3 week plateau, 3 week falling, then schools open?

[AlmostThereKeepMoving]

The figures being released are promising.

I’ve said all along that there is absolutely no chance the schools will keep closed until the end of July!

I think it’s looking like they will reopen after May half term.

If you open schools too soon, you're reliant on staff being willing to work in areas with constant footfall, no chance of a decent clean let alone a deep clean, no sanitizer, working in very close proximity with hundreds. Children in general are not good at washing hands properly, keeping their, keeping their distance and covering mouths when coughing/sneezing.

Same can be said for shops, businesses, restaurants.

No haircuts for a while!

Delatron I agree, but I just can’t see this being a scenario people are willing to accept. We are still relatively early into our outbreak, as more people are infected, hospitalised and sadly die from this vile disease it will make people even more apprehensive to go back into the wild, as it were.

The level of disruption going forward is going to be significant, any slight sign of illness and people will be self isolating for 14 days, that means staff sickness in shops, schools, public transport, supply chains is going to be difficult to manage, indefinitely until any vaccine or treatment is released.

Life outside of lockdown is going to be very tricky because the rules change, the safety net of being at home disappears, people will be relying on strangers to do the right thing to not get infected.

Colleges, primary and secondary schools, vocational schools, technical colleges and nursery schools are still closed. Officials said in a notice on Tuesday that the opening date would be “decided after evaluation of prevention efforts”

That’s from a guardian article yesterday about Wuhan. Sounds like schools aren’t yet open there and they are still evaluating the best thing to do.

@Quiglet

I want comprehensive community testing, contact tracing, remote learning, as much working from home as possible, altered shift patterns/short hours working and a VACCINE before we plump for a possible short term herd immunity and highly risky strategy for the adult population that no one has any idea of its longevity.

We cant wait for the vaccine though that is the whole problem everyone is facing. The other things should be what we used in the short to medium term to build up as much immunity as possible whilst a vaccine is being made.

Because the absolute worse thing is to rush a vaccine and end up
with something that doesnt work or causes issues.

This is possibly why though my feeling is 3/4 weeks end June early July because I think schools for example will need to have staggered classes (2 days/3 days depending on years and other stuff at home) different start and end dates and different lunches. And a run through in end June/July (if the peak has been flattened) will help.

But in order for that to work testing testing testing needs to be done and we are just not doing that and its frustrating

Denmark are just reopening primary schools for now. In theory that leaves more school buildings available to spread out the classes.

My local primary is using the huge secondary school for key workers' children at the moment.

Everything will be phased back in, in stages.

@CaroleFuckinBaskin I’m agreeing with all your posts too!

@Quartz2208 good post. I don’t feel we can wait for a vaccine either because that could be 18 months. The right things need to be in place, including the numbers, for us to even think about going back to normal and we’re not getting the things we need... like testing.

Even in Wuhan where the lockdown is stopping it is only in stages and the schools are still closed (Source: BBC).

So I would not expect us back in physically before Sept.

So many people adamant they know what's going on better than anyone else. I get all our LEA updates on the situation twice daily and they don't know what's going on beyond the next week so if those who know it's definitely May/June/July/September/never would like to PM me the numbers for next Saturday's lottery draw with their crystal balls I'd like them please.

I can educate my kids at home fine - but my FB is full of the other school parents who, like us, have all had kids crying because they're missing friends desperately (school holidays not really a direct comparison as we'd all have organised meet ups during those and they'd have ran into them at the park etc) and the uncertainty of when they're going to see them again is hitting home now. Hell my kids might not even see their best mates again as they're due to move away during the summer holiday - and that realisation is going to hurt them when they realise it. I can do a curriculum, I can keep things going and keep the kids occupied (at immense personal cost to me - this year of my degree has gone down the toilet as a result really and my mental health is suffering) - but doing that while being unable to leave the house, and not even able to take them to the park to blow off steam for a while - that's unnatural really, and if you have a child with SEN who has various interventions they access at school (but doesn't qualify for an EHCP so doesn't fall into the priority categories - and our LEA try to tell parents that you can't get EHCPs anyway) and you're trying to cobble those together at home, while knowing that they need that input and support really to keep them on a par with their peers... that's an immense strain and it's bloody unfair to be throwing out the trite "oh it's such a shame people don't want to spend time with their children" shaming.

People need to realise mumsnet is not a good representative of real life... About 90% of people I know would be happy to get back to normal now.. We can't hide from this forever... It was responsible for 1 in 20 deaths in march... We don't go and hide from the other 19 causes of death do we...

I want to get back to school as soon as possible but think we all need to be realistic about the fact that even if we DO go back at the end of May/June, we won't be teaching normal 'academic' lessons for a while - there is a lot of trauma work that will need to be done.

