To ask when you think all schools will shut

[Helpmechangemymindsetplease]

Due to the corona virus.

Have been talking to a relative and am more worried than I was. Have three dc, one of whom gets ill at the drop of a hat.

Facts emerging from Italy are not great, so why aren’t we in complete shut down now? What is the government waiting for?

I didn't say anything to the contrary @PeppaisaBitch

Another thread on this? Seriously?

Well if you are surely you understand the huge impact it would have on the students? It’s a massive deal to spend up to three years preparing for exams that you never actually take and to have your whole future laid out by a (sometimes crap) teacher’s ‘prediction’.

And I wasn’t saying your thought that it will be done by predicting is horseshit, I’m saying the idea that a child’s grades can be decided like that is.

If communities pull together for childcare doesn't that defeat the object of closing the schools?

Not always. It'll be smaller groups of 3/4/5 instead of 30 kids. Plus people will tend to do that locally so less travel.

I'm chair of an afterschool care and playscheme (properly set up with inspections and gradings, but run and staffed by volunteers - mostly SAHP's taking some time out of their career due to childcare costs/issues) and I was asked if we'd consider running if schools closed. I've also been asked in a "just hypothetically" way by someone involved in planning if we'd consider running for the children of key workers in the event of closures.

I already use Googleclassroom. I have the facility to do a 'live feed' to my class if needed. The issue will be getting them to log on and learn. In my classroom, they are captive! Some of my pupils will work their socks off in isolation, some will do the minimum expected and some will do buggar all and blame Covid-19. I want them in my classroom where I can control everything, prep them properly and motivate them face to face. How am I supposed to throw creme eggs at the hardworking pupils through a screen? They have slogged their guts out for two years and so have I. I'd be gutted if our school closed, given we only have two cases in our county.

I have teenagers who don’t need to be looked after but I’d worry my gcse year child was not doing quite as much work as he would if I was there. I’m frontline nhs though so I’ll be at work. It will be a disaster for the less engaged y11 child if they are off for weeks.

@Gertie75 that sounds like a sensible idea.

My child came home today shit scared because her school have said under no circumstances will they be closing. This in itself has caused a lot of disruptions at school.
If it comes to it, I will have to refuse to send her in and accept the fine.
Two of the bigger towns either side of our town have cases.

Swine flu got to over 80,000 and over 300 deaths cases and still they never closed the schools... did they?

Apparently they're going to tell anyone with even a mild cold type illness to stay at home in the next couple of weeks. If all teachers did this, it would cost a fortune to get supply staff, if it were even possible to get enough. I'd say at least half the staff of your average secondary have cold symptoms at any one time over the winter. Supply staff can't effectively teach exam classes so this would be worse for results than actually closing because that would mean awarding estimate grades, delaying exams etc. Schools kept open with insufficient staff and or supply with no allowance made for effects on exam classes would be awful. I'm desperate to get my classes through the exams but would rather shut and have alternative arrangements made for the kids to be given the grades they deserve.

@manicinsomniac £11,000! I'm so jealous! We run our school shows on a budget of about £800! It isnt selfish to not want the hardwork to go to waste. We had to delay a production of 'School of Rock' because of snow a few years back and it was a nightmare to rearrange. This would be even worse.

still they never closed the schools

They didn’t have to, it peaked at the start of the summer holidays.

Swine flu got to over 80,000 and over 300 deaths cases and still they never closed the schools... did they?

795,000 reported cases and 457 deaths by the time the pandemic was declared as over in March 2010.

This is my main worry to be honest. I can't afford to stay off work to look after DS if schools close. I need to work to pay the rent.

Perhaps closing primary schools only could work as the children that age spread more germs than older kids. Plus gcse students could carry on. Not sure what teachers with young kids would do though. They’ll only do this as a last resort I think. Though Chris Witty looked very serious indeed, the tone had changed somewhat.

I’m hoping they will stay open dc yr11 It will be so unfair if they lose the critical 4 weeks of in class revision

If these figures are accurate, and we're 10 days behind Italy... I think schools will be closing in the next 10 days.

@lljkk Swine flu kills about 0.026% of people that get it. This type of coronavirus kills around 3.4%
In other words every 10,000 people that got Swine flu 2.6 people die. With coronavirus current thinking is that for every 10,000 people that get it approximately 340 people die. And that's with good health systems in place.

@MamaFlintstone
⭐😁

There is an explanation of the mortality rates here and reasons why they are still variable, in particular countries why who carry out wider testing have lower mortality rates.

time.com/5798168/coronavirus-mortality-rate/

I think the government is desperately hoping we can get to the Easter holidays, after which the improvement in the weather often means a reduced burden on the NHS. SARS just vanished unexpectedly when the weather improved, but even if Covid-19 doesn't, at least the winter flu season will be over.

One if my friends is a teacher and she has been told to prepare internet lessons ready for next week....so that sounds like they are preparing to close.....she has been told that forever the school closes would mean the time would be made up during the summer school holidays

I don't think they will close before Easter unless the situation really spirals (obviously cases will continue to increase every day). They may not reopen for a while after Easter.

But I also think Year 11s may be allowed to continue attending, as they have GCSEs soon. Closing schools to other years would also reduce the risk to them.

Molly, thing is, we’re not 10 days behind Italy.

Look at the figures. It took Italy 4 days to get from 20 cases to 320 (which is where the UK is today).

It took the UK 10 days to get from 20 cases to today.

The numbers in Italy are increasing at a far higher rate. Lots of potential reasons for that, including the concentration of the cases increasing spread where the UK’s are far more spread out due to being mainly travellers rather than community contact.

Just because today we have the same number they had on 25th Feb, it doesn’t mean that our numbers will follow the same path as theirs.