When will our children get HEPA filters in their classrooms? I am so tired of my children constantly being ill and missing school!

[Annemcc32]

I can't believe we are still waiting for HEPA filters in classrooms, they were talking about this in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and STILL they have done nothing! What exactly are they waiting for at this point? There's tons of evidence that they work to remove viruses from the air.
My kids have had Covid 4 times so far and were both very ill. How can they defend doing nothing to prevent staff and children? They have a duty of care to provide a safe environment.
The MOST annoying thing is that clean air IS provided in the Houses of Parliament, many private schools and even the DfE!!
Other countries have already done this now and it reduces transmission of airborne viruses to offer a layer of protection and reduce illness/absence.
I noticed that one council has committed to it just recently (Herefordshire I think). Why is this not being sorted out ASAP before the kids go back in September?
Why are we so bad at protecting our kids?
Not to mention that IF bird flu takes off (no pun intended) this would help. Where did public health go? The UKHSA seem to have taken a sabbatical for the last four years.

My child is almost through school now but she's now a strong girl with good immunity because she caught all the bugs. The only difference I xan see between her school life & mine in the 80s & 90s is the Health & Safety scares over opening windows... when I was a child the teacher could teach with the windows open, my daughter's school kept them locked shut all the time.

Honestly, my child's cohort got more mental health problems over the past four years over anything physical, because of the lockdowns.

as I said before, I work in the pharmaceutical industry, where HEPA filters are in pretty much every area… and guess what?… we still get sick, we still got Covid. It is not a guarantee that if you put her filters in your children’s classroom that they will not get sick. They could catch something whilst out in the playground and hugging their friend, they could catch something walking through the corridor which more than likely will not have a HEPA filter because the school will not put HEPA filters in all corridors. I work in a lab with no more than 10 people in there at one time and the lab is probably three times the size of your average classroom, the lab HEPA filters, an airlock to enter which also has HEPA filters, we wash our hands on entering and I’m leaving , it is cleaned daily with IPA and other cleaning detergents. we wear lab coats and other garb to protect us. And as I said, we still get sick, we still got Covid.

This is not me disputing that HEPA filters work. They wouldn’t be there if they didn’t work, but they are not a 100% guarantee that your children will not get sick. So all in all, I do think it would be pointless putting HEPA filters in a classroom, like a PP said, opening the windows and good handwashing would be enough in a classroom.

Don't be ridiculous Op.

This is misinformation.

Air filters remove particles which can cause bad health such as asthma and infections by providing clean air which has also been shown to improve academic outcomes.

They are as cheap as £100 so less than a teacher absence and filters are a minor expense once a year for schools. They pay for themselves many times over.

For more information:
https://health.clevelandclinic.org/can-air-purifiers-improve-lung-heart-health
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220622100735.htm
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869-013-0216-9

The number of kids with #LongCovid has doubled in a year.
What's stopping you from being bothered about that?
1% of all kids has it.
HEPA filters keep kids and teachers safe

I came on the thread to say this. Also a qualified teacher plus TA for each class.

I see a lot of parents offering to pay for HEPA filters themselves and schools being too dense and uncaring to see the benefits.
Clean Air Saves Lives

So you recognise that HEPA are there to protect your health. You also recognise that you can catch infections in other locations.

Nobody is claiming air filters would remove 100% of infections 100% of the time. But reducing illness and improving health is a good goal.

You wouldn't feed your children from a dirty plate or give them dirty water. Ventilation in classrooms is poor as we have over stacked them. It is no wonder children get sick all the time now. We can give them clean air to keep them healthy rather than making them breathe a sneeze - why wouldn't we? Infections lead to an increase long term health issues (sequelae) we should act to improve long term health.

@Nijiko there are many types of HEPA filters…. and that study was carried out in the country would’ve ridiculously high amount of air pollution it’s not comparable.

What are you talking about?

Which school is spending their budget on eating out and not on filters?

I blame the Government.
What ARE they doing ?

Of course I recognise that they are beneficial, but yes the way I am reading it is that people think that if they put these HEPA filters in the classroom, their children will not be getting sick. Maybe I’m misinterpreting people but that’s what I’m reading.

I would worry that their immune systems would be too underused and then off they go to work in the real world and pick up everything going.

The ‘attendance crisis’ is driven by illness. There is no attendance crisis. The kids are ill more. A lot more. Then parents are blamed for it.

So are you going to do some stuff to build up your children's immunity @Annemcc32 ?

With less staff sickness, air filters will save money and improve attendance. Also it takes pressure off the NHS (saving further money) in the long and short term as infections trigger long term health conditions.

Why is this a race to the bottom.

Surely flamingo means as parents, as a society, we've prioritised what we see as normality over health.

Really shocked to see anyone saying they'd prefer pencils and glue sticks over healthy kids. Really shocked. Can't imagine my kid getting disabled and me saying "oh well, at least they had school supplies" wow. HEPA should be standard and should be the least of our expectations for keeping kids safe.

The post you're replying to said "online Long Covid groups" so your sarcasm is kind of ableist

For me it’s the opposite. I would want to know the efficacy models before committing to a large and repeating line in my budget. If the efficacy is, for the sake of argument, a 2% reduction in air born infections then I would be saying ‘I think we could do better with this money, is there anything/a package of measures that would get us a better number?’

3.3% of the UK population has #LongCovid. ONS figures. It's utterly ridiculous to suggest that teachers haven't had to give up work due to Long Covid

What a tremendous waste of money this would be. There are all sorts of things schools need the money to spend on before they consider this. Any attendance crisis in schools is happening either due to anxiety or the slack parents who can’t be bothered to make sure their children attend. There are regular offenders in every school who regularly miss Mondays or Fridays or skip a few days here and there. (I’m not including the children who are genuinely ill in this statement. School pupils aren’t suffering a Covid crisis).

I mean, that's simply not true, they don't cause any of those things. But conversely COVID causes death, organ failure, brain damage, deafness, stroke, heart attack, disability, life changing illness, did I say death? Of nvm I read online hepa causes headaches 😂😂😂

We can't afford gluesticks. How are schools going to afford hepa filters?
Get real.

What am I supposed to do with them all day every day if I haven't got any pencils?

I've already had no white board pens for the whole summer term and our phonics planning is heavily dependent on whiteboards. So it sounds like a small thing, but actually it's quite a big deal. I haven't been able to do a proper phonics lesson for a third of the year.

We also didn't do mother's or Father's Day cards because we had no card which almost caused a riot.