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.

No, I am saying that the risk of exponential growth returning is unacceptably high if we open schools at a level anywhere close to what people want to satisfy their childcare requirements. And there is nothing we can do about that. We are not being difficult. We are not being snowflakes. We are saying that if you want childcare and teachers to just "suck it up like the rest of us" then the end result of that will be the virus getting out of hand again, which would mean more disruption to the economy, not less. And we would be very grateful if instead of taking that out on us, you listened to what we are saying.

I can’t speak for every school but my child doesn’t have his temp checked.
Lunch at home??? (So increased travel for parent & child)
Staggered pick ups (what about people with a few kids or more)
Masks (only last a certain amount of hours & need to be repeatedly changed or it defeats the object of using a mask)

This sounds like it will work a treat put it to your union I’ll be interested in their response

**There's other things you can get from a child other than COVID!!!!

Speechless!! Maybe you should have told the whole world this before it locked down.

My friends hubby works on oil rigs and he is not working because it is impossible to socially distance 150 adults.

I am not taking away from care workers, UTI consultants anyone working at the moment is a hero.

Would you all be OK with no social distancing in supermarkets?
Teachers are working. I am a TA working with children who have tricky behaviour. They can kick, bite, spit, kick other children and myself/staff daily. All we are saying is it's not that simple just to open schools.

We happy to listen but teachers are missing a key point children are not carriers though from what we know!! I’ve been sending my child to a hub and I also travel on public transport to a play scheme, we walk to the hub and my household is high risk due to my job.

I talk to the mums at the hub and I’ve not heard of any child falling ill nor have I watched it on the news.

The point is that it won't work.
Schools will be a high risk of exponential growth of the virus until community transmission is low enough to enable test track and trace to be effective.
Until then the precautions schools have take - reduced class size to keyworker children only so we CAN do hand washing, try to do some social distancing CAN do effective cleaning - will have to remain.

Teachers are back at work - we are all in school on rota (unless shielding) we are all working from home. Same as other workers are working from home if their employers can't guarantee social distancing.

Greenlorry, I could cite lots of research that supported the case that children are carriers just as much as adults. You could cite studies that say they are not.

This is called "cherry picking" - choosing only the studies that support your point of view. I won't do it. The truth is, no-one really knows yet.

There have been several research papers done on outbreaks in schools. Research that shows children actually do catch it at the same rates as adults just show fewer symptoms

@Kitcat122 you and some other teachers need to get a grip. If you had to work on the frontline AND look after a child too you wouldn’t be singing from the same hymn sheet would you!

Many other people do jobs that are at risk and they are willing to work teaching is not really a high risk job even with COVID they should thank themselves lucky!!

This sounds like it will work a treat put it to your union I’ll be interested in their response shock

That’s what’s happening in Denmark. I’m not suggesting it will happen here. It’ll be hugely reduced Class sizes here when we do reopen, I expect.

Sonineties

Here’s the science on just how hard it is for children to catch and pass on COVID19, even without social distancing measures at school and PPE. The doctors who wrote the paper have concluded on this basis, schools need to reopen

I couldn’t find the date on that data/paper, which is important because recent studies have confirmed the opposite but that article was full of ‘may’, ‘could’ and ‘might’, such as Evidence is therefore emerging that children could be significantly less likely to become infected than adults.
And
On the other hand, children could have the less likely scenario of showing minimal symptoms despite significant viral shedding.
And
Until there is high-quality sero-surveillance data, these questions will not be able to be answered with certainty. It is possible that biases in population selection for testing or false-negative swabs due to difficulties sampling in children contribute to existing findings

On the 30th April in The Lancet, an article was published that showed more emerging data from China that had the proof of children just as likely to catch and spread Covid19 as adults. The graphic attached shows the graph from that article. A quote from that article states 'Notably, the rate of infection in children younger than 10 years (7.4 per cent) was similar to the population average (6.6 per cent).

In response to that paper in The Lancet:

Professor Simon Clarke, a virus expert at the University of Reading, told The Times: 'This is an important paper. It means we should be extremely careful. As children are carriers, reopening schools could expose parents, grandparents and teachers to infection and in turn anyone they might come into contact with... risking a second wave.'

I know that teachers as a whole will go back when they are told to, despite what posters on Mumsnet think/accuse, because that is what teachers do by and large and are used to their concerns being ignored yet carry on for their students. However, I do wish that still using early/out of data data that children don’t catch Covid19 as much as adults or are low risk, would stop being used as the excuse to send them all back to school ASAP. Heck, send all children back on Monday but if there is a second wave as a result, remember threads like these tried to warn of the possibility.

Can I ask who would be doing this extra cleaning throughout the day?
We're down to two cleaners in a school with 300+ pupils. Even if only half were attending it would be physically exhausting. The last week before schools closed was horrendous. Half the cleaning staff down and quadruple the work.

Also, any attempt at social distancing would be pointless. Totally different set up to supermarkets etc.

@nellodee. Nice and balanced there I see. At least try to be objective here!

