Scottish schools

[Trichford]

Hi

So as of tomorrow any gatherings indoors of over 100 and outdoors over 500 is to stop. How will this work when it comes to lunchtime in dinner halls? Any Scottish teachers etc have any idea?

Thanks

Surely they'll have to close schools with this advice?

Maybe eat in the class room, going to be quite difficult though isnt it.

Not sure,the school I teach at has over 500 children,and my kids school has over 1200!! Tomorrow should be interesting

surely they’ll close the schools

Really? Where did you see this advice? We’ve had no mention of the virus at all from the school. Amazing really 🤔

A lot of Scottish schools (in the Highlands at least) are pretty small. My kids' high school has around 150-160 pupils in total.

It is business as usual, with extra hand washing. My school have given us extra tissues, hand-wash and we are waiting on more sanitiser. There is a rumour a further decision will be made at the end of the week, from a reliable source in Holyrood. I work in a large high school in Central Scotland.

Sorry, I made a mistake. It's only gatherings of 500 or more. I think I got the 100 from Ireland's news muddled! Although our high school has 1100 or 1200 pupils. I wonder how that would work out 🤔!

Our primary has only 365 pupils

How big are the dinner halls if 500 or more pupils eat together? Surely that would be very unusual? Usually dinners are done in 'sittings', not the whole school together. And usually packed lunches are ate elsewhere.

The ban on mass gatherings isn't about the spread of the virus but to ease the burden on emergency services. These are the scale of events where organisers need to have medical staff on standby or ambulances in case of injury. So by not having the event it means the medical services are freed up to deal with any medical cases.

The instruction has been given to reduce the pressure on the emergency services, not to reduce social contact.

So unless your school dinner hall has police or ambulance crew in attendance then you will be fine.

I’ve heard the same rumours about close closure decisions being made at the end of the week.
Although if the UK are going with a herd immunity response, then maybe they’ll just leave the schools and protect the vulnerable 🤷🏼‍♀️

To the posters who have heard rumours do you think it is likely they will close?

They specifically said when this was announced that it didn't exclude schools. They were talking about mass public gatherings that require policing, ambulance crews/st johns ambulance etc so that these resources are free to do other things.

The EIS are saying after Easter.

@bananahood Interesting, can I ask where you saw that? I can't see anything on their Twitter or website and NASUWT aren't saying anything that I can see either.

If they stick to the 16 weeks think after Easter ties in - that would be 16 weeks roughly to the start of next school year. But the updates last night seemed to be suggesting school closures of "a few weeks" ...so much contradictory info

@ManyShades It sounded to me like it could go either way. I imagine they would try their best to postpone it for as long as possible.

I’m dreading the schools closing I work in pharmacy so need to get to work and my parents are over 70 and usually my childcare dd is 16 so she may end up having to be her 9 year old brother childcare.
Highland council stopped an event in my town’s high school last night and dd has a big inter schools dance show next week so cancelling last night suggests they will end up cancelling that too.

Bearing in mind that any closure of schools is likely to be for a minimum of 16 weeks according to the epidemiology models used for the response plans. The timing of school closures is going to be carefully considered if done at all.

The only communication we've had is that they are closely watching the guidelines.

Our school is just under 500. They’ve always done split playtime and lunch.

It feels like they're swithering on it doesn't it?

I'm really hoping they leave childcare open for those who need it, both for those who have to work and for the industry which would be decimated by a 16 week shutdown. It would still reduce circulation of kids significantly vs fully open schools

Message from our council saying no planned closure this week.

It’s difficult to speculate as things are changing all the time. The unknown is causing me to become a bit anxious but I’m trying just to carry in.