Primary school seems obsessed with covid

[Lightswitch123]

My children's primary seem obsessed with covid.

We had a few cases in school before half term (??20 positive tests in the whole of the school?)

Now we are back, because 2 parents emailed the head over half term to say their child had a also had a positive result, the school have cancelled all in person events, after school clubs, parents not allowed in playground, reintroduced bubbles, staggering drop offs, minimising lunch and play times, kids not allowed to use class pens or pencils, no water provided etc

We get at least 1 parentmail a day "updating" us on the situation.

This is in spite of no one actually being unwell- just positive lateral flow / pcr results off the back of being named contacts. And we've all been off for ages for half term as well.

It all seems so bloody punative and OTT.

I'm beginning to think I'd rather the kids went elsewhere or just stayed at home away from this crazy.

Aibu?

YABU - School response sounds reasonable

YANBU - School is OTT

Also any advice as to how to tackle this with the school? It's doing my head in.

Interesting, as one of my employees told me just today that since he took the vaccine, he's become allergic to a wide range of foods, breaking out in hives sometimes from merely touching.

I'm very pro vax, including this one (myself, wife, son double vaxxed), but I think the extent of adverse reactions is vastly underestimated.

*meant to quote a previous poster who wrote about seizures after the vaccine.

Also I used to work with in the NHS and now work in the private sector. I am still in touch with many old colleagues and a member of a society which promotes the safe practices with in our sector. Many many people inn my sector have been lobbying the society and the their own trusts to lower work flow, stop patients coming in with partners ( who are often needed) refused to see patients that wouldn't wear a mask, called security on people when they were upset about their partners not being allowed in.

I honestly dont recognised some of my old colleagues. Its interesting as they use the fact teachers have had a much better deal than they have and great umbrage is taken because of it.

How have teachers had a better deal? You aren’t allowed anywhere near hospitals if there is Covid in the house. Suspects are PCRed and visitors are too. In schools siblings can rock up to school even if brothers and sisters in the next door class are off with it. Visitors to school aren’t PCRed or even kids with symptoms.

@3asyp33l3r I've not seen anyone say teachers have had a 'better deal'. I think we've had a different deal. I sure know a lot of people that would rather have had my extremely stressful job in a school than lose their house, which they unfortunately have lost.

I am sorry that you got so sick, but this is not common. It is by no means the norm. I am quite baffled by your inability to see another humans point of view and possible suffering caused by your wishes.

Suffering by my wishes? 🤔What following guidelines to keep schools open and everybody safe.Yeah real suffering.

Which guidance exactly? There is no guidance out to do what OPs school is doing.

@Nevermindthesquirrels

There is, our school has been given similar guidance as well, back to no assemblies, staggered year breaks/lunches; masks etc

My school similarly. It’s a secondary school. We had 1/4 of pupils out with Covid before half term. We’ve been advised the the Health Agency (was PHE) to wear masks in communal areas no assemblies and no after school activities for a few weeks. 250 students out of 1000 off wasn’t sustainable.

@blameitonthecaffeine

I have a friend who is a head teacher at a primary school. He told me last week that this last half term has been the most challenging of his 30 year career

To be fair, he's either had an unusually easy time for the past 4 terms or an unusually difficult time this half term then. There's no way this Autumn term can even begin to compare to Summer 2020, Autumn 2020 or Spring 2021 for schools in general. Summer 2021 was more normal. But not as normal as this term.

For me and most of my colleagues this term has definitely been the hardest, though the others mentioned were all pretty shit too, yes. Summer 2020 we were closed to most students and, though it was worrying and we provided work, it wasn't the most difficult. Last year was not normal in any way, including the summer, but in my school we were in bubbles so I only had 3 year groups to teach instead of my usual 5 and there was a sense of urgency about things which, though stressful, also made it better because we all felt like it was an extraordinary year.

