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!

@PastMyBestBeforeDate

We are at dddccc's rates. I'm immunosuppressed but if I pull my dc from school and tell the truth, I can be fined.

I'm not sure you can. Wasn't there a change in the guidance last week?

@PurpleOkapi

YABU because if you were "anxious" about getting covid, you shouldn't have accepted a job where you were 100% guaranteed to be exposed to it. Literally any other possible job would have been better for you.

The parents' feelings are irrelevant, because there's nothing stopping those who are worried about it from keeping their children home. If they're continuing to send their children to school, you should assume they'd rather chance a covid exposure than have their children at home all day. If I were a parent who depended on the school for child care, I'd be pretty annoyed at a teacher depriving me of that (while still drawing a full wage) because she belatedly decided she was no longer ok with an obvious risk of the job.

Why assume that OP took the job after Covid developed rather than before?

@rrhuth

Unfortunately to the thick 'living with covid' means ignoring it.

I don't think it's people being dense, but being ignorant. If course we need to learn to live with it, but as has been said, there is most definitely a half way house between a lockdown and what is happening now. Anyone who has worked in or been near healthcare knows that most winters resources are stretched to breaking point and sail very close to the wind. With the inevitable resurgence of flu and other seasonal illnesses this year, it is reckless to be doing nothing to try and contain the spread over the next few months. Unless we have reached a point in society where we just leave people to die, services are going to be hugely, hugely impacted. Waiting until late winter/early spring would be much more sensible, and then give some time to try and better prepare for subsequent winters (although realistically that will take years). Those who think it won't affect them are probably right re: covid, but if they need to access healthcare it will have an impact.

@CherryBlossomWinter

Of course you should send the class home. Your instincts are totally right. They all need to self isolate for up to two weeks and do remote learning in that time.

Public Health are absolutely crazy not to advise you to do this. Read about the Irish school that have gone onto remote learning for two weeks, as they also have not had adequate advice.

I’m a medical professional. Vaccinations are a big part of the control of the pandemic, but they won’t work on their own. Children do get ill, do transmit to others (leading to breakthrough serious cases), do get long covid, do sometimes get seriously ill.

It is not a good strategy by any means to just ‘herd immunity’ children in schools. Reducing cases is extremely important still

• by mitigations within school (mostly ventilation, HEPA filters, masks) greatly reduce transmission.
• by sending close contacts of a positive case home (= the whole class) for testing for at least a week.

The best strategy is as soon as a child tests positive, for the whole class to switch to online learning for 5 days, and then daily antigen tests for another week. That is the very least to be done, and is quite an effective way of reducing transmission.

Why should they? The children are at very little risk, and vulnerable people need to take steps to protect themselves.

It’s an awful situation, but it has been the case since literally the dawn of time that individuals which are not well adapted to their environment won’t survive.

Covid has very fundamentally changed our environment, making it far more hostile to vulnerable minorities in society. I think we just have to accept the admittedly difficult reality that our expectation of very vulnerable people living a close to normal life has to change.

We can’t expect to live into our 80s and 90s any more, and yes, vulnerable adults and children will have to accept that there are limits on the occupations and general life options that are available to them.

Maybe over time covid will become less virulent/deadly etc, but we need to be realistic and accept that perhaps this is going to be the reality from here on in.

We need to play the hand we have been dealt, not wish for a different one.

It’s rife in my dd’s school. Her teacher tested positive on Wednesday with symptoms starting Tuesday.

Up to that point only 2 children had had covid in the class the year before. All the parents tested their children on Thursday evening as symptoms had started to appear in a few of them and we had just found out about the teachers positive test result from the school, and we found 10 positive children out of 30.
By Monday this had increased to 20 positive children and they all had developed symptoms by this point.

We are now on Tuesday and only 3 children out of 30 are left. I suppose they all need to get it at some point and with only 3 children left and no Teacher they aren’t going to be learning new things at school so they aren’t missing out on their education but obviously it means 2 weeks off work unpaid for parents and it’s been horrible for the kids

The best strategy is as soon as a child tests positive, for the whole class to switch to online learning for 5 days, and then daily antigen tests for another week. That is the very least to be done, and is quite an effective way of reducing transmission.

Well, yes this would be effective in reducing transmission. In practice though it would mean closing schools because of the high case rates in that age group.

Plus, selfishly, daily testing is a complete nightmare. My 7 year old DS has some additional needs, and would not cope with daily tests without symptoms.

Yes. My son’s year has 25% isolating and they’ve moved to remote learning for the rest of the week.

@ImUninsultable I agree with you. There are so many consequences to closing a class and people here don't seem to be thinking these through. Who will look after the kids at home? What happens when the kids go back and covid starts spreading again just like it did after lockdowns all around the world have shown us?

Sending your children to school comes with that risk. You had to option to withdraw them from school homeschool them.

How realistic is that an option? There are little issues like having to pay rent and mortgages which tend to mean that parents have no choice but to work if their families are not to become homeless.

vulnerable people need to take steps to protect themselves.

People keep spouting this, what do you propose they do? Bearing in mind that the government has withdrawn shielding provisions, and there are vulnerable people across the spectrum of society, not just the elderly as your post seems to allude to.

, if anything the d and v bug we all had that whipped it's way through the entire class/school made us far more ill than covid would. School doesn't close for d and v (a couple of children were sick in class so gave it to those nearby etc etc...). I am obviously aware covid is still a risk to those who are vulnerable, I'd assume any vulnerable parents would keep their children off during such an outbreak anyway.

