1600 paediatricians have written to the prime minister

[havefunpeleton]

Demanding schools reopen or risk scarring a generation. Reported in Times today.

I am hoping this will be the push needed to ensure this madness ends and all our children can go back to school full time in September.

Most teacher training is on the job these days carrie

It is nothing to do with ‘warm bodies’

Usual naysayers on the thread who are so Covid obsessed that they are utterly closed minded about giving kids a proper education until risk is zero which is unrealistic and writing off the life prospects of hundreds of thousands of youngsters.

I don’t blame individual teachers (although some on Mumsnet appear to be massively obstructive). I blame unions, councils and government (both north and south of the border). They have consistently prioritised opening things for adults rather than education for children.

Teateaandmoretea

but if they are training with a teacher, that just increases the size of the bubble and doesn't leave them spare to take another bubble.

@CarrieBlue perhaps some retired teachers could help with training. Perhaps some shielded/vulnerable teachers WFH could help via zoom or whatever.

Perhaps graduates could be fast tracked into teaching with longer mentor ship but more real time experience.

Lots of possible ways around every problem

@FrippEnos

CrowdedHouseinQuarantine

the unions have only asked for the same provisions that the vast majority of keyworkers have had.

do you have any links?

That is what shielded teachers are doing, they are helping with remote learning at the moment

havefunpeleton

We could wheel the teachers teaching from home around on tvs like holly form red dwarf whilst TAs tackle all the behavioural issues.

@ineedaholidaynow

If KW children are in mixed bubbles it is very hard to teach them, much easier if they are in year group bubbles. So most schools with mixed bubbles won't be teaching KW children just providing childcare.. Again KW children were higher priority than Y6 pupils

I'm in awe of your dedication to the cause of defending something you know nothing about but hey ho, we'll go with it.

Our school currently (prior to Covid) teaches cross years in 3-4/5-6 mixed classes. Now however, they have dedicated year pods. It was suggested that we mixed these years again and had some cross F-yr1 classes also.

Apologies if this has already been covered but has anyone given thought as to how children are going to get to school if more classes are opened up under social distancing requirements?

A lot of pupils, especially those in out of town areas, rely on school buses. IME these are almost always full to capacity. How will dedicated local authority contracted
buses into schools work while social distancing and face covering are required on public buses?

@Teateaandmoretea I’m well aware that trading is done ‘on the job‘ these days (and I’ll ignore the debate about whether cutting the academic pedagogy study is beneficial or not) but that still means no extra pupils. It also assumes that there is a vast army of eager-to-train apprentices (rather than graduates) which hasn’t really been in evidence when £30000 was on offer so I’ll reserve judgement until I see it happen.

@havefunpeleton - retired teachers? again, I’ll await seeing that army of volunteers mustering but I’ll not hold my breath.

The government could solve the problem overnight
Gave schools emergency funding (biggest one)
Made class sizes 15 for primary
Freed up senior teachers to be in class more by suspending ofsted (accept for serious safeguarding failures) for two years in order to focus on the national effort.
Stopped companies that produce phonics resources from making money off education by employing national school staff who produced daily phonics resources available free (Oak academy has virtually nothing for this). Read write inc is fantastic and far more systematic than other schemes for example, but it should never have been developed by the private sector.
Secondary schools should move to planned, blended learning unless you are vulnerable for have SEND (although for some online is actually better!). They should produce a free to schools safe online learning platform that is proper online lessons. Learning from organisations like inter high.
All children on free school meals provided with dongle and chrome book (or equivalent).

Look like huge sums of money? Yes. But amazing how they produced it for furlough yet lack of schooling will have at least as much impact on the economy now (through parents not being able to work) and in the future. Not to mention the human cost!

CrowdedHouseinQuarantine

neu.org.uk/media/10536/view

Note that they are all inline with the DfE guidance

I want to apply for my pgce next September but I'm not allowed into school to work experience for my CV. I saw a TA role that would tick the box but I am not guaranteed school places or wrap around care for my own kids ( youngest is five so the MN rule of thumb of locking her in my car all day or being home alone would land me in the hands of SS - not great on the CV either).

Unless I do my pgce in my degree subject i would going to have to pay for my pgce as well with guarantees of a normal full year of training.

For the same reasons it's hard to teach, it's also harder to train up.