This year it's like nothing ever happened, let's get back to normal... and yet students absences are through the roof - way above what we had last year. This adds to workload in terms of providing work, most of which isn't done, and then catching them up when they come back. I have two year groups to get through public exams who have both missed so much over the last few years - it's really frightening. Those students are continuing to miss school so we don't actually know how much they will miss overall. I am being pressured to get my staff to offer (paid) catch-up sessions after school. They are burnt out and utterly exhausted and don't want the money. People are on their knees. It's an awful year and the stresses of the last couple of years are just building and building. Behaviour is at an all time low - friends in other schools say similar.

I'm secondary, but I'm in awe of any primary colleagues who are being expected to put on the usual nativity extravaganza this year on top of everything...

@coffeerevelsrock This is exactly how many of my colleagues feel. My colleague cried to me yesterday as her kids primary school is going back to the sake kind of set up OPs school is.
This stuff is triggering. I can't comprehend why anyone wants to carry on like this, all my colleagues are exhausted and are completely fed up of doing bubble bs that doesn't even work but make my day 10x longer and more difficult than it needs to be.

coffeerevels that's an interesting take on Summer 2020 which I haven't heard before. Where I work we don't feel anything can get as bad as online learning was. Being online for 6 hours a day and trying to make the teaching effective is something I know I couldn't face again. Every lesson was hell. And we had to keep all our extra curricular activities going online as well. Whatever's happening in school, it's very much a 'things could always be worse, we could be closed again' mentality where I am.

I'm secondary, but I'm in awe of any primary colleagues who are being expected to put on the usual nativity extravaganza this year on top of everything

Also, don't forget that this is what some us do It's literally why we teach. I'm a dance and musical theatre teacher. If schools are cancelling these kind of things then it's not a school I'd want to be a part of. One of the schools I work in does around 30 productions a year. Not one was cancelled throughout Covid. At it's hideous worst, we performed live over Zoom then progressed to distanced, bubbled performances which were filmed, then proper productions which were livestreamed and/or filmed, then smaller, distanced audiences and now finally normality. I will go back as many steps as is deemed necessary. But cancelling is a cop out.

Well, I admit we weren't online in the summer of 2020. We were setting work daily for all classes, feeding back on work that was submitted and going in on a rota to teach selected classes. It wasn't easy but it wasn't as difficult as what came after. That doesn't mean I want to go back to that-I don't. Being in school with students is the whole point of being a teacher, which is why I support schools like the one in the OP taking preventative measures to try and keep cases down and therefore schools fully open. We went online with teaching in January and it was not fun at all. I far far prefer being in the classroom and I don't know anyone who feels differently. That still doesn't mean that this term isn't harder overall though. There are more moments of enjoyment, but also a far greater workload and sense of pressure.

It sounds like the schools you work in do some fantastic work with performances. That's great, but it doesn't mean that those schools who have had to cancel or cut back on some of the extras are 'copping out'. I don't think that's a great way to speak about colleagues who are in different settings with different specialisms and challenges from your own.

@Lightswitch123

Fair enough if this was still 2020.

But it's not.

Kids don't get ill from covid.

This obsessive testing and disrupting does not happen for the flu or rsv or other communicable illnesses that actually make children and adults of parental age unwell.

We are almost 2 years down the line.

Everyone who wants to be is vaccinated.

At what point does this madness end?

Kids don't get ill from covid? Try telling that to mine, who is now in her 3rd week and still too weak to get out of bed for more than 3 or 4 hours a day.

At our school, teaching staff are NOT paid for after school clubs. We love having children there who want to be there but I'm not there for free child care. There is wrap around care that can be paid for.

@Mumwithbaggage

At our school, teaching staff are NOT paid for after school clubs. We love having children there who want to be there but I'm not there for free child care. There is wrap around care that can be paid for.

Absolutely this! I do get that parents who work, rely on the fact that their children are in school during the normal school hours but it always bugs me (as a primary school teacher giving up my time, unpaid, to provide extra curricular clubs)that some parents then used the clubs as unpaid child care. I remember one child telling me that they didn't want, or even like, the activity provided by the club but that they had to come as there was no one to look after them on that particular day of the week. Teachers are not child minders!

