For those who want schools to go back..

[pfrench]

.. tell us how you think it should work. Primary or secondary.

In your ideal world.

How would social distancing be adhered to?
How about drop off and pick up?
How would classrooms operate?
How about lunchtimes and breaktimes?
What about after school childcare provision?
What about staff who are sheidling?
What about children who are sheilding?
What about staff who have family members who are sheilding?
Should only some children go back? Who should they be and why?

So many education and school experts on here, it will be interesting to read your safe solutions.

Primary children are more compliant surely?

If people want to find someone to criticise for the disparity of provision between schools, then look to the government.

Schools were informed (well, I say that generously, lots of heads found out via social media) that schools were to close on 20th March, that GCSE and 'A' level exams and SATS wouldn't happen this year and that the curriculum was suspended.

Schools have been given NO guidelines about what - if any - learning/support they should provide at this time other than to provide childcare for the children of key workers or those who are vulnerable and to implement the supermarket vouchers for children in receipt of FSM. This scheme has been highly problematic to say the least.

In reponse to the OP, I honestly have not idea. I do think abstractly that children should be in school but I honestly can't see how this is possible at the moment.

Even putting the health of teachers aside for the moment (as many posters seem very keen to do...), I don't see how social distancing could be implemented in state schools, I don't know what teachers with children in year groups which haven't gone back or pre-school children would do. I can't see how the risk to teachers, other staff or children who are in shielded groups or sharing a household with someone in a shielded group would work.

Also, none of the problems of childcare/parents wfh will have magically disappeared by mid-July. What are peoples' plans for the summer re childcare?

Maybe a focus on yr 10 and 12 in terms of some provision to attend school with more thought through (centrally) distance learning, including grants for families to purchase broadband and loan of laptops etc for secondary?

Maybe to prepare for Y5 and Y6 in primary going back for a period of time late June/July?

I don't know. If one person in a school has symptoms and tests positive, will the whole school and their households need to self-isolate for 14 days? Or will this be per class? What about shared toilet facilities etc?

It would be helpful if people who actually knew anything about the day to day realities of state schools were involved in making these decisions, which excludes the current cabinet unfortunately.

Not a teacher btw, but have children in Y6 and Y8 in state schools.

To be honest I do blame the government rather than the schools. Either way it’s unacceptable that some children have all these online lessons and resources and others have hardly anything.

The government, if they are to keep the schools shut, need to find a way to provide education, across the board for all children and not disadvantage many.

This won’t happen though and some children will fly ahead and others will be left trying to catch up.

I can't see how schools can shut until we have an injection, life needs to go on.

Also, are people thinking they want to completely stop their child getting the virus so are planning on keeping them off school? Isn't that very unlikely even with social distancing? If the child is healthy even if they do catch it it is most likely to have very mild symptoms. Would it be that bad if they got it?

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince
But that's not going to change until there is a vaccine. We don't take these measures with other viruses that have such a low mortality. This is a virus that granted isn't nice for some people, but it's not Ebola. It's not guaranteed to kill everyone it touches.

Delatron yes me too.

I have some sympathy for the fact that they weren't up and running with a plan in March (some... you didn't have to be Nostradamus to see what was coming our way), but it's now 7 weeks in and there is no guidance.

Along with the FSM scheme shambles, it's creating huge amounts of anxiety for teachers, teaching staff, parents and children.

1981m I think that's what OP is saying. Life needs to go on, but how, practically?

Yes I understand that but if children get the virus it's extremely unlikely they will have anything but mild symptoms. Should we be panicking about this?

Well, I guess the point about schools is that they need teachers and other staff in them.

I don't think many people are suggesting panicking, but rather saying how can school go back in practical terms?

Children may usually have mild symptoms, but that's not necessarily true of the adults working in the school and definitely not true of the people each child comes into contact with on the way to and from school or outside of school.

