Schools Reopening?

[ClimbDad]

A major, peer reviewed study into transmission in South Korea has established that tweens and teenagers spread the SARSCOV2 virus more than any other age group.

The study involved more than 65,000 people and used South Korea’s exceptionally effective contact tracing system to look at who brought the virus into households. Tweens and teenagers were the highest index case age group. Younger children transmitted at the same rate as 20-somethings.

This is a large scale, rigorous piece of research that proves children are effective at transmitting the virus. It was conducted in a country that implements strict social distancing and mask wearing among children. The authors say the rate of transmission would have been higher if children weren’t subjected to those measures.

Plans to reopen schools more or less as normal in September will place many lives at risk, and increase the likelihood schools will have to close again. The government needs to acknowledge schools will be highly efficient vectors of viral transmission and change its reopening plans.

Published Paper:
wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/10/20-1315_article

Article on the paper:

www.bloombergquint.com/business/covid-19-spread-fastest-by-teens-and-tweens-korea-study-finds

@Greysparkles

Sir Patrick Vallance is forecasting 120,000 deaths in the second wave

No he's not, that's the worst case scenario. Which is be only likely to happen if there is no Preparation done withing the NHS and social care

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/14/action-to-stop-winter-covid-19-second-wave-in-uk-must-start-now

Maybe have a read of this article and stop scare mongering

Vallance forecast 20,000 deaths as a bad outcome, worst case in the first wave. Look where we are. I’d take his forecasts as being at the low end of expectations.

Children need to go back if they are not shielding. We cant live like this forever. Children deserve and need an education. Their needs have been put last throughout this.

@stitchmaker85

So what shall I do with my 7 year old then whilst I'm at work in September?

What will do with your 7-year-old if you catch the virus and are one of the unlucky people who has debilitating symptoms that go on for months?

There are no easy answers to any of this.

There really are easy answers to this

Children NEED an education, in school, with their peers.

OpheliasCrayon

I’d be interested in your thoughts on my post up there ^

@SmileEachDay

I think we need to go into this with our eyes open - which is why this study is welcome.

I’m a teacher at a secondary.

I’ve spent the last week (in between teaching Y10 and teaching the rest online) getting the department physically ready for September. No furniture except tables and chairs. No space for books in rooms. Trollies for each teacher so they have their own stuff that they move with them if they move classes.

It’s been impossible - absolutely impossible- to make the Y10s socially distance outside class. And that’s been with only a quarter in at a time. When we have over a thousand pupils in the building there is no hope of distancing.

That, inevitably, will push infection rates up and risk staff shortages, many children being off school and potentially further closure.

We have to have a plan to manage this - a robust blended learning model “just in case”. That means government money to ensure disadvantaged children have online access - device and WiFi. It means ensuring staff have that too. It means making parents accountable for their children being “in school” remotely. It means a thousand tiny logistical and pedagogical decisions being made now “just in case”.

What this study shows Is that we can’t just go back as normal and keep our fingers crossed.

Exactly this. The government needs to plan for prolonged distance learning. Or a mix of in school and distance learning. Pretending schools won’t significantly contribute to a rise in transmission is just foolish.

Education will not be the normal parents expect come September. Yes, we will be all back in full time but the quality of provision will not be as it was - it’s all the ‘extras’ that help children progress which will disappear.

For example I teach in an ‘outstanding’ school. Part of this is down to mentoring programmes we implement, the ongoing recision classes through the year, the one to one teacher support. If a pupil wants help with an essay they’ll see me in my breaks or lunch time. From Sept I will have a 20 minute break all day as we need to do bride school duties, break time duties, a lunch duty and an after school duty. We can not offer the extra support that pushes pupils to excel. Our pupils will have chalk and talk and I feel sad for them.

But parents want their pupils in, the government want the economy moving. I teach Yr 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and a tutor group. I’m advised to stay ‘2m’ away from pupils but classrooms aren’t big e ought for this. Yes I can stay at the front but the front row will be less than from me. If teachers are counted as part of the ‘bubbles’ I could pass on a virus to a lot of people. Let’s hope community numbers stay low.

I find it very interesting reading all the posts where people are completely unprepared to return back to their busy offices on a packed train, due to the risks of Covid, but want their children and our teachers to do just that.

@SmileEachDay

OpheliasCrayon

I’d be interested in your thoughts on my post up there ^

I still believe despite what you've said and I do appreciate the challenges, that all children need to be in school . Remote learning isn't acceptable or appropriate

Again I say this as a teacher , as a parent of young kids , and as someone who is supposed to (but isn't) be shielding

@OpheliasCrayon

There really are easy answers to this

Children NEED an education, in school, with their peers.

Easy answers in the face of a virus that is less than a year old? Really?

