Every child in every year group will return to school in September, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said.

[itswhereitsat]

I didn't catch the briefing but read the above comment in the news. The big question is, did he say whether children returning would be part-time or full time? Or did he just gloss over that bit?

Ponty the virus is still out there, yes. It's going to be out there for quite some time. The country can't shut up shop until there is a vaccine (if there's a vaccine at all). The virus could become endemic like the flu.

I read today that the UK's borrowing is now worth more than the UK's economy.

That threat is more tangible to people of all ages than the virus.

When assessing risk, you generally have 3 options: avoid, mitigate and accept.

We are currently mitigating but it will get to the point where we have to accept.

This virus is dangerous and we're still learning a lot about it, but the chance of dying is statistically very low.

Even those who are shielding and are classed as extremely clinically vulnerable - the risk of death is still very low, albeit higher than somebody with no pre-existing conditions.

Hallelujah! Mine will be there with bells on!

@Useruseruserusee do you have a TA per class?

Italiandreams. Yes in EYFS and KS1. Usually in Y3 as well but not in upper KS2.

Sounds like fobbing off to me. When? How are you going to do bubbles of 30? How? And when?

We all know politicians aren’t known for their transparency and honesty, right?

Doesn’t matter if he spelt it out that come September schools will be back to normal. It doesn’t matter a jot.

@colouringindoors

Has he ever been in a secondary school?

Don't get me wrong, I want both my kids back in school. But I do not trust this government one tiny bit to keep my kids, their teachers and me as a member of staff in a secondary school safe. They've killed thousands in care homes. We have one of the highest death rates in the world and now Gavin says they'll all be back September. F**k him.

This. I’m a teacher. I’m not worried about myself - my partner is a nurse and has tested positive for antibodies so we’re assuming we’ve both had it. Although who knows.

But I’m worried about my colleagues. The kids I teach - a high proportion of whom come from BAME families. The families who could get the virus as a result of kids mixing.

I don’t actually know what the answer is - but yes we’re one of the worst affected countries in the whole world and I don’t trust the government one bit anymore. It’s been one huge F-up from start to finish,

Teachers teaching wildly different subjects to their own is not better than remote learning, set by a subject specialist. I’d be useless in a Maths or Science lesson. They’d be better watching a YouTube video and following a decent textbook.

I completely agree with you about mixed ability teaching for all the reasons you mentioned, and for your set up I can see it working.
You however, have a lot more support staff that many schools around here and that is my worry. If TA can’t be shared as mostly happens around here, many will be 30 children to one adult and I worry about how the promised catch up programme will work.

I’m definitely up for everyone going back, just slightly worried it’s the usual big promises from the government with schools struggling to implement.

Oh I definitely agree we are in a lucky position. My school is inner London and historically we have benefited from better funding. Of course we have our own challenges, particularly with mobility.

I agree with you - the government will promise but leave to schools to deliver and we are all different.

@Billomatey

How will primary school bubbles work if you have siblings in different bubbles? If someone gets ill, how many bubbles need to isolate?

My understanding is that you only isolate if you have had direct contact with someone who has symptoms or tests positive.

I have a DS in Yr6 and a DD in YrR so
If another child in DD's bubble has symptoms/tests positive then DD has to self isolate, but DS, DP and I don't (because we - DS, DP and I - haven't had direct contact with the symptomatic child in DD's bubble).

If DD then develops symptoms/tests positive then DS, DP and I will have to self isolate, but DS's bubble don't (because no one from DS's bubble will have had direct contact with DD)

If DS then comes down with symptoms/tests positive then his bubble will have to self isolate.

I hope that makes sense. (It took me a while to get my head around it)

Even those who are shielding and are classed as extremely clinically vulnerable - the risk of death is still very low, albeit higher than somebody with no pre-existing conditions.

I’m not worried about death. I’m worried about long term health problems that come with the virus.

Hilarious. 70 secondary school kids from my village will get on the bus, dutifully wearing masks (which they’ll pull down the minute the bus leaves). And then at school they get separated into bubbles.

Even if we all manage to drive them to school, my 3 kids are connecting to 70-80 other families, and most of those families have siblings in bubbles of their own.

It’s either safe to get them back in school, or we should be in lockdown.

DH's school is back next week - R through to Y6. Private sector so they have commandeered empty office space and local sports club pavilions to enable the bubbles. 8.30 earliest with staggared start times until 3.30 though so hopeless for those who work unless they're furloughed as no breakfast/after school clubs.

The vulnerable aren’t a homogenous group. I have a vulnerable toddler, I believe the chance of him dying is tiny but his surgeon is clear that he would almost certainly be hospitalised. Every winter he is hospitalised with some kind of cold or chest infection so it’s sensible to not take any risks with this unknown virus. At the moment his surgeon is advising that he doesn’t go back to nursery so of course we will follow that advice.

The vulnerable should have individual assessments of their risk towards Covid.