A significant percentage of staff in each school is likely to be in the shielding or vulnerable group. If there aren't sufficient staff, who exactly will be teaching/cleaning/serving and supervising lunch in schools?

Once you bring hundreds of people back together (over a thousand, if we're thinking of many secondary schools) and they then go to hundreds of different households coming into contact with hundreds of different people between them, the transmission rate is bound to rise again.

At the moment, we know that being older, being male, being from BAME community, having pre-existing medical conditions increases the likelihood of you becoming very ill with CV19 or it being fatal to you.

My children aren't in any of those groups, but I'm still not desperate for them to become harbingers of this virus to those who are tbh.

I do think there needs to be some centralised guidance re: distance learning and provision of grants for broadband/loan of laptops for households who don't have these things, and to provide education for the children who will be long-term shielding eg those who have particular medical conditions or who are being treated for serious illnesses.

Other than that, I can't see how it could work at the moment. Don't get me wrong - I think children should be in school (unless they're home schooled), it's the how that's the problem at the moment.

That’s very unfair, Callme, and if you’d read that thread, you’d know it was perfectly reasonable last night with some lovely teachers, until a teacher called Buster Gonad came on being very goady towards parents.

I actually went to bed after that and the thread was deleted when I woke this morning. I’ve no idea what happened to have it deleted, but I certainly was not part of it.

Being the OP doesn’t mean I was responsible for its deletion. I was reassured by teachers responding positively prior to Buster showing up. Which was a bit of a shame.

I was just reading one of the teachers up above who was saying about using lots of equipment. I realise I have been thinking from a maths perspective. I won't be able to teach trigonometry to children who forget their calculators and it's going to be a real pain in the butt. Usually, I would lend out some of my own personal supply, but I won't be doing that (not out of meanness, but because I think we need to not be sharing equipment).

How will subjects like art manage?

Do people think we should just give up completely on any kind of transmission control and have people sharing art supplies, pens, pencils, paints? Or should we just do without those parts of the curriculum that require sharing equipment?

Social distancing in primary is going to be impossible to achieve so I guess the only solution is to limit the number of children in the space - so some sort of part time provision for groups of kids.

Video teaching doesn't seem to work with young children so the government needs to wind the expectations down and schools need to function as childcare only for a while. Not ideal for using teachers' skills but it would be in the national interest.

Secondary seems a bit easier.. Online teaching would work better but some don't have tech for this. A some in / some out policy could work here. The students without tech at home, those who have additional needs, those with parents who can't work from home maybe prioritised for attending school? We both work from home, have tech at home and a child who is managing school online ok so we would be back of the queue in this scenario. It wouldn't be great but it would be possible to work like this for a year or so maybe? Lots of offices won't be rushing to open so there's at least some parents who can work in this way for a while.

Perhaps shielding teachers could team up with colleagues who are in school and could record video lessons, answer student questions and do marking from isolation? Of course they might be looking after their own kids too but we're all doing some of that. The alternative is long term sick leave and surely it's better to use someone's skills if you can.

We do need some sort of national leadership though - at least around what's working and safe. Zoom isn't safe but what are the other options? It doesn't seem fair or sensible to leave individual schools thinking through the same problems. If the answer is a million Microsoft teams accounts then the government needs to get on with making this happen.

What’s the research on transmission via objects?

There is some German research which suggests no transmission on surfaces - will try to find.

There is no good evidence on transmission via surfaces. We know the virus survives on surfaces. We don't know what proportion of cases were transmitted this way. It appears that the main form of transmission is droplet, with surface transmission forming a small contribution. However, a lack of evidence certainly doesn't mean it is safe. If surface transmission is not a thing, then surely washing your hands is unnecessary.

Agree @Sportycustard I think Microsoft Teams is deemed safer, so instruct schools to roll this out if Zoom isn’t safe. Just do something and have some consensus on it rather than leave it to schools.

There’s transmission by object, and then there’s primary children sharing pencils they’ve chewed, stuck up their nose and scraped the bottom of their shoe with....