Scientists are learning new things about COVID-19 every single day. Here’s a recent peer reviewed paper suggesting the SARSCOV2 virus can cause male infertility.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/andr.12859

IMHO our challenge is to keep transmission low while we properly understand the risks and threats of this virus? If we knew for sure this virus was impacting male fertility (like mumps) would you be so keen to send children back to school?

Some of the consequences of infection by this virus may not be immediately obvious.

Our children need to be back at school. They need and deserve an education. There will be localised waves of this virus, the same as with norovirus, flu etc but we can't spend the next two/three or more years sitting at home waiting for something that may never happen.

Wrote this on another thread yesterday:

My gut feeling is that Oct - Feb half term is going to be chaos in schools and in work places. People in and out the whole time. I might be wrong (hope I'm wrong), but I'm mentally preparing myself for it.

We've been told that we need to be ready to go straight away with online learning. We have to somehow teach 5 - 11 year olds how to use Teams by mid September. They cant do that without adult support. Also, what if the teacher of the closed bubble is the ill one? Am I expected to be running online live lessons from my bed?

For this to work from a societal perspective:

Massive survey of home tech needs to be done. Children without a laptop/decent sized tablet, given one each.
Teachers without school provided laptops and webcams need to be provided with one each.
Every school follows the same curriculum day by day, so when bubbles close, they pick up gov financed online learning from Oak.
If you're isolated then you have access to gov funding for those 2 weeks, and guaranteed food deliveries.
All businesses are on board with this, no bosses are arseholes about it.

So you know, nothing like that will happen (I hate the curriculum idea anyway), so we'll poddle on, individually doing the best we can.

I'm going to plan and save online a set of YouTube learning lessons for my key stage at school, over the summer. Most can access youtube on a parent's phone, and we'll send a work pack to go with it.

Yes really

I think herd immunity has always been the plan.

Number 10 are giving us a little freedom this summer to enjoy ourselves, go to the pub, shops etc. Encouraging us to spend to prop up the economy. Then 2 weeks after schools go back in September there will be a massive spike in cases and subsequently thousands of deaths. They will try to play down the figures but hospitals will be full. Schools will have to close again.

The DFE needs to properly put together a centralised home learning programme for all year groups. Much more flexibility for wfh parents. Parents should have the option of a small bubble of 3-4 families to manage home learning and childcare. Grandparents should be allowed to be part of a bubble if there is no other option.

Ultimately schools are far too cramped, classes are twice as big as they should be for effective learning and good progress and classrooms are too small. Signs point to further cross species pandemics being more likely in the future. Chronic underfunding of schools has created this impossible situation. It's not healthy to have so many people crammed together, sharing toilets across many classes, for 6 plus hours a day.

No one's going to live forever. The virus is mainly fatal in older people who can shield. Families who want to home school should but those who want to take a risk and live their lives should be allowed to live. We can't raise a generation of children stuck indoors with no interaction apart from a computer screen. Very few young people have died. Yes the virus might have longer term implications but so can other viruses. We can't just destroy everyone's mental health. Not everyone can cope with lack of socialization and the other things school and normal life brings.

I agree that provisions need to be made for remote learning, none of us know what the winter will bring even the experts can only make predictions.

If Covid sweeps through schools there may not be enough teachers to keep the school open.

Also not ALL children need to be back in school, shielding children’s parents should have the right to decide what is best for their child.

Mine will be going back in September but won’t be seeing their grandparents at all. Deputy head expects closures by October half term anyway.

Also, this:

I'm not particularly worred about getting the virus (rightly or wrongly), I'm concerned about me or my child bringing it home to my vulnerable partner.

BUT, if I think too much about it, I'm massively stressed by the potential logistical nightmare that will be this autumn and winter in school. If you're teaching a sequence of work that has each lesson building on the last, and required for the next, and you have say one or two children who miss an important stage, then it's sort of OK to catch that up using TA support. But my bubble for example, doesn't have a TA, and the likelihood is that children are going to be in and out a lot more - probably for 2 or 3 days here and there waiting for test results. Suddenly you've got loads of children needing to catch up the last one or two stages in the sequence, otherwise they don't know what they are doing in the lesson on the day they come back. How do you get that catch up to happen? Again, if it's one or two children, you can sort of do it without anyone else to help you in class, but that means that everyone else is losing out on your support time.

All this 'don't worry, everyone will catch up' stuff is nonsense - really hard to get your head around how on earth it's meant to happen in reality.

