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?

My school is 99% Asian. How do you think those parents feel about sending their kids back in, knowing they and their family are at a hugely higher risk of complications and death from covid?

Nobody should be forced to send their children in if they don't want to.

Equally people who want their children to go to school should be able to send them.

I agree OP. Poor children. There was another thread with everyone talking about how much their kid’s mental health was suffering (without even going in to the educational side of things).

Our best hope is that the rules on social distancing in schools are reduced/ done away with. That those that need to shield do and that by September cases in the community are so low the risk is minuscule to all.

September is 3 months away. Other countries are getting back to normal now, opening shops, restaurants, allowing gatherings of many people. We are following a different path but surely not one that is 3 months behind them?

Other countries are giving me hope now.

Shielding teachers can still work away from the classroom, relieving those who normally have significant admin burdens but can do face to face teaching.

The admin burden is linked to the face to face teaching. You can't do admin burden without teaching unless you are admin staff specifically. But thanks for trying to organise my job for me despite not understanding how it works.

@NeverTwerkNaked no, its like people don’t give a duck about the virus in schools. Everyone is forgetting that whilst we know most children get it mildly if at all (but again this is limited because children haven’t had much contact with each other until now) but the role that children play in transmitting the virus is not yet known. It isn’t known yet whether children can pass it to other children who can carry it home, or pass it to the staff who cannot stay 2M away from them, but hey don’t worry about that, cram them into classrooms and let’s get on with it

we had school closure in the recent past because of D&V

Yeah for a couple of days not for months on end huge difference!

What's the point at raging at reality? We all need to take stock of our personal situations and plan as well as we can accordingly.

Won't happen.

Unless we see a considerable spike over the summer, public sentiment will support a full normal return to school in September

Whether this is wise and science led is another matter. But I think other factors will mean that school will resume as normal in September simply because of behaviour and how fed up the public are.

This government are very much led by public sentiment rather than other issues because they are popularists - who have certain economic self interests.

We shall see whether we get a spike in cases soon enough.

I think that we could well see a 2nd Wave at some point but i think it more likely to reappear in November rather than earlier than that.

Have the people commenting actually read the link? It's an interesting article and says lots about more than just education in a classroom.

Much of what Longfield laments should also (some might argue only!) be the job of a properly functioning, properly funded children's social care system.

Disappointingly ( I don't know her background or how she came to her position) she never mentions this. Nor do the government, obviously, who don't want the spotlight thrown on to a chronically underfunded social care system , so want instead (chronically underfunded) schools to solve all of society's woes : including a pandemic virus, it seems.

@twinnywinny14 according to this study, zero cases of children passing CV 19 to adults.

www.smh.com.au/world/europe/experts-fail-to-find-a-single-case-of-children-passing-virus-to-adults-20200430-p54ohi.html

No child has been found to have passed coronavirus to an adult, a review of the evidence in partnership with the Royal College of Paediatrics has found.

Major studies into the impact of COVID-19 on young children suggest they "do not play a significant role" in spreading the virus and are less likely to become infected than adults.

I really never understood why so many parents think September is the magical month when everything will be ok.

At some point, unless we get a vaccine very soon, the government is going to have to decide just how much they want to damage the youngest generation’s lives to protect the oldest and the vulnerable. I suspect social distancing will be over by the end of the year at the latest.

I think November is optimistic.

I'm just going to point out that the limitations around opening are coming from the government.

Our best hope is that the rules on social distancing in schools are reduced/ done away with. That those that need to shield do and that by September cases in the community are so low the risk is minuscule to all.

We've just changed our plan for this term to take out all BAME staff. The report we based our decision on had a line about the NHS expecting a second wave in late Autumn.

Don't blame the schools, blame the Govt for not acting quickly enough when they saw the virus tearing through Europe towards us and us ending up with almost 40k dead and a not-fit-for-purpose test, trace and contact scheme which, had it been up and running by the end of March, would've made it much easier for our children to safely return to the classrooms. Anger at schools is totally misplaced.

2m is a made up number.
The sooner it is dropped the better.
1m and most of the country can function.

zero cases of children passing CV 19 to adults

All in cases of household/family transmission, so 2 children 2 adults as an average. No research on 30 children and one adult.

Appuskidu- one third of your staff are shielding?! That seems an enormous number. Are you sure that's correct?

Anger at schools is totally misplaced.

What you mean is 'anger at schools is normal'. We had a whole 2 days there where schools and teachers had made people's kids have a nice day in class, and now no more. "Two days worked, with massive changes in operating practices, let's get them all back!!" THE ECONOMY!!

I have 1 m distancing in a bubble of 15 children.

I certainly can't make it 1m with the usual 32-33 per class.

Secondary schools can't have bubbles, because of the subject combinations, so for them, social distancing is the ONLY transmission reduction mechanism.

I am a massive teacher-supporter.

But I feel like we are prioritising teacher -shielding over every single other group. The teacher unions are going too far. If my small child is in school 1/3 of the time, do I quit my job? I can't really manage this wfh thing for a year. Do I find a nanny, can I afford it? Do I cobble some dodgy child share with other mums that leave my kids just as exposed to covid as she would be in school?

Either I kill my career and impoverish my family, or find childcare that means my child is just as exposed as she would be in school. Closing schools hurts my family. The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged will grow.

Stop telling me school is not childcare. It is not only childcare, it is more than childcare, but it is also childcare. It is how our culture is set up to allow people to work and support their families. We need to dramatically change a lot of how we are organised if primary school is not a kind of childcare (and that means women don't work)

I am in near constant physical contact with my own kids. As a secondary teacher I was trained to never have physical contact with pupils. If my children, who I am missing and cuddling, changing nappies and wiping bums, aren't passing it to me, then the 30 kids sat behind desks in front of me aren't either.

1m would really help. Businesses and the hospitality sector could function better/ start opening and it would help the school situation.

1m is the WHO recommendation and it is 1.5m in many countries. I really hope this is changed soon.

I'm getting more and more pissed off by the day that millions of children are having their lives screwed up by a virus that disproportionally affects the generation that's two up from them.

Why the hell are we depriving children of their lives when it's the vulnerable who now should be protecting themselves? I've had numerous conversations with my 78 year old father who is horrified that so many children are having their futures compromised by protecting - for the most part - his generation. It's mind blowing when you stop to think about it. 8 million people having wages paid by the state, people of healthy status, in low risk brackets, all at home. It was absolutely the right thing to do at the time but this all has to be paid back and my god it's not the 70+ year olds that will be paying for it. And kids are suffering now beyond anything that's justifiable. Home learning isn't education. I've stopped kidding myself that my kids, despite doing everything that's set, have made any progress at all over the last ten weeks. Thankfully one of them is now back at school but the other is falling so far behind despite having a full online programme - she's just not built for this, she's too young to make progress this way.

The lockdown did its job which was not to overwhelm the NHS. We have to start accepting risks now and get children back to school properly.

I await my flaming.