We are planning a large unit of work on coronavirus as we can't brush it under the carpet and pretend it hasn't happened. There will be a large number of children who are suffering a bereavement as a direct result of the virus, children who know someone who knows someone who has had the virus and we need to work backwards before we can expect them to go back to academic subjects.

There is also the fact that the curriculum will need to be adapted for a length of time to cover all the learning that has been missed. Those pupils going into Year 1, for example will need to be taught the term they have missed from Reception before being expected to cover anything in the higher year group. I envisage we will run a more holistic curriculum when we do open, with lots of work on trauma and in September, we will all reach for the first 1/2 term from the previous year curriculum to check gaps and coverage etc.

We need to remember all children will be in the same boat come June/July/Sept when they return back to school and the government will expect results in schools to dip for quite some time as a result.

Forgone90 sorry but that’s very uninformed, you must know that while you’re “happy” to go back to normal, doing so would totally overwhelm the NHS and lead to tons more people dying not only of covid but of other things as they couldn’t get treatment.
I’d love to go back to normal and see my family but the cost is too great as you must understand.

We will probably go in and out of lockdown until we get to a vaccine. It will be like switching taps on and off for a year with schools and businesses.

But immunity in the population will increase, we will have antibody tests at some point , we will be doing more testing. Each wave the peak will be less.

Even now we are funding more and more out about the virus and learning from other countries.

But we will not stay in lockdown for 6 months then release everyone out at the same time.

I think the whole point was to slow the spread then bulk up the NHS with more ventilators and more hospitals to cope with it befor then easing restrictions as they will need more people to get this... A vaccine is to far away and the people who think we will just go in and out out lockdown... You really think the government will just give £300 billions every time this needs to happen? I'm sorry to sound so morbid but we will get to a point where the government will say we can do any more now and let it runs its course... The cure cannot be worse than the problem..... Lockdown will cause more deaths and suffering than this virus will in the long term I can tell you that!

They already indicated schools would be closed through summer.

It has been announced that grades would be given based on predicted grades.

Schools don’t need to reopen.

Enjoy the time with your children, they are safer at home.

I don’t think much will change in schools until that ‘12 week’ period is up for vulnerable people. What’s that, end of June?

Many schools will not be able to open without al those people and there isn’t time or the ability to find suitable replacements for them before that.

@Quartz2208 Saying we can’t wait for a vaccine (or functional drug treatment) is the same as saying accepting collateral damage to the adult population, healthcare and teaching professionals though isn’t it?

We ARE doing untold damage to our economy, but we are also doing untold damage to those professions. I’m also fairly certain that attempting to have the second peak so early would be to keep the NHS staff in war mode rather than have them have enough time for the true horror of a lot of these situations to express itself. If there is a lag and then re-emergence, many of the HCPs may have found themselves in “shell shock” in the intervening period. Presumably it’s cheaper to have all the infrastructure such as the Nightingales on hire for as short a time as possible.

The social damage we do by actively choosing to kill the most vulnerable in our society, our grandparents, our parents, our friends when we are not a developing economy where we are struggling to put rice in the pot surprises me on a regular basis.

Who’s ‘they’ that indicated schools would be closed over summer?

The government? Given they don’t know the plan then I doubt this information has been given to anyone. Schools may be planning for that in case in happens. But just as quickly as they closed they could open again

They cancelled exams because of the uncertainty. It wasn’t fair to pupils. Nothing is certain at the moment.

@Kuponut I would suggest you email your DC school and ask for a chat with/support from the SENCO. They may not be able to have your DC in school but I am sure will be able to offer support in other ways. Our school is giving differentiated work and activities for all the DC we support, not just those with EHCP.

There are also no guarantees that the schools will open after the holidays whether that's May or Summer or Christmas.

They were only given a few days notice to close and sort out places for key workers they might be given a few days notice to reopen.

It has been stated that businesses will not survive past June under lockdown conditions... The government want to restart the economy as soon as possible... The only we to possibly do that is to open schools to allow people to go back to work.. Like it or not!

I would say it’s pretty guaranteed that they won’t stay closed until Christmas. The economy won’t cope with that and the impact on children would be too great.

They may go back for 6 weeks from mid June.
Then off for 6 weeks. Then back in September then shut early for Christmas but they won’t stay shut for 10 months...

Schools will need more than a couple of days notice to reopen. It isn’t the same as closing down with a few days notice. We can’t reopen without our catering and cleaning contracts up and running. We would need to look into how many staff we would have back (once you take out those shielding or living with someone who is shielding, or those who are sick) before making decisions about which year groups to open to on what days, rewrite the timetable and then we would need to communicate all of that to parents and students. They can’t just announce on a Friday that schools are opening on the Monday.