Someone is going to come along and tell me THIS HAS BEEN HAPPENING FOR YEARS, NOT EVERYONE HAS A TA YOU KNOW, I'VE HAD NO SUPPORT IN MY CLASS FOR YEARS, 10 CHILDREN ON THE SEN REGISTER IN EACH CLASS, CUT IN TWO WITH BREAD KNIFE AT LUNCH TIME, and so on.. but I'm SLT with responsibility for teaching and learning in a really big primary school, I'm not a weak or lazy teacher, I don't need support staff in normal times. And I'm dreading it. We've already had the conversation at home about me leaving at Christmas if it's all a bit too much.

I still believe despite what you've said and I do appreciate the challenges, that all children need to be in school . Remote learning isn't acceptable or appropriate

That won’t be a decision in the hands of schools. Do you not think it is important to have a robust plan in place for any further closure? Or do you think we should be sticking our fingers in our ears and shouting “everyone back to school”?

I’m surprised, if you’ve been teaching throughout, that you’re not more invested in making sure we safeguard education in the future.

Their needs have been put last throughout this.

They really haven't.

@climbdad

Didn't Vallance say that keeping deaths below 20,000 would be a good outcome not that 20,000 would be a bad outcome?

@opheliascrayon - if you were meant to be shielding, but didn't, then with respect, your approach to risk is questionable. Not sure repeatedly saying how 'brave' you are helps a conversation about risks other people are willing to accept.

@motherrunner

Education will not be the normal parents expect come September. Yes, we will be all back in full time but the quality of provision will not be as it was - it’s all the ‘extras’ that help children progress which will disappear.

For example I teach in an ‘outstanding’ school. Part of this is down to mentoring programmes we implement, the ongoing recision classes through the year, the one to one teacher support. If a pupil wants help with an essay they’ll see me in my breaks or lunch time. From Sept I will have a 20 minute break all day as we need to do bride school duties, break time duties, a lunch duty and an after school duty. We can not offer the extra support that pushes pupils to excel. Our pupils will have chalk and talk and I feel sad for them.

But parents want their pupils in, the government want the economy moving. I teach Yr 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13 and a tutor group. I’m advised to stay ‘2m’ away from pupils but classrooms aren’t big e ought for this. Yes I can stay at the front but the front row will be less than from me. If teachers are counted as part of the ‘bubbles’ I could pass on a virus to a lot of people. Let’s hope community numbers stay low.

Appreciate the difficult job you and all teachers will be doing come September.

The sad thing is that as long as a significant proportion of people don’t feel safe, the economy won’t get moving again no matter how many children are at school.

That's the second big study that has found tween and teenagers spread it more than any other group.

It's a total nightmare and people are just putting their fingers in their ears, singing lalalalala and thinking that will make it go away.

@ohthegoats

Wrote this on another thread yesterday:

My gut feeling is that Oct - Feb half term is going to be chaos in schools and in work places. People in and out the whole time. I might be wrong (hope I'm wrong), but I'm mentally preparing myself for it.

We've been told that we need to be ready to go straight away with online learning. We have to somehow teach 5 - 11 year olds how to use Teams by mid September. They cant do that without adult support. Also, what if the teacher of the closed bubble is the ill one? Am I expected to be running online live lessons from my bed?

For this to work from a societal perspective:

Massive survey of home tech needs to be done. Children without a laptop/decent sized tablet, given one each.
Teachers without school provided laptops and webcams need to be provided with one each.
Every school follows the same curriculum day by day, so when bubbles close, they pick up gov financed online learning from Oak.
If you're isolated then you have access to gov funding for those 2 weeks, and guaranteed food deliveries.
All businesses are on board with this, no bosses are arseholes about it.

So you know, nothing like that will happen (I hate the curriculum idea anyway), so we'll poddle on, individually doing the best we can.

I'm going to plan and save online a set of YouTube learning lessons for my key stage at school, over the summer. Most can access youtube on a parent's phone, and we'll send a work pack to go with it.

Interesting post @ohthegoats

I’m not sure people who aren’t in education realise what when teachers are off ill (although we do tend to drag ourselves in!) we still actually set the work for the day, keeping in mind a way those particular lessons could be taught by a non-specialist. If we are unlucky enough to have more severe symptoms how can we set quality long term provision?

You’re absolutely right. The government need to prepare for quality remote provision and helping families access it. During lockdown I taught live throughout. I have seen how remote teaching can run successfully but I teach in a school where parents are predominantly affluent. If the government cares about vulnerable pupils they need to ensure they can access this provision too, and not just make it at the doors of individual schools.

I wish there were more flexibility for the option of distance learning, especially for children on the shielding list like ds. It feels mad, after this long period of keeping him safe, to think about sending him back on September as we head into a season where he is often ill anyway. Sending a medically vulnerable child with complex needs into an environment where social distancing is near impossible, and to be threatened with a fine if we decide to keep him home...it just feels as though there is not enough consideration of all the options.