snogging and so on.
These conditions don’t apply for six hours a day, five days a week in hospitals, supermarkets, pubs, cinemas or anywhere else. And infections among schoolchildren are higher than in any other group.

Our school has just been through this.

I would hazard a guess the actual numbers are higher. We're in an area where parents can test regularly as they often work from home and frankly are wealthy. 32 out of 40 kids in my eldest year group got it. The 8 who didn't have parents who are self employed and in the words of one parent "didn't go looking for it". Not one child has been more poorly than a cold. A fair few teachers had it. All back at school within a fortnight. If we don't have herd immunity now I don't know what chance humanity has got!

Interestingly it hit year 6 first in late sept and then worked its way down the year groups. Funny how it fizzled out in year 1 about 10 days before half term when lots of families were booked to go away. Wonder how many people changes their approach to "not looking for it" then.

I think posters who tell teachers to quit if they don’t like it might want to rethink that strategy. Teacher retention pre COVID was pretty poor.

Schools are struggling to maintain adequate staffing levels.

It wont. This is life. We take sensible precautions. We get vaccinated. We get boosters. We take LF tests twice a week. We wash our hands regularly. We stop touching our faces all the time. We maintain social distancing and masks.

I can’t take any sensible precautions in my classroom. I can’t socially distance from 30 children.

Do you think teachers should be entitled to the boosters, like health and care workers and over 50s?

I’m in my 40s and last jab was May. I’m not entitled.

I have a lot of sympathy for teachers but I am against closing classes and children losing any more education time. I also think you lose sympathy by insulting parents, suggesting we only want kids in school to keep them off our hands.
This pandemic has been dreadful for children. Because of a virus that won't even make them ill, they have lost a year of education. The impact on children's mental health has been severe. And many children have suffered really severe abuse, much more than usual, due to being at home. More children have been killed due to abuse than in any other year.
Add to this the impact on parental mental health and pushing more children into poverty because parents cannot work.
I do understand its difficult to be a teacher and work in an environment with close contact. But I find it difficult to see teachers, who should care about children, being so dismissive and often sneery about their needs.

Same happening in my children’s class. It’s slowly working it’s way through all of them.

It happened in DS year at the start of term. One class ended upwith3 in. dS class 10 put (including him) as did the other. Measures were implemented. It was a nervy 3 weeks but then seemed to just die down so very few cases now and measures withdrawn

@LegArmpits

We had this. I'm not vaccinated. I went on a school bus trip with the class three times in two weeks and didn't catch it.

And your point is.....?

I think it's best we all get it and carry on as normal. We can't keep hiding at home in fear. The vunerablr and elderly can isolate if they want to, I ve had enough of being in a prison.

One of our local schools is having a three week half term break. They have run out of teachers as so many are now off sick with Covid. Over the last few weeks an increasingly large number of children have also been off. It’s disrupted any form of teaching so hopefully the longer break will give the teachers a chance to recover.

People can have it and have no idea. A few children only found out after there school switched to daily testing because of the rise in cases at school. It's a sod!

Dc1s class has a minimum if 4 positive (probably mire but I don't knowcall the parents and the schools dontvtell you) out I'd 20 in 1 class. I've kept both dc off this week.

@ wherethewildthingis lots of adults are still scared of catching covid and respectfully there are parents who have still sent their children in clearly unwell to school. It's crap for us as parents because of work but it's not ok to send someone in - even more so when the parents admit they have done PCR tests but sent the poor kid in ill anyway. He came back positive and within a week most of the class and teachers weren't well. So we all had to take time off and the parents honestly didn't care. We need to try and keep them in school but that's harder to do when people seem to think covid isn't an issue anymore.

Why do people respond as though the only options are to let corona run completely unchecked or to lock everything down? There's a lot of leeway between those two stances.

Quite. I hope all of those shrieking about living with it enjoy this coming winter.

School is not childcare

Well of course it is. Who else is responsible for the children's safety/wellbeing in that time?

It isn't solely childcare. But that is one function it delivers by virtue of legally mandating children to be in school during teaching hours.

Pretty much everyone who can be/wants to be vaccinated has been.

There are those who really cannot have the vaccine ( advised by GP not to, foot example) or those for whom the vaccine is not effective ( those with blood cancer, for example).

I’d be pleased I’d like any disruption done and dusted before Christmas. I realise I’m coming from a position of privilege that we don’t have anyone immediately close who is likely to be very ill.

@wherethewildthingis

I have a lot of sympathy for teachers but I am against closing classes and children losing any more education time. I also think you lose sympathy by insulting parents, suggesting we only want kids in school to keep them off our hands. This pandemic has been dreadful for children. Because of a virus that won't even make them ill, they have lost a year of education. The impact on children's mental health has been severe. And many children have suffered really severe abuse, much more than usual, due to being at home. More children have been killed due to abuse than in any other year. Add to this the impact on parental mental health and pushing more children into poverty because parents cannot work. I do understand its difficult to be a teacher and work in an environment with close contact. But I find it difficult to see teachers, who should care about children, being so dismissive and often sneery about their needs.

I dont think they're being sneery about the children's needs, just pointing out that they are also human beings with needs. My school has more cover than staff in at the moment because of the number of covid cases in teaching staff.

How can we help kids with their needs and mental health if we don't deal with our own first?

eeyore228, respectfully, the answer to those issues is not to start closing classes again and pushing the impact onto children to protect adults.
I'm also interested to know how you know that a. It was the sick child who spread covid and b. The parents didn't care that people got sick? Did someone ask them of they felt guilty? This is an example of how people use anecdotes to support trying to push their own agenda.

It's also still guidance that any child with covid symptoms should be sent home - so the school should have sent the ill child home.

Dddccc

"Well thanks to school we have covid and all 3 of us are ill and put higher risk family members who could die if they catch it at risk but yeah let's keep spreading it then let kids stay home a few weeks to reduce the cases"

Exactly, we have three times the number of daily cases that we had last year, and people are thinking everything is OK, because the government are playing fast and loose with people's lives.
Meanwhile teaching staff and other frontline workers are being put at more risk to "save the economy".
We have lost more people to Covid in the last 18 months, than the total number of UK civilians killed in the six years of WW2.

I think it's a crazy policy. 2 of my daughters have Covid and so do I. We've be sensible, careful, and have continued to wear masks in shops, etc. My daughters have gone to school. They have friends who have family members with Covid, but policy is that they continue to go to school unless they get symptoms or positive lateral flows.

My daughters have caught Covid from school friends. Daily lateral flows won't pick up Covid quickly. I know this because I was feeling a bit rough on Saturday evening. I had already had a PCR on Saturday afternoon because DD2 had tested positive. The PCR picked up DD3 as positive, but the rest of us were negative. I still felt rough on Sunday morning. Negative LFT. Feeling awful, I retook it on Sunday lunchtime. Positive LFT. Another PCR - positive. Most people would have just accepted their negative LFT and negative PCR and carried on.

It's unfair that people who are careful about exposure are being exposed via school. I have vulnerable parents who I visit daily - I can't do that now until next week.

These thread do make me smile. The feeling is always that the OP should be in work and getting on with it. As a teacher it’s likely they have been in school getting on with it since March 2020, much like myself. However, ask people to go back to the office, with a largely fully vaccinated staff, and it’s the end of the world. There has to be a trigger point when an individual class has to close in the short term.