Are we expecting schools to be open as normal by September?

[Concerned7777]

So many threads on here about whether to send dc back in June or not....totally not the reason for the post I dont care your thoughts either way about June .
But what about September, many saying they're keeping dc off til September but are we expecting everything to be open and normal as it was before? Do we think all classes will return in September full time?

Schools are having to implement changes to open in June with many saying the changes aren't possible or not safe. Some saying it may be child care only not education, part time only and not even able to accommodate the priority nursery reception yr1 and yr6 classes at this time with the current guidelines. If we cant accommodate them now how can they accommodate the whole school a few months later. I doubt the virus will be eradicated by then although the R rate will be lower there is still going to be risk even then.
It never occurred to me until today that a September full school open may not be possible or safe? Am I the only one who thought this or am I late to the party?

Primary/infants here, i email then every day but they also ring every two weeks, which they do for everyone to make sure they’re keeping in touch with those not contacting via email or online assessment thingy. They also have class Facebook private groups for each class where they reach out every day and refer to work set

I can't see any schools opening full time for classes. It's not going to happen.

The guidance isn't worth the space it take sip on the internet as quite early on it states:

Schools are not required to use this guide, and may choose to follow alternative approaches to preparing for wider opening, or to use some sections of this guidance alongside other approaches.

I bloody hope we go back to normal in September but I'm not hopeful. 😩

Why on earth would teachers ever end up furloughed? If anything we are going to need 2 to 3 times as many of them. Smaller social distanced classes are going to need more teachers.

How will anyone get their teacher training done right now?

How can PGCE qualifications happen (if the Unis stay closed), and is it really social distancing practice to have trainee teachers in the classroom?

So that's additional shortfall of 28,000 people who should newly qualify each year.... who won't exist. As long as social distancing continues.

The reality is we can open full time and keep group sizes safe. If my class is split into two groups of 15 then we need space for the other 15 kids to go! Our schools are already overcrowded and we can’t magic up classrooms up out of thin air - especially in a two form entry school. Even if we could recruit the extra staff required (we only have 1 TA across the whole of key stage 1) we don’t have any spare classrooms. So for everyone to get a turn in school then that has to mean part-time unless you want us to return to class sizes of 30 in the middle of a pandemic? Plus when the full school is in - we will still need staggered start and finish times to reduce numbers at dropping off and home time to keep people safe.

I have a ds in y2 who’s school have been using google classroom for 7 weeks now. The teachers are amazing, they post work everyday, read and upload stories, do online assemblies which include merit and birthday’s where they name and sing to everyone who has a birthday that week, lots of parents are photographing work and posting it on the live stream, teachers, ta’s and the head take the time to comment on every single one. They have been fantastic throughout
Ds y9 school uses weduc which is email based, he is set work from every teacher at least weekly, ds is completing the work and emailing it back and they are very quick to respond with praise and feedback, they are all contactable via email on the app and have been wonderful with responding quickly to any questions. They have started preparing for GCSE’s with a lot of subjects already starting project work to ready ds for y10 come September. It’s clear that the teachers in our area are very busy and working very hard to deliver a top notch education in the only way available at this time.

So this is why I think schools need to get behind some sort of June opening. September won't be magically all better (although some things might have improved it EG track and trace established, antibody tests available, new treatments possibly in wider use) if we re open in June with just a few children, achieved with a combination of parent's willingness to send the children to school and allocating part time places, then we can start to get to grips with the measures needed to keep one another safe. These measures will included no mixing of class groups, distanced seating, as much fresh air and outdoor time as possible (whatever the weather!) each child having their own box of resources rather than sharing, twice daily temperature checks, no contact activities and of course massively increased hygiene.

We're going to need to change and adapt at some point like everybody else and hopefully by September we'll have got our heads around it a bit more.

Let them have a staggered return from June, see how the numbers go. Reduce summer holidays to two weeks to make up for the lost contact time in classrooms. Five months is a long time to be out of school and it is a lot of missed learning. I appreciate teachers are doing their best for their students but it is not a substitute for school.

