Was anything said about school closures?

[whodunit3]

Missed it, if it was.

How much longer are we going to avoid the elephant in the room, cinemas closing, no mass gatherings, no holidays...

All this is pointless if school continue to stay open!

No

Nope, monitoring situation daily.

Nope. Boris did say that it was imperative that people followed the distancing advice though. Erm, Boris I can’t - I’ve got to go into a school with hundreds of children and a hundred staff. With relatively limited hand washing facilities and no hand gel.

No decisions as yet.

Every day he can hold off is probably worth billions to the economy (at the cost of thousands of lives).

Didiusfalco Same! Also with students who are clearly ill and coughing but we can’t send them home. Given the amount of (students) coughing I heard today, I don’t know how many teachers will be left standing next week.

I think schools will close on Friday. He's now said heard immunity won't be effective and sounds like gov. Will be watching Taiwan and other countries very carefully to see what happens when 'normal' operation begins again. Reading between the lines, I' hypothesis that 'lock down' will be for several weeks. Slow increase back to 'normal' and if virus starts to spread again back into 'lock-down'. But this is only my guess work.

Sorry I posted to soon, he hasn't said when schools will close, but now gov have changed track my guess would be they close on Friday!

I think he said it was 'under continuous review' which sounds a bit like they will close soon? There is a widespread view (not quite sure where from) that it will be Friday (we've started today).

@UtterlyPerfectCartoonGiraffe why can’t you send them home? The isolation rules apply to everyone including children. My mum’s school are sending kids home who have symptoms

If we have one more teacher off, we will have to close tomorrow. We have so many off, it’s impossible to staff. We have no TAs to cover as we had to get rid of them all due to Tory budget cuts.

Two of our local secondary schools have closed to Year 7-9. Children are starting to be kept at home in primary and preschool.
I can only hope that they close soon. Myself and other teachers are more at risk each day from the children we teach.

Schools will be forced to close if there aren’t any staff. Earlier today we had an email saying schools will remain open as government advises, an hour later we were told school is shutting due to staff shortages. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what the government say once there are no staff they simply have to shut.

A number of schools are saying they are facing operating difficulties because of staff absences, and might have to close soon.

My guess is that there will be a general winding down at the end of this week, though those with GCSE/A level coursework to finish might be allowed in for that.

If primary schools are to be able to offer partial opening (eg as an alternative to childcare for key workers) then they might need some policy top cover to allow them to do that asap

Buffalo Possibly SLT would be able to, but from the latest faculty meeting the message was very much “we can’t tell the parents that their children should stay home, we can only advise and refer to the government advice.” Hopefully that will change in the days to come.

Not yet...I think it'll come on Friday - one week extra either side of Easter and review after that.

My son's school (secondary) has closed - we received an email after they finished today, no warning at all.

My kids secondary school has closed except for year 11 and 13 students because they now have too many staff off to operate. At the Primary school they are staying open for now as if that closes it will have more impact on parents then having to stop work. Also lots of vulnerable children for whom it will be better the longer they can stay at school, especially as then they will get a free school meal and adults to actually look after them.

Quite a lot of schools appear to be closing from teacher shortages. No idea how long for though.