I have wanted to do this for about three years but it's made me think twice a bit. Education seems the most up in arms profession with covid. The only reason I even consider teaching is that I dont desperately need good money or promotion ( third career change)

I think schools just have to go back as normal. Deaths/cases are falling fast. I am happy to work from home and not use public transport so the kids can go back. My key worker friends' kids have managed to get nits from each other so no social distancing in their bubble, but they haven't got Covid despite the exposure to other key workers' kids and not have the teachers. There is no evidence to suggest that those teachers in and working with key worker children are dropping like flies and these are the kids most likely to have it.

@CarrieBlue there are a lot of teachers who have left teaching due to disillusionment/stress. I think huge numbers would return if ofsted was scrapped, class sizes were reduced and a swing towards a focus on wellbeing alongside academics.

Freed up senior teachers to be in class more

How many “senior teachers” (?) do you imagine are wafting around schools not actually teaching?

[quote toinfinityandlockdown]@CarrieBlue there are a lot of teachers who have left teaching due to disillusionment/stress. I think huge numbers would return if ofsted was scrapped, class sizes were reduced and a swing towards a focus on wellbeing alongside academics.[/quote]
I totally agree - the retention rate would also vastly improve. Not on offer though is it, sadly.

I’ve been a senior teacher and a lot of time is taken up on government initiatives and ofsted driven assessment data crunching. I’m not suggesting that is the school or teachers fault. It’s the mud we swim in. But it could be changed and most senior teachers (privately!) will admit that they think it’s a horrible waste of time.

I think schools just have to go back as normal and I am happy to work from home and not use public transport.

You’re too kind.

The government could solve the problem overnight
Gave schools emergency funding (biggest one)
Made class sizes 15 for primary
The 'gimme more money' mantra.
' Overnight?????'
To spend on what?
Elsewhere teachers are bleating about a recruitment and retention issue (tho in the Staffroom threads they admit that there are no job vacancies)
Chucking money makes no sense.

Alright @HipTightOnions

What I mean is that I am happy to accept limitations on my own life - including not socialising too - so that kids can have a proper education.

I think that it is tragic that we have underinvested down heavily in education, but I think that we really need to get kids back in a full timetable with qualified teachers ASAP, not continue with differing levels of provision, which is frankly where will end up even with the best will in the world and executing lots of the ideas that are good on this thread.

What level of safety do you accept - if there are still 100 cases U.K. wide and just a couple of deaths a month is that good enough? Or do we need total eradication?! France has sent all primary schools back as normal as of Monday despite not having eliminated CV - they are at about 50 per cent of our levels. We will definitely be there in September I would have thought.

I hope it helpS!
My child’s school were picking who to accept in next week.
Sadly we got text my child is not on list to go in.
How disappointing. Not to be in school for 6 months.

What level of safety do you accept?

It’s not about what school staff accept - we have no say in the matter and schools are working within government guidance. We want to be back too, but we would appreciate a similar level of caution to that deemed appropriate for other workplaces.

@UmbrellaHat - it’s not ‘bleating’ (how rude), there are serious shortages in a range of subjects. There are some regions where it is easier to recruit, but even desirable areas struggle to recruit maths or physics teachers. Due to severe underfunding of schools, it is difficult to move jobs as an experienced teacher as newly qualified or unqualified teachers are cheaper for schools, or schools are just not replacing teachers that leave. If you are spending time reading staff room threads, maybe you should read a little more carefully.

@Bartlet

Usual naysayers on the thread who are so Covid obsessed that they are utterly closed minded about giving kids a proper education until risk is zero which is unrealistic and writing off the life prospects of hundreds of thousands of youngsters.

I don’t blame individual teachers (although some on Mumsnet appear to be massively obstructive). I blame unions, councils and government (both north and south of the border). They have consistently prioritised opening things for adults rather than education for children.

I blame both the unions and some heads who've collapsed into a pit of "can't do it" and refused to even try to solve any issues. (Before I start I'll say I'll be hiding this thread afterwards as the "must lock down forever doom mongers" are getting on my tits right now - we locked down initially to buy time and prepare, somewhere along the line it turned into people shrieking we must be locked down forever until the virus goes away - the virus won't go away, it will likely mutate to become less virulent because a virus with a high kill rate is a pretty crappy virus and will kill itself out of existence).

