Schooling - do you think there will be a choice?

[Missmummy88]

I know school threads have been done and no one really has any answers just speculation and guesses.

My question though is do you think we will have a choice whether to send our kids to school should they reopen in June?

In my personal situation dh is a shielder ( cancer and autoimmune and history of stroke) I am currently pregnant on furlough but 90% sure I’m being made redundant should furlough not be extended. If not I can work from home as only work part time online.

My kids have been so happy at homeschool. My 8yo maths has come very far with 1-1 learning (although I appreciate I have focused much more on maths and English than the full range of subjects)

My 5 yo is happy and engaged in the different activities we do, is doing well with handwriting, number formations, counting and reading.

Technically my 8yo falls under pupil premium as the pp stays with the child for 7 years as we claimed benefits while dh was ill when he was in foundation. Stats would say he is disadvantaged by virtue of this, but technically he’s not we are degree educated, no mortgage, financially stable.

I don’t want to send my kids back to school in June, to me it seems too early. The risk for us as a family, I believe, outweighs the benefits. Do you think there will be an element of choice? Particularly for those with shielders in the family?

@MaverickSnoopy - there is indeed already thinking and provisional planning going on in schools now ( including how to best protect staff) and I’m sure at government level ( even without anything having yet been communicated from government). I think the hope has to be that the giver emend advisers give some recommendations that schools can work on.

We can see if there’s a second wave by September, or if children start dying in countries where they are going back to school, so I can see why you’d want to wait for more information, even if not a vaccine or other treatment by then.

It won’t be optional, I have already seen a lot of reluctance from teachers who have a (non shielding) condition or someone they live with has. If the government make school optional for students then teachers will be arguing that they should not be in.

I think once they are ‘open’ and the guidelines are announced, you will expected to send your child on whatever days their class is due in.

That said, if as a parent you are shielding, or someone in the house develops a cough the morning school starts, or indeed one child in the class is diagnosed with COVID the day after everyone comes in - presumably everyone stays at home again for another fortnight?

Cinnabuns makes a good point, as the father is shielded she may well have a choice, or more than that, her child may not be allowed back.

I’m not sure of the relevance of pupil premium to your situation, OP?

And if you’re in the UK, pupil premium is for children who have been eligible for free school meals at any time in the last 6 years, not 7. It’s paid to the school, not to the child’s family.

I hope there's some safety plans put in place. I'm currently 30 weeks pregnant and feel really uncomfortable and feels it's too early to even be thinking of sending primary children back. They are little germ bags at the best of times. It's a real mockery of all the social distancing we have been doing, if they go straight into "normal" schooling. How can you distance 30 4-5 year olds in a small class?

Plus It's well known in my class that a few parents never respected the 48 hour rules, and would send their kids in hours after being sick/high temp etc (they would honestly message and ask if anyone else's kid had been sick etc) and still send them in the next day. I imagine these people would still send their kids in with symptoms and it would spread like wildfire.

I hope they don’t make it a week of half days, especially if you get lumbered with the afternoon session.
Half the week would be more efficient and would be easier to manage around work.

If it is to be half days, they will have to alter the hours of the sessions, as currently the morning is way longer than the afternoon (for us, 3 hours 10 mins of teaching time vs 2 hours 5 mins).

I don’t think it can be half days, that just makes everyone’s life hard.

@BighouseLittlemouse we had an email from our very transparent Head this week, which said that they are thinking about how they can manage a return but they've had no information, nor advice. So they have lots of thoughts but until they have something a bit more solid they can't plan properly. To the same tune, I am a registered Childminder and our LA have communicated nothing about guidance or how we can look after ourselves or how to run our settings for both eyfs and school children. I have seen that oftsed have a revised temporary eyfs on what should be delivered in childcare settings up until September, but this of course is relevant to whether it is just keyworker children or more.

Don't get me wrong, I very much want things to return to normal. At the moment I have no personal income and my husband is on 80%. I'm not entitled to any of the govt funding. But I'm absolutely not convinced that the schools will be returning any time soon.

We have a 9yo and are currently shielding for a number of reasons.

My 55yo husband has high BP and other risk factors. He is at increased risk of a severe infection. He has worked from home for almost 20 years and only travels a couple of times a year for work to (now cancelled) conferences. His work is probably secure as he writes computer chip software.

I’m 50yo SAHM and have an auto-immune condition which looks like I will have a higher risk of severe infection and other cardiovascular factors which will add to the risk. I’m actively trying to minimise my cardiovascular risk.

My main motivation for ongoing shielding will be that I am my elderly hypertensive, cancer suffering mother’s and my 85yo terminally ill, severe immune-compromised father’s only carer.

The prolonged incubation period and the high rate of asymptomatic infection especially in children coupled with the significant risk of me taking it to my “extremely vulnerable” father and shielding mother is too high a risk. There are too many unknowns.

However there is so much worldwide research into COVID that by September we will have much more knowledge. New complications and presentations of COVID are being recognised each week. It is not simply a respiratory infection, but can cause strokes, blood clots, brain inflammation, skin disorders etc etc. It is causing long term lung scarring and neurological problems if severe. It is v uncertain whether you become immune even for a few months if you have only had a mild or asymptomatic infection.