@Greenlorry you keep going on about willing to work???? I am in school everyday and oh! I have 4 children myself. It's not about getting a grip it's about safety of opening to everyone. (I and my family have had covid so I'm not too worried about myself).

Thermometer checks

Who will do this for 1200 children daily? If done at home some parents will, some won't. Who monitors that?
Deep cleaning between different groups
For every classroom in the zerominutes in between one class ending and another starting ?
A deep clean.
Do you know what a deep clean is?
Lunch at home
School buses? Public transport? Younger children ? Nobody at home? Not everyone lives across the road. We live 30 min by car from DC's school and I'm at work.

Staggered starts/pick ups
As above.

@Floatyboat I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.

@TheSultanofPingu

Other places manage to stay clean and employ cleaners. Why can't schools. Especially with the end of furlough, lots of people looking for work.

The problem for me is that those making the policy for how to deal with schools have not spent enough time in them.

Just the basics of hand washing for example - my daughters secondary school has approx 1600 pupils and 3 blocks of toilets with between 10-20 sinks in each. So max 60 sinks between 1600 pupils who will need to wash their hands between every lesson. 6 times a day means each sink being used 156 times a day!

@nellodee your photos. Also your argument that there is equally strong evidence for kids transmitting highly as not transmitting highly. It's almost embarrassing how determined you are to argue you should not get on with your job when millions of other key workers are doing so every day of the week.

To all intents and purposes impossible to socially distance in a school. Hell even thinking about handing out books and worksheets etc is difficult.

Why, what's difficult about it?

to minimise transmission there needs to be effective testing or track and trace

And in the meantime?

most schools due to safeguarding have only 1 entrance and it will take quite a while to temperature check every child.

How long would it take? Does it matter if it takes half an hour or 2 hours in the grand scheme of things? You could even check for bits while you're at it. I'm sure many parents would be eternally grateful due to the amount of lice and re-infection rates in schools

id estimate there are about 25 to 30 sinks for 900 pupils. We would go on and on about washing hands for long enough but realistically few would have.

So use buckets of water and a cheap bar of soap. What's the problem?

This is what I meant in my last post about thinking outside the box and schools taking on new ideas. There have been some really good suggestions on this thread but it's always "no no no, couldnt possibly do that, no way, it won't work". Its so defeatist

even before lockdown when people were told to self isolate you had parents keep people home but you also had kids coming in to school with persistent coughs or where other family members had temperature or persistent coughs.

If the child is coughing then why can't you ring the parent to take them home

I will go back when asked to but lets not pretend the risks of transmission are easily controlled; people would not be minmising these "simple" challenges if the effect on the children were so small. I myself have asthma and middle aged and carrying a few stone more than i should - will i survive an infection? used to think so now not so sure.

But other people are working and in much more high risk areas

To the other poster who says supermarket staff have PPE. No they do not. I worked in retail until recently and often chat with other retail workers and not one single supermarket in my area is handing out masks and gloves as far as I know. Some staff use their own but many don't bother. They just wash their hands on a regular basis

@MrsWhites

Well come up with solutions then! Maybe loads of non hospital grade alcohol gel? Come on tell us how it would work. This attitude that everything must be perfect or not work at all is childish.

Edit above
Check for nits, , not bits, of course.

Funny how nobody who doesn't want schools to open has suggested what we actually should do. Wait for a vaccine?

If this is what's going to happen the government are going to have to figure out some way to compensate a lot of very angry women (myself included) because we simply will not be able to work.

We chose to be a two income family. We are now not allowed to be a two income family (unless if by some miracle I manage to find an evening and weekend job). We will lose our house if schools do not re open until there is a vaccine.

Why should I be punished? Why should women be punished? Why should children be punished?

Noone is saying avoid it forever. We just have to keep the safety measures currently in place until we have test track and trace in place.
Why no cleaners? Budget. Heck we dont even have soap or paper towels. Teachers buy their own resources a lot of the time.
Schools are run on a shoestring. There are no spare classrooms and no spare staff to split classes. You can't clean between lessons unless kids are crowded into corridors waiting for you to do it.
They also "Corona cough" on each other and lick things. Eat th hand gel. Or their parents steal it. And parents send poorly kids into school all the time as they need the childcare.

@Floatyboat. We can't even get enough gluesticks in my school let alone employ forloughed staff to clean 😂😂. Teachers and TAs buy lots of our own things for the kids. Ie stickers, treats etc.

I am a TA working with children who have tricky behaviour. They can kick, bite, spit, kick other children and myself/staff daily. All we are saying is it's not that simple just to open schools

You are going to have to find a way to make this work just like every person in EMI homes, psychiatric units, care homes, neuro units etc where this behaviour is a risk. You should be wearing a shield (the wipes or type) and probably a mask as you are a 1:1 (tbh if spitting is happening, you should have been wearing one anyway) The risk won't go away, it'll always be there so you need to decide for yourself what you want in order to do your job.

The problem with schools is looking at them as a whole. You can't. Just like you can't look at the whole nhs and come up with a workable plan. There will be different issues, problems and solutions for every little bit of education and the staff will have to work it out for themselves,
Not wait for crap government guidance.