I'm glad they are commited to trying to get this to work.
Years 7-9 is relatively easy, just stream instead of set.
Years 10 and 11 will be harder. It will be interesting to see what they come up with.

Year 10 in our secondary take options with students from all 8 forms. Those with unusual options and very high sets sets for some subjects and very low for others can end up being with most students in the year at one or other of their lessons. Plus the other year groups on the buses to get to school. Definitely no way it could be bubbled. May well be better off studying at home than being kept in one bubble of 30 even just for core subjects in year 11. It could result in students on target for 9s at triple science to be taught with bottom set dual science.

It annoys me that they tell us what is going to happen but not how it will happen. They clearly do not have a plan. It's nearly the end of term and school will have limited time to make the necessary changes.

In my school we have moved toward mixed ability teaching across the board so it would be easier to implement a bubble. We have no general TAs though except in Reception so how would a bubble work with just one adult for the whole day? Also there will be high staff absence if people have to self-isolate. Who will cover the bubble?

I have no idea how secondary would work especially with school transport. My DC are crammed in like sardines on the the bus every day.

@GravityFalls

Teachers teaching wildly different subjects to their own is not better than remote learning, set by a subject specialist. I’d be useless in a Maths or Science lesson. They’d be better watching a YouTube video and following a decent textbook.

^^This

Planning a lesson for someone else to deliver is tricky.

Planning a lesson for someone else who's not a subject specialist is nigh on impossible.

You'd be turning the entire teaching force into non-specialist supply teachers. Remember how much learning went on when a cover teacher turned up?

We'd have to reteach everything once things got back to normal.

@FancyRutabaga

The french are back in primary school classes on Monday. I think that the teachers are allowed masks but the kids are not uniformly wearing them at primary level.

Now, the average primary school class in France has 23 kids in it, so it is smaller but obviously 23 is closer to the 30 kids normal class in the U.K. than to the bubbles that kids will be in for this term in the UK (I.e. classes are up to 1/3 bigger in U.K. than France normally but bubbles of 15 are 50% smaller). France are ahead of us - reporting far fewer deaths c.30 per day, but we could be at their level in the next month or so as our average is dropping fast. Our deaths are actually not really happening in hospital now - if you look at the NHS England stats (other regions obviously exist, have just found the breakdown easily and represents large amount of the population), then you can see that actually it is about 50 deaths a day in hospital, so the rest are largely in the care sector. This is NOT something I am celebrating - my own granny died of Covid - but it is positive in the sense that it means that the community transmission elsewhere is lower (the transmission in care homes is still shocking, but the fact that transmission is concentrated in care/healthcare settings means that there is less transmission elsewhere in the community reflected in the R rate at the moment iyswim).

I don't know other countries well enough to comment, but we are probably most similar to france, except that France has lower population density outside Paris and funds its public services better, so could very well be feasible to say what they achieved in June we could achieve in September.

France hasn't sent secondary schools back, but certainly will in september for full timetables, though they may try to adjust setting/require masks in corridors and/or permit teachers to wear masks.

The french Chris witty and the education minister have actually said they feel that in retrospect they shouldn't have closed schools as they feel that science has shown that transmission there was actually not very high considering the price paid by students. French ministers have acknowledged that they could have done better in their death rate by better protecting care homes and providing better PPE for healthcare workers and getting testing up and ready quicker (and Macron has apologised for this - nice to see a politician doing that!!) , but they seem to think that closing schools was not so beneficial. Obviously, this is just the view of the french ministers on the evidence they have had presented to them, so feel free to dismiss it - other countries are available !

I think they're only saying that because they know that's what most of their support want.

I would be interested to see what is being said in Scotland and Wales, as they had already confirmed that part time schooling would be going on until 2021.

The Guardian have reported today that for 22 consecutive days in April daily deaths were over 1000 but Bozo & Co played the numbers down in daily briefings - if we can't trust them to tell the truth about that can we trust them to tell the truth about ANYTHING?!!

*nicenames

I remember Macron apologising for mistakes made handling the pandemic. I really respect that. Our government has a massive trust issue.

At the moment Boris is saying schools are safe within the guidelines. We have had only about 20% of eligible pupils back as lots of parents simply do not believe him.

Years 7-9 is relatively easy, just stream instead of set

Not really, my daughter was top set English and very near the bottom set, she just scraped a pass in Maths. She's not the only one.

I think France is stipulating 1m between pupils. Spain I believe is limiting secondary school classes to 15 ideally in September with rules on masks, ventilation in classrooms etc and 1.5m distancing where possible. It isn’t true that Europe is just returning to normal schooling next Term.

That's all very well @Eileithyiaal but the virus is highly contagious, so if it gets into a school, or workplace, lots of people will catch it - and then pass it to their families. Even if you dont care about the death rate, or the long term health effects (and personally I care about both) that means an awful lot of people are going to be sick or isolating or caring for the sick -and that will disrupt the school/business etc. The only way to get back to any sort of normality is to keep the infection rate really low.