Schools fubared till November?

[Clemmieandareallybigbunfight]

Disruption to schools could continue to November, MPs told www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52895640

Is this a dystopian joke?

Are we actually trying to fuck up our kids?

Schools need to be instructed to open fully five days a week with enhanced on day cleaning, increased buses to allow distancing, staggered start and finish, covered but open refuge areas allowing distancing whilst outside in all weathers for breaks and no assemblies. Relatively low investment needed, huge gain economically but more importantly for our kids education and mental health. Some of these kids will never get back to school if they are out for so long. Some will fail to achieve their potential. And all for an illness with a tiny mortality rate overall?

Then we may as well stop SD everywhere. No more queues at supermarkets, etc.

It doesn't work like that. Even a proportion of the population social distancing breaks up the infection rate. It's not a case of x group isn't social distancing so there's no point in y group doing it

@snowballer

I’m not denying that schools does function as childcare. But that is not what it was set up to do.

And I actually think that the education side is being eroded by the childcare function. It comes across fairly forcefully in the attitudes of many parents and pupils.

This is what I am complaining about. Parents seem to be pushing to regain a system that does two things increasingly badly. Schools is terrible childcare because I doesn’t cover enough of the day for most parents, even with wrap around.

Why aren’t people demanding better if the government? The last ten years have seen school budgets cut to the bone and staffing levels decrease. Yet parents seem to blame teachers rather than the DfE.

From the inside it is obvious that the whole shoddy system is only held up by teacher expertise and good will. We pay our own money out to bridge the gap by buying resources and staying late to run session for kids who hang around after school.

I find this attitude that teachers are the problem baffling. All teachers have ever done is give up their money, time and sanity for the children in their care.

Treating what should be an education service as childcare is a disservice to parents, students and staff.

How social distancing works:

@ProsperTheBear

I don’t think you understand resilience. My dd is extremely resilient, between us we have withstood significant trauma in the past 5 years and she has dealt with it all admirably. Children can be resilient but it doesn’t mean this situation is ok and won’t have major impact on them. And I think for those of us with one child, the impact is even greater .

I am hoping that in September that the threat that this has with have reduced significantly.

It already has and it will be reduced further. Obviously things can’t just spring exactly back as before (so parents nights, assemblies, concerts, meetings with other schools, extra curricular events, trips etc off the agenda) but schools should be opening as much as possible to as many kids as possible. It seems like there’s no will for that to happen, this half arsed blended learning approach and social distancing in schools, even where the number of children who are likely to have the virus is minute, if any kids even have it at all, is OTT. But it’s been decided that’s what happening regardless of the actual threat of the virus and tough shit to those adversely impacted.

Due to leaving a traumatic situation my dd was on her own all last summer. And I was working . It was 7 weeks. We’re already at 10 weeks here .

Also for whoever thinks this is childcare need. I wfh anyway. I can do that with dd here. It has no impact on me. But it is impacting her .

I think the only way forward is to stop social distancing in schools between pupils. Not now but after summer.

It won't work.

Once children are not having to SD at school, they won't out of school either. And, in the case of primary, most likely their parents won't see the need either.

I think the only way forward is to stop social distancing in schools between pupils. Not now but after summer.

I think so too. If SD measures are still kept everywhere else and schools don’t open for parents nights, extra curriculars etc, why won’t this keep the virus down enough, after 5/6 months of suppression measures.

SudokuBook

the half arsed blended learning is from the government, scientists, unions and parents (those that want schools to open and those that want them to stay closed).

There is plenty of shit to share around if people want to.

And I actually think that the education side is being eroded by the childcare function.

I could not agree more with that!

@Delatron

I think the only way forward is to stop social distancing in schools between pupils. Not now but after summer.

Get them back full time in September when hopefully we will have reduced community spread right down and maybe the track and trace will be better.

Other countries like Switzerland have had children back full time since May 11th. Yes they had lower cases than us. We could hope that in 3 months we may be in this position though. We don’t know do we? The virus is down to less than 100 cases per day in London.

The easing of lockdown hasn’t caused an uptick in numbers or a second wave in other countries...

For what it’s worth I don’t blame the schools or the teachers but very much the government for a complete lack of leadership and direction on this.

Out of interest I just looked at Switzerlands deaths. They had 12 deaths on May 11, and only 3 the day before. (Our equivalent would be 88 and 22). They even had a day the week before with no deaths. Do you think we'd be having a different conversation with those numbers?

Those people saying other countries have gone back to school do realise that other countries have far far lower infection rates then ours!

Yes I said they had lower infection rates!!

In three months hopefully we will!

the worry is that they had a lower infection rate BUT a much stricter lockdown.

Let's hope we are proven right but I wouldn't bet my lifesaving on it.

They did allow bubbles of 10 children to play though? So that was less strict than us. Seems they locked down in the right areas and quickly (borders).

Surely the hope is that by September our infection rates will be far lower too?

Schools are disease laden places. I was constantly sick when worked in primary.

None of this is easy op. There are enough people already in arms that they're going back at all.

Well exactly infection rates will be much lower by September. We’ve peaked and we are on a downward trend. September is a long way away in the grand scheme of things. Think about where we were in April. Think about where Italy and Spain were and look at them now.

I think most people are now wise to the goady made up nonsense of the few.They overplayed their hands.

Such hatred of teachers is weird.

Such hatred of teachers is weird.

Is it? It has just replaced the hatred for SAP (usually mothers) on this site.

Followed closely by the bitterness towards furlough workers, but most people seem to have realised that it's such a close step from redundancy it hasn't gone too vile.

There's some interesting conspiracy theory where teachers actually made up the whole pandemic to go cruising and take a paid 6 months holiday on the beach somewhere.

Such hatred of teachers is weird.

I don't hate teachers. The teachers in my children's different schools have been uniformly incredible. I've written to the head of one of them to say how brilliantly they're doing. I have nothing but support for them doing what they're doing.

However I would have felt very differently if I was one of the many parents who has teachers who are not sending out any work/just sending an activity a week etc, or if my kids' school was one of the ones posting prison like pictures on social media and sending out letters telling parents they should keep kids at home.

What's "weird" is when teachers on here take personal offence at legitimate criticism by posters of their own schools, or of systemic problems with the teaching profession and their unions. You choose to be personally offended. You can choose to be more objective and realise you personally are not being attacked.

if my kids' school was one of the ones posting prison like pictures on social media

so you resent schools being upfront of what the measures look like? You'd rather they lie?

Just to add - it is true there are threads and posts which make sweeping statements about the teaching profession as a whole. I don't condone those at all.

But when someone comes on to say they haven't received any work for 6 weeks and then has to deal with anguished shouts of "teacher bashing teacher bashing" and ALL the daffodils, people start to lose sympathy

Prosper do you have a child in any of the year groups that have returned (or indeed in the KW bubble)? Because I do, and my child's school looks nothing like any of those pictures. You might want to have a skim of a thread I started on Monday on this topic and read the 300 odd replies of people who found the same as me. Link below. You'll see how remarkably positive the entire thread is.

First day back at school - how was it?
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3926188-First-day-back-at-school-how-was-it