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.

@HandfulOfFlowers Yes, I have my own primary aged children at home. Some days they get sent really good work and we all sit together at the table working really well. Other days, I end up working whilst they end up playing on Minecraft.

Schools cannot open enough to function as useful childcare presently.

These are the options.

Open safely. Limited children in on any given day. People with childcare issues still have childcare issues and are still unable to work. Reduced economic benefit. Education is done reasonably well, with students provided meaningful work at school and provision for when they go home. May still result in unpalatable growth of the virus.

Open fully. Meaningful teaching (while it lasts). Useful childcare (while it lasts). Unfortunately, the downside of this is almost certainly exponential growth, massive amount more deaths, eventual closure and even harder eventual hit to the economy, health, education.

Open more for those who need childcare, no attempt to provide schooling for all children. Solves the economic issue, but provides completely uneven opportunities for children. Difficult to provide two types of provision, home and school at the same time. How to make it fair? What are the eligibility criteria?

Open only for safeguarding. Doesn't solve the education or the economy issue. May be hard to target and enforce.

Continue and improve homeschooling until cases lower and track and trace is possible. This may be the quickest way to a solution that does work for everyone, but whilst waiting, provides very little childcare or economic boost and a level of education that many are unhappy with.

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So those are the options. Personally, I think test and trace is the best of these. I think if we pushed on until September (7 weeks more) we could accomplish this. I think any other options just risk prolonging the pain. I want out of lockdown as quickly as possible and I think that the way to do this is to maintain it reasonably tightly for a little while longer. We should have locked down earlier and we wouldn't need to do this. But we didn't, so now we need to lockdown longer initially, so we can end this sooner.

Yes we can "eradicate" this (or get it low enough to work). No, we don't all need to get it at some point. Herd immunity without a vaccine = hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths. Test and trace is the only humane exit route.

Some nurseries have been open during lockdown for frontline staff. There is no social distancing once the babies and toddlers are in the nursery. Parents drop off at the door. There is no more PPE than normal. Nappies still have to be changed and babies cuddled. For some normal life has continued if you are a frontline worker or retail or care etc.

I think if we pushed on until September (7 weeks more) we could accomplish this

I'm sure we could. Who would pay for it? Or are the millions of unemployed a sacrifice you'd be willing to take?

Would furlough continue until September? Are the government going to throw money at nurseries and childminders? Because another 7 weeks closed over their busiest time will kill a lot of them off. Then where does that leave people when schools do start to re open?

I mean there'll be so many unemployed people perhaps only a tiny % will even need childcare.

@coffeeandbeans This is true. I want to know, why haven't people been doing some testing in those places (of adults, rather than children) and done research into levels of transmissibility for that age group? As you say, it's absolutely impossible to socially distance from a baby, so it should be very clear whether cases are coming from keyworkers to staff or not, and it should be reasonably straightforwards to reduce contact with the parents, rather than the children.

Where is this data? Where is the data on amount of cases in carehomes, split into separate groups, staff and clients? Where is the data about how many nurses, cleaners, care assistants are testing positive? All this information is vital to make sensible choices.

These decisions need to be made based on evidence, not on public opinion.

I disagree that we can now track and trace. That option is gone, personal opinion. It's rife where I live, completely rife. If you are willing to lock down everything completely perhaps,but this lockdown will never get to that stage. Just get the app, masks and temp checks to make people feel better, then go for mini lockdowns by area as it threatens to overwhelm the nhs

Anyone who wanted track trace quarantine - your time to speak up was mid to late Feb to very early March. You might have done. I did. In that three week window it became too late. Do you think we are at about the same levels we were then in terms of infected in the community? I really don't think so. We set sail to herd immunity then.

@TrustTheGeneGenie so which of the options I outlined above do you prefer? Because I cannot see one which gets everyone back to work and doesn't risk a massive explosion in cases. Do you think we -wouldn't- see exponential growth if we reopened schools fully? Do you think people would be able to return to work if we only offered 2 days a week, often on different days for different ages?