Until we have an accurate knowledge of how many people have been infected, how much it is circulating in the community, adequate PPE for frontline workers and careers, and the short-term results of research trials, I cannot accurately assess the risk to my family.

If I didn’t have to consider my ability to care for my frail parents, who would be at much greater risk from a care worker visiting other clients, I would probably send our son to school.

At the moment I’m seriously considering homeschooling for the next year or so. 😬😬😬

Sorry for the essay. That was longer than I expected.

If member of family falls into extremely vulnerable/shielding then I would think be more flexible as risk bringing it home be an issue

If shielding that is to end of June now o the Government site and I expect that be extended

I suspect if schools are given notice to open 1 June with guidelines, next week, then this is or should be more than enough notice, for both the parents and the schools.

I hope parents who refuse to send their children to school understand that the online provision will have to stop - I guess the BBC stuff will remain - teachers won’t be able to set work online and teach children in the classroom at the same time. So you’ll be on your own educationally. At our school online provision began a week before schools closed but this was to get teachers used to the new system of setting work and those children who had already left to get used to uploading it. It was a trial. It won’t continue once they reopen. How could it? Imagine the precedent it would set.

At best if the schools did return in June then there would still need to be some kind of online provision. We've been told that schools would be phased so in whatever capacity it is, there will still need to be some remote learning as it won't be 100% in a school setting straight away.

If a family member or child is shielding those children/parents should be given a choice. No question.

If that is not the case I don't think parents should be allowed to home school on an undefined timeframe they see fit AND not de-register because that wouldn't be convenient for them long-term. Which is what the OP posted.

So should that be allowed until Sept? Dec? A vaccine?

Sure there are some great home-schoolers. And then there are others. If it's not already a logistical nightmare for teachers, how could they keep children within the expected milestones for education attainment in that sort of situation.

The magic thing about September is that there will be many fewer cases by that time. Currently, the amount of cases are falling. If they fall further and we manage to keep R below 1, then there will be a far lower chance of catching anything. By September, we will have had a good few weeks to observe what happened to other countries in Europe and see how their choices affected R. We will be able to learn from their mistakes and successes. Right now, it is pretty much a leap in the dark as to whether opening various parts of schools will push us back into exponential growth. Denmark reported a rise of R from 0.6 to 0.9. This is just one place and I take all data with a pinch of salt, but considering that rise is averaged out over the whole population, it seems like there must have been a huge increase in cases transmitted at school to get this. Switzerland, on the other hand, are extremely confident that primary schools opening has no effect on R at all. One of them is right, one of them is wrong. In a few more weeks, we will know which one.

I wonder whether it will lead to a change in school populations? If a number of schools that are normally popular suddenly have vacancies, will the empty places be grabbed by people on the waiting lists or people who really wanted their child to go there originally but didn't succeed first time round?

@Flipflopflapflip

"I don’t think they’ll be an element of choice because it’s essential that some children are ‘seen’. If attending is optional, you can bet your bottom dollar that the most vulnerable children (in terms of safeguarding) won’t be in. The gap would also get wider between those with parents who are motivated and supportive of their children’s education and those who aren’t for whatever reason."

This is exactly right. The main reason they need to get schools reopened is because of the widening gap between disadvantaged kids and others. Schools have remained open for kids who are vulnerable with regard to safeguarding, but only a tiny percentage of these are actually attending.

Vulnerable children are falling out of the system and are at great risk. They need to get these kids back into school, even if it causes a second wave and more deaths, because the consequences otherwise to these children are appaling.

they cant make school voluntary because then abused and neglected children wont go, defeating the whole point. Unfortunately people like @Missmummy88 8yearold will probably get caught up in this because it is hard to allow exceptions without risking an at risk child slipping through and as she said, in terms of the statistics her child is seen as disadvantaged.

I think the choice will be that you can remove your child from the school register and home school them. That choice has always been there. Unfortunately Covid 19 will not be eradicated, we will just have to learn to live with it and live in a different way to what we were used to. People will have to make individual decisions, taking into account their personal circumstances, as to how long they want to put their life on hold for. Personally I will need my children to go back to school so that we can get back to work and I want them to go back to school for their mental health and well being.

I think they tell schools to return whikst there is still shielding advice they will allow use of an authorised absence code at least for 3 weeks whilst the government watches to see if opening schools causes a big growth in infection rates. I think if it doesnt have much impact they might say 'compulsory' after 3 weeks or in the magic september.

Matt Hancock answered this question at one of the briefings this week, not a direct answer, but reading between the lines he said as schools will only be reopened once it is deemed safe

But it's never going to be safe. It will be lower risk, but safe implies you won't catch it at school and that's never going to be the case.

It's going to be a really shit decision to make for lots of people when the time comes. One of many shit choices this situation has caused.

We're a low risk family so my kids will be going back asap but I know it won't be so easy for so many other people.

So children within shielding families lose their school place to children who are fortunate enough to live in a family where everyone is unlikely to die of coronavirus? Is that your idea outcome, Judy?