I pray they can go back. I work from home. One DC has severe learning diffs and autism. she is not coping now as it is (neither do I and her sister). I really need her back into school full time Asap. We are already beyond breaking point.

For me, the risk of any of us catching covid is less concerning (none has underlying health issues, all fit, healthy and slim) than the ongoing effect of having her at home long term - both on her own MH but also on me and her younger sibling.

Of course the risk involved is different for everyone and personal circumstances and health issues need to be taken into consideration and accommodated accordingly. The recent ONS graph below highlights the risks to different professions.

stuckindoors77 speaks a lot of sense

BackinTime, They are not going to reduce the summer holidays to two weeks, know that.

An alternative option, and it is already in place in other countries such as the Netherlands, is that social distancing rules just don’t apply to children under the age of, say, 10. A friend of mine who lives just outside Amsterdam said that during their lockdown the social distancing rules didn’t apply to kids so they were able to meet up at parks for kids to play together, providing the adults kept 2m apart from each other and children not in their household. Their schools have gone back this week so we will see in the next week or so if it makes any difference to their infection rates.

Reduce summer holidays to two weeks to make up for the lost contact time in classrooms.

This isn't going to happen.

ragged I have no clue were or how we magic up extra teachers. But I do know that furloughing teachers will not happen. Which is what a poster up thread suggested.

I have considered that empty office buildings or council sports halls could be quickly transformed into temporary classrooms with a class split between two rooms. Teacher moving between the two rooms / video link and a classroom assistant to help. I can see how it would work for primary kids.
High school bit more difficult.

If people suggested exhibition centres could become hospitals six months ago you'd have thought they were mad. But really anything is possible.

Reduce summer holidays to two weeks to make up for the lost contact time in classrooms.

😂 all these people angry at teachers getting paid and you think they'd be happy for us to have an extra month's salary?!

Instead of picking fights with teachers, why not demand the government stop the fraud of pretending they have the testing set up and ready (remember they've stated this as one of their 5 tests to be met before easing restrictions, you know like wider reopening of schools)?

They're not meeting the target of "hundreds of thousands of people being tested per day" (BJ).

On May 10th 37 000 people were tested. The government reported that their target of 100 000 tests were met on 10th May.

Statisticians do not believe the government have ever met the target even once.

This is fraud and this is where our attention should be, not teachers.

'More or less' from radio four explains this very clearly:

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2r7

Haplap- agree cannot trust gov, also they cant just randomly test people and call that tracking and testing they need to test people who are likely to have it. But they dont know because it's not like they are asking people going for testing who their contacts are and making them SI for weeks.
Someone said 1/500 is currently infected that is 1 child/parent/teacher in an average size primary.
Also the in everywhere is currently higher than london and rising in some areas.

I can't see our secondary school open, with social distancing, for every pupil.

We have 2000 plus students in our school and, working out as they did when the school became a hub (so it's a quick and dirty calculation), I THINK we'd have room for perhaps 1000 socially distancing. They'd have to bring a packed lunch as we couldn't move that amount of people safely around the area OR our lovely canteen staff may be able to deliver the 'dish of the day' into classrooms - we use pots for our meals so the kids can take them outside on a sunny day as we only have 40 minutes to feed 2000 at the moment!

So it'll either be half days, every other week in class or those who are at critical level or in need of extra help coming in.

UNLESS, the school can source portacabins for the rest of the students...We're lucky, we have an extensive playing field and portacabins could be the way forward. We'd need 100 though - it'd be like Nissan huts in the old war films.

As far as cover is concerned, it'll be TA in one class, teacher next door. If we need to go to 10 per class then they'll have to call up the final year teaching graduates and they'll all have to do a year in a classroom as part of their degree. They did similar with the NHS - final year students went to the front line.

Forgot to add though, my biggest fear isn't the schools. Our schools will either manage it or they'd limit access. My biggest concern is the travelling to school.