We can't wait for a vaccine. We need some kind of less-than-brilliant minimal version of school that just about works for the moment.

We do, it’s called homeschooling.

If schools don't open till September, presumably all the part time, trial and error, phased return etc stuff will happen then and proper full time education as we knew it before won't start properly until maybe October,...November?

Government needs to be explicit that they are accepting children will miss 6-8 months of education so everyone is on the same page. My son hasn't done any work since lockdown lifted. None. He's Autistic and already missed 2 years of school due to his needs. He's basically been written off - I want them to acknowledge that this is the case with lots of children and stop pretending that everyone is accessing oak academy and isn't it lovely.

My other question is, what happens when more and more people are requested at work and therefore their work is key again.....will schools will need to start accepting them like other key workers? Won't that make it all very difficult to manage with lots of different people saying they have been instructed to go to work?

The part time option sounds the best to me, I would much prefer that to half days. At least in a whole school day you can get more work done then in a half day. 2 days with group of 15, day to clean, sort home learning, 2 days with the other group. Sounds the fairest and most workable option.

In my mind schools will need to get creative with spaces. So library's, the hall and rooms used for 1-1 work will be converted to temporary classrooms to fit more children in but keep them separate. I am thinking it will probably be groups of 10 ideally, desks 2 metres apart, each child has own set of resources which stays with them all day. Teacher only teaching at the front. Lunch eaten in classrooms and playtime staggered. They only interact with their group. Timetabled times for toilets.

Drop off kids go straight in, no morning playtime and lining up. Same with pick up, 1 in one out drop off/pick up situation. One way system in corridors. It's going be logistically be very hard. I don't envy the person deciding or the HT and staff trying to see how to make it work for their school.

As for work I guess they are going to need employers to be very flexible. Allowing parents to work within school hours, or a shift system in two parent families where parents do one long day each and make up hours at evenings and weekends if possible. Days dcs aren't at school parents work from home as much as they can around home schooling as we have been.

@llets this isn't true. Cases are falling. I've used daily deaths, as new cases is very unreliable due to changes in testing criteria and ability. I'd prefer to have used hospitalisations as the best indicator of cases, but this is the best I have access to. In one month, we've gone from a peak of about 900 to 600 deaths per day. This drop is linear. If we continue at this pace, by September, we will have very few deaths at all, if any.

We CAN do this.

Honestly? I don't know. I don't know what the best option is. Perhaps a combination of opening schools partially plus track and trace.

I'm not sure there is a good answer but I don't think it's economically viable to stay locked down until September unless the government bring in universal basic income.

The poor are getting poorer and the "doing alright" (me) are going to get very poor very quickly if this continues.

The rich are generally totally fine.

It's creating a bigger gap in society a bigger gap between our children...

There obviously needs to be a balance in where we do not condemn the childcare industry to death. And where we do not condemn parents of young children (already happening) but where we continue to at least limit this virus' growth. Because yes if it's left to run rife the economy won't thank us for that either.

I’m not convinced we are following evidence - this study in the lancet for example, showing we basically don’t know if school closures actually help because no-one’s studied it in enough depth.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/06/school-closures-have-little-impact-on-spread-of-coronavirus-study

Is anyone monitoring whether infections amongst children who have remained in school have gone up? This would be useful information to have.

Keeping schools closed just in case they may help slow transmission needs to be offset against other harm occurring right now. Who is studying the impact on children’s mental health? There are countless vulnerable children hidden away with no voice in this at all. Abuse, DV, highly stressed parents, impact of poverty etc. These matter too.

The problem with half in one day, half in the next, is it doesn't account for key worker/vulnerable children. In my class 5 children are in each day at the moment, another 5 are entitled to come in (2 of them would need to if schools reopened). So I could have 10 in every day, leaving the other 20 children to share the remaining 5 spaces.