I'm so glad that you and yours are ok and that you have no responsibility to a wider society. Obviously the children of the vulnerable don't have the same rights to education and can just stay at home while you live your life.

Tough a message as it is, I think SheikhMaraca has the measure of the situation.

@2Two

Exactly. That'why we cant close schools. Yet that poster blames the school for covid and seems to think it should have closed. So find. If she is happy to have her kids at home and do the teaching herself, then she could. No one is stopping parents who want their kids at home from doing just that and homeschooling them.

I'm a single parent. I dont have another parent backing me up. I didnt qualify for any of the financial help during the lockdowns. I cant work if my children are home all day needing to be taught and even if they bring back the financial support for anyone with a child at home from school, I wont qualify. I need to earn. I went for more than a year with no income. I wont support closing schools. I will support parents in making that choice for themselves and homeschooling.

@Djifunrsn

My good god. I hope you have had jabs op, that level of exposure (for you) is unacceptable. 2 schools here have gone on early half term. Not sure if that is zooming or just closed entirely.

Yep. Everyone seems to have forgotten that greater viral dose = more severe disease. There are an increasing number of double jabbed in hospital as cases go up and are transferred from children to their parents.

Also, that many people such as people undergoing cancer treatment and transplant recipients may not have any response to the vaccine.

OP - make sure you're wearing an ffp2 mask to minimise your viral dose. I'm fairly sure workplace H&S regulations make what the school is doing to you illegal, but they're rarely enforced. Have you spoken to the union?

I used to be one of those people who were against the schools closing/isolating when they had been near somebody who was positive. I had the complete mindset that if we were going to get it then it would happen, I thought it would be like a bad cold/flu at worst and it was important to keep the world flowing as normal especially schools etc.

Then last month my son caught covid from school, the school had long stopped telling us if there were positive cases like they used to and my son said he'd sat next to his mate who'd got it a few days before and another friends sister had got it at home (friend also ended up testing positive so he was obviously carrying it) and more cases in the class.
My 2 year old caught it, both DP and I too and we were hospitalised, had complications and had over 3 weeks off work which crippled us financially.

To be honest I'd have rather had his class shut when there were positive cases and just isolated for 10 days rather than these weeks we lost (assuming we wouldn't have caught it if he'd isolated early enough)

Everyone's opinion will differ according to circumstances so I suppose it is hard to find a right/wrong answer.

YANBU.

I'm late 40s and had Covid a month ago. I'm still struggling and not in work.

I work in education, non teaching, but if I were a teacher then I wouldn't be well enough to teach and children would be without a teacher indefinitely.

@Fetarabbit

vulnerable people need to take steps to protect themselves.

People keep spouting this, what do you propose they do? Bearing in mind that the government has withdrawn shielding provisions, and there are vulnerable people across the spectrum of society, not just the elderly as your post seems to allude to.

Approximately 624,000 (28%) clinically extremely vulnerable (CEV) people reported being at work before receiving shielding guidance

Source paragraph 6

The ONS data show that 0.009% of the population of the country are CEV and usually at work.

Surely you can see how unreasonable it would be to continue this extraordinary state of affairs to protect such a tiny minority of people?

It would be disproportionate in the extreme.

We need to play the hand we have been dealt, not wish for a different one.

Pretty much all other countries that are comparable to the uk - who have been 'dealt' the same hand - are keeping rates lower with more universal mask wearing, ventilation and other mitigations. They have better economies and their vulnerable populations (which are high numbers not a tiny minority) don't feel that everyone else wants them dead.

So better all round really.

Australia and New Zealand come to mind. They had all kinds of draconian rules, and they still couldn't make it work

Those really don't illustrate your point, @PurpleOkapi. Australia has had 5691 cases per million population, New Zealand 1030. Compare that with our 125K per million, and you can't claim that their practices don't work.

But currently the better comparator is Europe, where sensible precautions are keeping their figures under control whereas ours keep rising.

I'm double jabbed and caught it off my child from school.

The same thing happened in my DC's primary class. Half of the class came down with it within the first two or three weeks back. All back now and it seems to have stopped. No point closing down the class, the ones that didn't get it and were susceptible to getting it would only catch it when they went back! These half measures that PPs mention are simply delaying the inevitable. There would only be a point to that if the local hospitals could not cope. And anyway, in our case, none of the children had much more than a runny nose and parents/staff did not catch it.

Also, what we're doing is actively increasing our disabled population at a fast rate. The number of people who are double jabbed who still haven't recovered after a few months is high.

As well as being morally bankrupt, it doesn't even make economic sense. Unless you're a disaster capitalist.

@theemperorhasnoclothes

Also, what we're doing is actively increasing our disabled population at a fast rate. The number of people who are double jabbed who still haven't recovered after a few months is high.

As well as being morally bankrupt, it doesn't even make economic sense. Unless you're a disaster capitalist.

Please don't bring facts and economic reality into it....

Oh and hospitals ARE close to breaking point. With some people waiting insane amounts of time both for and in ambulances. Do the people saying 'back to normal' not read the news? Better hope you don't need an ambulance any time soon.

www.independent.co.uk/news/health/nhs-emergency-waiting-preston-ipswich-b1940158.html

Something similar has happened at a school near me Jenster03 and the local authority won't let them close.

5 out of 6 of the Early Years staff were off at one point and they still weren't allowed to close.

I completely agree with you that a few days of remote learning would be the most sensible thing, but the government has pushed it's laughable 'schools are safe' mantra throughout and they're not going to change now.

I hope that you don't get sick, and that the next few days go by smoothly and quickly.