School illness rules

[Bazingaaa]

My children's school have changed the rules regarding illnesses, are these now the normal rules for all schools now?

"The 48-hour rule, which required children to stay off from school for 48 hours after symptoms of vomiting or diarrhea has stopped, will no longer be in place."

"Please be reminded that if your child has a high temperature and is well they should still attend school"

Alot of people are now worried about it causing a rise in illnesses in the school.

Aibu for thinking that the rules are absolutely ridiculous especially getting rid of the 48hour rule

That’s absolutely shocking! Cases of sickness and diarrhoea will be tenfold in that case. I wouldn’t be happy with that at all and I’d be taking it further

What has it been replaced by?

I’d be asking for the guidance about what to do if your child is vomiting, and what the evidence base is for getting rid of the 48 hour rule. That sounds ridiculous. Our school used to have a 24 hour rule but upped it to 48 hours, in line with NHS guidance.

I can understand some flexibility depending on circumstances - eg travel sickness. Our childminder used to be flexible with one of my DC who had a non-contagious reason for vomiting. But generally, it’s there for a reason!

Generally speaking there’s no such rule in the workplace, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable that schools replicate that. The number of times I’ve had to take 2 days off because my kid puked once but was absolutely fine the next day, is ridiculous. If they are well in themselves they should go in.

Not acceptable at all. Many more children will be getting sick. The 48 hour rule is there for a very good reason. I would be livid if my child got sick because another child returned to school when they were still contagious. Really dense of the school too, because overall their sickness figures will go up.

I would complain about this. Strongly. Ask them what medical data they have based the revised policy on. What modelling have they done or referred to that shows this is an improvement over the previous policy? How have they ensured no harm will come to children as a result of this?

I would be very prepared to take this to the governors and/or Ofsted and the council if I got no traction.

Numpties.

Sounds absolutely ridiculous to me! Will also make it much more risky for kids who are immunosuppressed or who have close relatives who are immunosuppressed to attend school.

(DOI GP)

Silly and shortsighted, because more people getting sick = increased absences overall

I agree with flexibility in cases of sickness that are definitely one-offs, but also disagree with the fever guidance - in my experience children with fevers are still ill so need to be at home, and are also contagious.

Presenteeism at its most idiotic. No interest in what's best for the children, just bums on seats at all costs. Whoever decided on that policy should be the one to have to clean up all the vomit and diarrhoea that will ensue.

I can’t imagine being violently sick one day and feeling recovered enough to return to work/school the next day. Unfortunately there are parents who would send their child back if the rule is lifted.

I’m so glad my DC are older now and have left school. When they were younger I kept them off when they were ill, that meant viruses, infections and high temperatures and they didn’t go back until they were well enough. I wouldn’t get away with it now. These absences had no negative effects on their education and they all past GCSEs, A levels - those rules are just going to result in more absences surely?

The rule does need changing as lots of kids are just sicky not due to anything contagious so the 48 hour rule is ridiculous.

Lots of illnesses are contagious before any symptoms are obvious.

Schools should be asking parents to use common sense to see if their child genuinely needs to be off school or not.

A temperature coule be due to something minor and not contagious, just needing some calpol.

Absolutely awful.

I understand the pressures on parents to be at work, and therefore the downward pressure to push sick children into school. For many parents there is real threat to their job due to normal childhood illnesses.

A child with a fever is a sick child - a fever (an actual fever above 38C) usually comes with nausea, headache and means that it is very unlikely that a child would be able to concentrate in school or learn anything.

It basically says that school is childcare, not education.

Sick children deserve to be cared for, not dosed up with anti-pyretics to hide the fact and shoved into school.

The problem with a blanket 48hr vomiting rule is that there are many non-contagious reasons why a child can vomit.

I once had to collect DS after vomiting in class. He'd had months of post-concussion migraines and headaches and he bounced out looking the brightest that he'd been in months but still had to miss 2 days off school, and still added to the snotty letters we'd got for the days that he had to stay in bed in a darkened room.

If a child's ill keep them off, but blanket rules don't cover all circumstances effectively.

Where parents are already under pressure, they often send children in and hope for the best. If they have a bit more flexibility for their own judgement call rather than minimum times off, that could actually help with them staying off during the highest risk part of the illness.

If they were saying 24h instead of 48h then fine. But this is bonkers

In terms of vomiting - that's usually the first part of a stomach upset - the virus usually travels down to the lower part of the gut and then diarrhoea arrives.

The 48hr rule gives time for the virus to travel through the gut - most of these are faecal/oral transmission and school toilets are not known for being cleaned up very well.

Given that schools do not let children go to the toilet easily, can you imagine the discomfort and fear of having diarrhoea or abdominal pain in school and not being able to use the loo.

It's been replaced with the school will encourage hand washing and teachers will monitor the child during the day if the parent let's them know the child is poorly. The school is understaffed as it is and age ranges from 3-9 years. Unfortunately schools aren't able to check a child's temperature unless it's an emergency situation.

Ridiculous. I would ignore this. I am a teacher and had sickness and diarrhea in July. I was wiped out for over 48 hours.

My other concern is that kids can be cruel so if another child has a diarrhoea accident in school it's going to risk them being bullied plus they don't have enough staff to clean them up.
Since the rule change there has been more cases of sickness bugs in the school

Yes that's definitely bad!

The rule doesn’t exist in the workplace, it doesn’t exist in secondary schools. In real life you stop being ill and, if you feel well enough, crack on. You don’t need to be at home twiddling your thumbs if you feel fine.

It’s because all they care about are attendance quotas. Our schools are the same (I don’t know if any official policy change because I would ignore that anyway), but they are hot to trot on attendance.

My dd regularly like one lesson a day doesn’t have a teacher in place - their PE sub for example isn’t allowed to teach PE so they all sit in the library and read instead. But god forbid you miss a day. Dd has usually between 95-99% attendance, but they sent her home in the first week of school for having a fever, and then that week I got a letter about our ‘attendance issues’ because she missed 2 days in the first week of school. I was like, well, don’t bloody call me in the middle of the day to come get her then! I have in the past simply refused to come get her because sometimes she has a ‘tummy ache’ just because one of her friends is off sick, and they don’t like that either (she was completely fine).

For hand washing to be effective and stop the spread of infection , it has to be for a full 20 seconds, a good 10 second rinse and then for the hands to be dried thoroughly - I can really see kids doing this!

Bloody hell! That's awful. I would never send a child to school witb a fever. I would presume (a) that going to school would cause them to feel ill and (b) that they probably have something contagious.

With the diarrhoea and vomiting thing, i I would have be totally certain that the diarrhoea and vomiting had stopped before sending the child to school, which might after less than 48 hours.

24hours would be so much better than no hours. It's all about attendance percentage

dc school has only one rule: if dc feels like shit they stay home.
in forrin, so no 48h rule either.