Keeping schools closed just in case they may help slow transmission needs to be offset against other harm occurring right now. Who is studying the impact on children’s mental health? There are countless vulnerable children hidden away with no voice in this at all. Abuse, DV, highly stressed parents, impact of poverty etc. These matter too.

This.

September is 4 months away. 6 months in total. There needs to be some explicit statement from government to say that if they do this, the above are acceptable losses to them.

A keyworker isn't someone that has to work. A keyworker is a job that has to operate through lockdown for us all to live functional lives. Ie food, doctors, rubbish collection etc.

I understand the posters who say, 'NHS workers are faced with COVID everyday.'. Yes and what a horrible, terrifying prospect. Huge respect to them all. The issue with schools is that the children can be silent carriers. Imagine having 30x little creatures, all carrying the germ, with no idea of personal space, some coughs/sneezes are not caught, boogas are picked, eaten or spread to stationary. You don't know who is a carrier or where it's going next. It's definitely a case of 'the devil you don't know'. A normal sized primary is almost 700 children, a secondary 1000-1500. I think it's the younger ones who are likely to spread it more, yet they're the ones expected to go back first so parents can work. And if they only go in half days or alternate dsys/weeks, how will that help parents get back to work?

The problem with that @kitkat122 is that a lot of other people are still working outside the home.

People are managing now because of furlough. When that ends previously 2 wage families will be 1 wage families.... How is that sustainable?

If the government are actively going to stop people working (ie not open school or paid childcare) then they need to carry on furlough at least or bring in something else to keep people afloat.

A keyworker isn't someone that has to work. A keyworker is a job that has to operate through lockdown for us all to live functional lives. Ie food, doctors, rubbish collection etc.

If government change the advice on who should work, the definition of what they class as a key worker will also change.

Use the provisions the school send you to teach your children. If you want more look online twinkle etc offering lots of free stuff. Keep a routine, get the out for a walk, bike ride etc daily. Facetime friends - yes it's a bit tricky and not ideal but come on, we just need to do it. Have some fun with your kids make some memories!!!

Send those back who NEED to ( Still more child care than education)Safeguarding/ child in need /SEN/ both parents working etc.
As more parents go back so do kids.
If all ok expand to opening to those who want it.

Some sort of child care over the summer holidays.
September all in as normal if everything went ok so far.

Use the provisions the school send you to teach your children. If you want more look online twinkle etc offering lots of free stuff. Keep a routine, get the out for a walk, bike ride etc daily. Facetime friends - yes it's a bit tricky and not ideal but come on, we just need to do it. Have some fun with your kids make some memories!!!

Ffs you literally have no clue about what some (including me) are dealing with. If you did, you wouldn't write something so knoblike and insensitive.

Have some fun with your kids make some memories!!

Ah yes fun memories of being plunged into poverty and not being able to pay the bills.

You're clearly very privileged if your focus is "making memories"

Ok, to be fair if we lockdown for six months we might reach those levels

We can't afford that as then we couldn't afford anything ever again

I kind of discounted it

Do you personally have six months savings to live on and are you prepared to do so? Does everyone else?

One of my options was to have school focused on protecting the vulnerable. I'm not sure how this would work, but it is certainly one focus. I think probably the days in/days out would work best for this, but like I say, the trade of with that is that many people would still not be able to work, cases would rise, and it would hamper the track and trace program and potentially delay a return to something more like full normality.

If the purpose of school is safe guarding, then my suggestion would be to have a single day a week for all children. This would mean every child was monitored but would minimise spread and hopefully mean the amount of time until we have low enough cases to rely on test and trace more than social distancing was as low as possible.

It seems we have several axes:

Spread. Safeguarding. Childminding. Education.

Whichever one you prioritise, you are going to take a hit on others.

@llets at the rate I showed, it would take 2 months, not 6. I suggest all mortgage, rent and utility payments are frozen for those unable to work for this time.