Did I miss something in the press conference- school closures?

[souldivachakkakahn]

I listened. The only time closures warranted a mention was an aside for "maybe later" measures. Did I miss something?
Now, if keeping schools open is the best course of action, then ok. But the fact that so many people are anxious about kids going to school, there are petitions etc. How could they not dedicate some time to explain why the advice was not changing yet? People need information to make informed decisions.

Bloody hell.

It's like russian roulette at the moment, without knowing how many bullets are even in the barrel. We have no way of knowing if it's in each of our dc's school - if it is we need to know, and isolate everyone there - but we don't even know. Because there is not enough testing. And not enough ICU beds. And not enough ventilators. And not enough doctors....

Sorry that shouldn't be a happy emoji

or clear and effective leadership

I work in HR in education sector. With the new social isolation restrictions now in place (particularly in relation to pregnant women in a workforce that is 70% female), there will simply not be enough staff to keep schools open by the end of the week....

Ofsted has been stopped which is good.

Boris needs to tell scrap fines for school absence (parents should have the choice about keeping their children off) now.

Tje childcare for essential workers thing isn't all its cracked up to be.

In two parent families both have to be essential workers.

DH isn't allowed to homework because his company deal with issues of national security, but I'm an essential worker and we have no family within hundreds of miles (and those hundreds of miles away are over 75).

Colleague has his son eow and one day in the week, his mum is in her late 50s and lives in the flat below him - he gets emergency childcare including on his ex's days!

The primary school are setting very large volumes of work requiring significant parental input - accessing it on an online platform, printing it, following links to other websites to print worksheets, sourcing online texts of stories and educational short films without links provided, explaining concepts because no notes are provided for the children, and marking the work.

The childcare is apparently just a holding pen anyway - no help for the primary school children to access and tackle the school work.

I also have college work of my own to do but couldn't do anything today as dc3's set work required such frequent input. It'd be even worse if he had to catch up in the evening after I'd done a shift and he'd been in a holding pen.

We're being showered with hectoring reminders that we're breaking the law if we don't educate our children as instructed.

I had thought we could do projects together and lots of reading

Have just had an email from my children's secondary school. They have staff shortages as some teachers are having to self isolate now. They are closing the school to one year group tomorrow. They are taking it day by day and may decide on rotating the year groups, although based on previous information, I think years 10-13 are a priority for them. Must be a nightmare for the schools having to work all of this out.

Rifraff I think they do need to be forced into it.

anothernotherone, what country are you in? Doesn't sound anything like the primary schools in my area.

Germany (Bavaria).

The emergency care for essential workers hasn't been set up in the UK as far as I know, but countries where schools are closed all seem to have similar rules - only single essential worker parents and two parent families if both are essential workers (regardless of whether the other parent can home-work) get the emergency childcare, and its justca holding pen, not support with set school work.

My family is in isolation now as DS can back from school with a cough this afternoon. It's likely to be nothing, but neither the school or ourselves want to take the risk. Given how many coughs and colds are going around, the classrooms will empty quite quickly.

Our school is still actively planning to open up for revision over Easter!
All extracurricular activities are still taking place.
Yet adults are having events cancelled across the country.

OK, very unfair but better than UK at the moment (unsurprisingly).

Also sounds like your children are getting much more depth of teaching than here, there's certainly not that level of parental support required here. I can't even get some parents to read a 10 page book with their kids once a week!! Well that's another story.

My DC's school was closed for one day today for a deep clean as a pupil has the virus. I'm not sending them back in. I've written to the school to tell them so.

CaveyWavey my dds school is doing the same due to staff shortage. Year 7 are in all week but years 8,9,10 and 12 will be off 1 day each after that. Oh and essential workers dc can still go in all week too.

This is due to staff shortage so we are debating keeping dd at home as it’s obviously in the school and dh has health issues.

Looks like full closure is coming soon.

No one is getting fined for self isolating their children. School were all advised first thing this morning that a special code for 'exceptional circumstances' could be used.

It was a logistical nightmare this morning for me, to try to work out how to divide 5 Cover Supervisors to cover the 15 members of staff that began self isolation today. My phone keeps pinging now, with new staff adding to the list as they are in the vulnerable category.

Regardless of whether Boris wants us to stay open or not, I think it's highly unlikely we'll make it to Wednesday, before deciding on at a partial closure at the very least!

I need to be at my desk at 6.30am to stand any chance of nabbing the last few supply teachers that want to work and I can't bloody sleep!

Roll on the next press call, when he calls for the schools to be closed!

Does it @Backyard72? Where?

Just my own thoughts, given the developing situation in a number of schools.

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from another thread

The reason schools aren’t closing yet is because the average age of parents with school age children is between 20-55. This is precisely the demographic BJ wants to hit in order to build up herd immunity. The science already tells us that children are the spreaders and with so many people working from home and new social distancing measures, the only way to ensure the spread to this group is to keep schools open. Once the number of infected reaches a certain point or when too many teaching staff are off, they will then close schools and create skeleton schools (holding pens) for NHS workers.

I hope the school closures are bloody soon. I'm on my bloody knees. I'm the cover manager in a school of 100 teaching staff and 1400 students. 15 are now self isolating, there's a bun fight with agencies every day for supply staff and all the kids want to talk about is the virus!

I got to work at 6.30 this morning and I have just finished trying to work out who and how we're covering all the lessons tomorrow as best I can. This doesn't take into account the calls I get tomorrow morning.

Sorry, totally self centred, but needed to share!

Lots of good reason for keeping schools open e.g so vulnerable grandparents are not involved in childcare, also letting lots more potential carriers out in society. But schools will close, i'm sure, probably at the end of the week.

The problem with not closing schools is that people are now using it as an excuse not to do any other social distancing. Kind of a 'What's the point if the schools are still open?' attitude.

What are people who are self-employed, but can't afford to make up their own contributions (and so get no sick pay) supposed to do to pay the bills unless the government pledges to make up their losses? Some people can't afford to stop working right now. They'll be jobless and homeless. Some can't afford working full stop 😔