But surely if what it takes to get schools back running is for each child to have their own calculator, pen etc (and it’s a disgrace they don’t anyway, how can you let your child go to secondary school without a pen?!) then either the government buys a set for each child, to be kept in school In individual labelled sandwich bags or something, or someone starts a justgiving page to get schools open and gets Dyson onto mass production of calculators now they’re not making ventilators anymore! Shared objects cannot be that hard a problem to solve. Science and specialist equipment might be harder - maybe they can’t experiment and have to learn from books. Maybe art is now with much more limited media. Maybe drama can’t happen this year, pick something else or wait. Perhaps PE is running instead of rounders. But surely something is better than closing everything until everyone can go back exactly as they were before...

dc go back to school next week (not uk)

How would social distancing be adhered to?
half class, 2 days a week at school, 2 days distance learning via video app
distance learning for vulnerable children/children staying home with mild cold symproms

How about drop off and pick up?
no adults allowed within 50m of school gate

How would classrooms operate?
teacher behind shower curtain screen
pe outside only

How about lunchtimes and breaktimes?
packed lunch outside, cantine stays closed
breaks out on the playground

What about after school childcare provision?
only for key workers, but 8-8 for them if needed

What about staff who are sheidling?
if they can they provide distance learning

What about children who are sheilding?
they receive lessons via video app

What about staff who have family members who are sheilding?
not sure about that tbh

Should only some children go back? Who should they be and why?
all children, apart from vulnerable ones or those with cold systems are to attend. but it's by far no full time in school education.

How would children moving between rooms work in secondary?

It would be a very sparse provision if subjects requiring specialist spaces/equipment like art, PE, DT, drama, PE, dance, computer science, music all had to be taught just from books, or very limited media.

Also, no assemblies, no school plays, no performances, no 'science day' or the like when people come together in the hall, no book fairs,

Not to mention not mixing children up for sets. How would all the different options in KS4 work when children may be in the same classroom as everyone else in their half of the year group at some time of the day?

Or do people envisage the children staying put and the teachers moving between classes and teaching science in an English classroom or drama in the Languages block?

The buses/tubes on school routes are RAMMED usually. Are people suggesting staggered timetables, to take account of this with the inevitable staggering of teaching time tables, taking into account those who work p/t, those who have to shield, those with pre-school children when nurseries aren't open, including planning and assessment time, staff meetings, training etc.

If the kids stay in the rooms whilst the teachers move, that's a lot of unattended children. We don't usually leave them on their own unsupervised anywhere around the school at any time.

If we wait until cases of Covid have dropped more significantly, then it will be less of a problem if children can't socially distance. With a good robust track and trace program, then outbreaks can be jumped on quickly.
I'd rather wait a few extra weeks in the short term until these things are in place than send children back earlier with the risk that this could spread infection rapidly and contribute to a second peak which would be far more disruptive to business in the long run.

You can not compare working with children to working in a supermarket, in healthcare or being a bin person etc. If you’ve worked with young children, you know that they pick their noses, put their hands in dodgy places (!), cough and sneeze into your face, don’t wash their hands properly and hug you, no matter how many times you ask them not to. You also cannot give an engaging lesson by standing at the front of a class, especially with young children. They would be so bored it would be cruel. The attention span of the average P1 on any activity is about 10mins max. But hey ho! Who cares about teaching staff’s health😕

Nellodee that's a good point. Maybe us secondary teachers will have to be more like primary teachers and teach just one group all the time.
It won't be great but maybe departments could put together daily lessons for each subject. I'd be fairly confident as a science teacher to teach maths as well as science (my degree was a science and maths) but I'd be on shaky ground with some languages and art/music - but I'd give it a good go!

And the older ones do daft things like sneak in to computer rooms at break and lick all the mice for a date, or cough in another teen's face and yell "Corona" or sneak off into hidden corners and snog each other!