@blameitonthecaffeine I imagine you and in the very very small minority having this level of performing arts provision. Most schools can barely afford an annual play.

Teacher and a parent here and I agree with you OP. YANBU. Restricting children so heavily in schools as you have described while allowing the entire rest of society, vaccinated or not, to do pretty much whatever they like, doesn't create a very watertight argument for "keeping people safe".

@Stela40 that's not the parents fault - that's the schools fault for getting you to work unpaid. Take it up with them not the parents who send their kids to facilities that have been put on.

School isn't child care. Its an institution the kids have to go to so they can get an education. The last ten years the government pushed and pushed for women to get in to work and leave the home. So they did. then they get berated for using school as child care when these women had found jobs which was integral for the up keep of their families lives.

Many many women do not have the luxury of working from home so it was either leave work and risk financial hardship/losing homes/not having enough to eat or access the facilities that have been put on for the children.

You should not be pulling your nose up at mothers that use the after school clubs - which the school provide - they are just trying to make ends meet. Take your issue up with school.

@Lightswitch123

Fair enough if this was still 2020.

But it's not.

Kids don't get ill from covid.

This obsessive testing and disrupting does not happen for the flu or rsv or other communicable illnesses that actually make children and adults of parental age unwell.

We are almost 2 years down the line.

Everyone who wants to be is vaccinated.

At what point does this madness end?

What the actual fuck are you on about?? Kids don’t get ill from covid?! Who told you that shit? My dd10 was very ill and I was worried sick! Suck it up and do what the school asks, I’m sure you won’t suffer if you can’t go into the playground ffs

Kids don't get ill from covid.

Tell that to my teenager struggling for months with what is most likely long Covid.

[quote charliesbookmarker]@Stela40 that's not the parents fault - that's the schools fault for getting you to work unpaid. Take it up with them not the parents who send their kids to facilities that have been put on.

School isn't child care. Its an institution the kids have to go to so they can get an education. The last ten years the government pushed and pushed for women to get in to work and leave the home. So they did. then they get berated for using school as child care when these women had found jobs which was integral for the up keep of their families lives.

Many many women do not have the luxury of working from home so it was either leave work and risk financial hardship/losing homes/not having enough to eat or access the facilities that have been put on for the children.

You should not be pulling your nose up at mothers that use the after school clubs - which the school provide - they are just trying to make ends meet. Take your issue up with school.[/quote]
I ran after school clubs because I wanted to, not because I was under any pressure from the school to do so. However, we will have to agree to differ on the use of these clubs. My point is that parents who force their child to attend school for a further hour to do something they don't like, want or resent is wrong if it is simply because they want free childcare. The teacher is the one left dealing with a very unhappy, resentful primary child taking time away from the children who are there because they want to be and who are getting something out of it. Unlike a school day where supply cover would usually replace an absent teacher, clubs run by a particular member of staff are subject to last minute cancellation if that member of staff is ill or has their own family emergency etc. so parents should really not be entirely reliant on them as their child care. It makes sense to have back up, surely? If you would be happy forcing your 7 year old to attend an after school club in which they were thoroughly miserable and upset for an hour each week after school, them that's up to you! I think you have missed the point of my post. I am not complaining about parents sending their children to clubs that I choose to run IF the child wants to but I do draw the line at being used as a babysitter.

Dont do the free clubs then its simple as that.

Kids don't get ill from covid.

Some children do get U.K. with Covid. We have children off now and, despite being only aged 4-7y, some are definitely feeling rough.

And schools don't only house healthy well children.

We have vulnerable children.

We have adults, a whole range of ages and vulnerabilities, all working within our school. Yes they are vaccinated, but we are now being told that the efficiency of the vaccines is starting to wane.

Also schools only need 10% in any one class for extra measures are put in place on advise of PHE etc.