Many of our students come in by bus. We have a huge catchment area - some come from 25 miles away (rural community). Most are in the next town over which is 10 miles away. Our bus company uses double deckers for them. Which are usually full.

So question 1 to sort out - how do they line up for buses in the town centre, 2 metres apart? With four other schools in that area all trying to get to their school too.

question 2 - are there enough buses to transport all of them if they are only allowed to sit 1 to a double seat for social distancing?

Question 2 could be handled with part day or part week working. But even that's a difficult one for the transport workers. It's not as simple as saying if class 8J is split in half, that satisfies social distancing on the bus. Because 8J may not all use the same bus obviously. That's going to be a logistical nightmare and I don't fancy being a transport worker sorting that out!

Backintime - don't forget those stats are for when most teachers are only in on a rota, with a lot less students than normal. If schools hadn't closed to all but the vulnerable and keyworkers then those stats would probably look a lot different?

London - very few teaching staff in secondary train on a three year degree course, it's mostly PGCE so not the same as final students entering the work force. The equivalent would be letting first year nursing students go straight into the workforce. PGCE students need a lot of support and should have a classroom teacher in with them at all times which doesn't help with staff numbers. In practical subjects such as DT and science this would be positively dangerous.

I don't think they can run PGCE courses next year, not in the format they currently are anyway. I suspect we will get a whole cohort who have spent very little time in a classroom. And in the big scheme of things, it's not a lot of time anyway. It is a big worry because there will be resignations over covid anyway plus all the usual resignations and retirements. Although having said that, some may hang on because finding other work will be difficult. We will see some schools run by teachers on supply in the main, I think. It's really not good.

I don't think anything is about 'protecting teachers'. Certainly on MN there seems outright glee at the thought of us keeling over.

It's more hordes of teenagers mixing & taking it home, causing a huge second wave. You could, I guess, make a case for thinning the herd of all those teenagers' vulnerable relatives over the summer before flu season kicks in - it's a cold way of looking at it but probably practical, if you're Dominic Cummings.

Not many students will die, & it'll mostly be the older & more expensive teachers whom the govt has been driving out for years, so unless you happen to have a parent or sibling teaching in their 50s or above, most parents of school age children won't much care. Dead teachers are generally seen as a fair price to pay to get other people back to work. Teachers are stuffed.

Personally, I think we will we doing the Hokey Cokey around regional outbreaks. Let's say hospitals in Wigan or Truro get overrun - quick, shut the schools.

It'll drag on for years.

Of course the other interesting thing will be the effects on teacher recruitment & retention. It'll be any warm body in front of any class, as any experienced, older teacher with options legs it out of the classroom - online tutoring will be a growth industry with experienced teachers charging huge premiums.

My son (13) is getting approximately 3 hours work a day. It’s all being marked and he’s getting feedback on it. He can contact any of his teachers any time and they have all replied quickly when he has. He gets a weekly questionnaire from his guidance teacher checking that he’s ok and has been told that if he doesn’t respond to it or fails to register each day his guidance teacher will be in touch to make sure he’s ok.

I’m very happy with what he’s getting from the school.

There are some schools which are setting no work whatsoever. The following comments were taken from one social media post in the space of five minutes two days ago. Note that it wasn’t a teacher bashing thread. It was a funny thread asking what is the worst piece of work assigned by your child’s school:

Not had anything set from school so just winging it

None, we've had the odd suggestion to grow sunflowers via FB!!!

Nothing set to submit but plenty of activities on the school website if one wants to.

Ideas via email and odd thing on class dojo but nothing set. I do feel they could have had one or two proper lessons on line . I’ve used bbc bitesize lots . Feel a bit let down to be honest. My teenagers had all her lectures every day with homework

We was having lessons sent from the teacher but now its all the bitesize lessons

We haven’t been set any.

Our primary school haven’t set work. They’ve given suggestions and set games on Purple Mash, but for those who won’t/can’t access Purple Mash there’s nothing other than suggestions like use BBC bitesize.[Response: our school is exactly the same].