My kids are at two different schools - one is run by a head who has been in education her entire career (we've discussed this a few times for various things) and the other is a head who moved into education from private industry. Guess which one has been putting obstacle after obstacle in place to opening? Guess which one has been sat there planning and replying with "yes this latest guidance seems really tough to implement - let me see what we can do with it." The contrast has been incredibly marked - one school have sent out communications that can only be described as politicised rants and the other have been asking opinions and trying to spin plates to keep people as supported and as many kids engaged as possible. It's not an issue of me liking one head more than the other - the first head is normally someone I've got a lot of respect for and the second head can come across appallingly until you get to know them - but the contrast in attitudes has been like day and night.

My youngest child has some SN, and speech issues - she'd made massive leaps forward in speech therapy this year and was doing incredibly well - just needed to work on a few final niggles with some sounds she wasn't fully consistent with. Happiest, most outgoing child you'd ever meet, incredibly resilient and just one of those kids who stick at things despite finding it harder because of her difficulties.

She had become completely tearful, terrified to leave the house for anything floating or flying in the air, unable to sleep because "there was too much sad" in her brain from missing her friends, and in absolute floods of tears constantly. The regression in her speech was terrifying - she was struggling to find words; sounds which she had been able to say consistently for months and months were slipping away and she was beginning to stammer. She began to have headaches so severe, with associated losses of vision - that the GP physically had her into the surgery to check things out and believed it was anxiety and mental health related.

I fought school to get her classified as a vulnerable child (and the negative connotations of having to label her as such really did bother me) not coping with the social isolation and it took weeks of me being stonewalled by the head, contacting every support organisation I could to try to get some mental health support for this child, and then eventually the class teacher actually calling us and hearing the deterioration in her speech fluency - for us to get her back into school in the keyworker/vulnerable bubble - and I have taken some shit from KW parents for us taking up a place there!

We're not fully back to where we were - her mental health is still wobbly, and her anxiety is still higher than I'd like - but we had done everything "right" - we'd followed all advice, guidance, chased up any organisation that might have been able to offer us some support in managing this at home - but what she needed was the social interaction with her peers that being at school provided. I should NOT have had to fight that hard to get her back in - and there are other kids suffering as much who haven't got parents with the confidence to do this who are just deteriorating in silence. The other child's school head picked up that we were not in a great situation and offered to take the sibling back as well so that we didn't end up with one in school and one out - again, she's absolutely buzzing with life now she's back in some form of "school". Neither are in school as education - it's very much child containment and the odd bit of busy work - differentiating for nursery through to year 2 in the same room was never going to happen - but just the interaction is so beneficial to them.

Even listening to my eldest on skype to some of her friends the other week - one of her friends is struggling to structure and articulate her thoughts in a similar manner now - and pretty much everyone I know is struggling to get kids to engage, to be interested in anything, to get out of bed - the impact on this generation is shameful. When I was trying to find any ways or avenues of support for my struggling youngest - time and time again I was getting into dialogue with organisations saying they were seeing exactly the same sets of symptoms again and again and again from these kids.

I'm an ex-teacher (currently retraining to change career as teaching wasn't good for my own mental health). I have offered to go in to either of my children's schools unpaid and fully DBS checked and qualified if they are struggling with staffing and need to maintain ratios to open to as many kids as possible. I'll stand in the kitchen washing pots and pans if required or do whatever to chip in - I'm not fussy but I can see our kids falling apart and I worry about those who haven't got parents who've felt able to flag things up to the schools when they're struggling - or had schools who were willing to listen.

I'm furious with the unions and I now resent every single penny I've paid to them over the years. They had a bloody golden opportunity - every parent in the land appreciating really just how tough that doing the educating thing was for a sustained period of time - they would have had more goodwill than they have had for decades toward teachers - and with rhetoric like proposing spraying our kids down with disinfectant before entering the school - they've blown it and made it look like they don't ever want to get back to work. The teachers I know - are equally as pissed off and ashamed of the way the more vocal ones have been going on.

Oh in case anyone thinks my child was just suffering adolescent angst - she turned 7 in the beginning of lockdown. Short of putting a 7 year old on antidepressants - we had done absolutely everything we could have done in terms of chivvying along, keeping busy, walks out in the nature reserve etc etc.