Schools reopening 2

[oldbagface]

Old thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3971862-Schools-Reopening?pg=1

There is a wide variation on opinion about the risks children present to staff

• almost no scientist thinks that children themselves face any significant risk in the short or longterm

How much risk staff should be subjected to is partly a moral question, balancing the needs of students & staff,
but safety requirements at place of employment should be agreed with teacher reps, not unilaterally reduced.

My personal opinion is that if community infections remain low, then the Uk should reopen schools ft
but only under specific conditions (cribbing from Germany, where I am !)

• Masks / visors allowed for all staff and pupils who wish them; mandatory for secondary schools in corridors

• Cooperation with local staff reps & national unions, not confrontation and dictats

• that parents who wish to homeschool until EOY can do so without losing their place, but won't receive educational support from school

• that each school writes out its detailled plan, with the extra resources it needs and this is approved by the local authority

• that these extra resources - e.g. extra budget for cleaning, extra supervising & ancillary staff, additional sinks, sanitiser & wipes, equipment etc - are provided so that the plan is implemented before reopening

• if a school cannot, because of lack of space, staff etc reopen, then its plan must be for pt school but with fully blended online learning and tablets etc for all who need them; school for those without wifi

• the situation in each local authority is under continual review, as is the national situation by the government,
  so measures can be added locally or nationally, with reversion to pt if circumstances require

• wraparound care to resume fully, before & after school and during vacations

• If there are staggered school times, then these should be covered by wraparound care including allowing all carers to bring children to school and take them afterwards.

I do appreciate those complexities.
We didn’t get a phone call/ welfare check. We had a weekly email with tasks That’s not anyone’s best.

Yeah, that article is posted on the crazy page with loads of comments.

How do they know no teachers caught it from pupils? There are teachers who have died from covid so obviously some teachers have been infected, but how do they know where they caught it from and that it definitely wasn't school?

I don't think anyone disagrees with any of what you posit BCF. Sadly, few UK teachers have any faith in any of this.

"There was plenty of anger, anxiety and hysteria directed at people staying in the second homes (e.g. Gordon Ramsay, etc) but the reality is quite a few of them did nothing wrong."

They did not break the law, but they selfishly increased the risk to others,
especially in tiny comunities with little or no medical care on tap

The warnings were because we saw in N Italy people rushing out to their holiday homes down South,
sometimes taking the virus with them

The warnings / requests were made well before lockdown
and a government adviser would have known all about this - maybe even helped construct the advice

Woolhouse knew the risks perfectly well, but acted selfishly

The risk was not non-existent when he moved - or he wouldn't have moved -
and then suddenly high risk shortly after

@Pomegranatepompom

I do appreciate those complexities. We didn’t get a phone call/ welfare check. We had a weekly email with tasks That’s not anyone’s best.

I'm not disagreeing that that isn't the best. But that is actually more than the government asked schools to do. A school following the guidance could have looked after key worker and vulnerable children and set nothing for any other children. That is all schools were asked to do. I agree that they should have actually asked schools to do more, but they didn't and so they can't complain that schools didn't.

We had a weekly email with tasks That’s not anyone’s best.

Why? That was my ds's experience (Y9) and he just got on with it. He had two welfare calls but at 14 he'd do anything other than talk to a teacher on the phone. The complaints I had from my Y6 parents were all about parenting - they couldn't 'make' their children work at home. Guess what? Neither can I.

Interestingly on Teacher Tapp yesterday they revealed that teacher anxiety spiked massively when the last lot of guidelines came out. The DfE makes us anxious!

Just an answer to a couple of the questions about Sweden - in the primary school I am in class sizes are up to 25 (but most are between 20 and 25); no teachers wore masks but a v small handful of students did; we dished up food for the students instead of having it buffet style, and sat on alternate seats in the dining room. Showers after PE were dropped and staff could opt to attend staff meetings via teams. Some parents opted to keep children at home and in our school we provided some work for them, but I think technically this was optional unless they were in a vulnerable group.
We had a small number of staff off sick, obviously unknown if Covid or not, but one staff member has since tested positive for antibodies.

Happy to answer any questions!

I absolutely agree the bar was set low- brilliant some schools could do more.
My DC would have have liked some interaction/feed back. They are year 2 & 4. We did complete the sheets plus other stuff of course.
@Feenie I do think some interaction have been motivating and reassuring.

*would have been

Two of my teacher friends had it (one at the beginning of lockdown almost definitely caught from a returning ski trip) and one during lockdown (almost definitely from a KW child whose parent tested positive). Neither had been anywhere else for days/weeks beforehand.

But it’s really not wrong to want children to receive an education - be that at home or in school - some children have been badly let down.

The assumption here, pomegranate is that this wasn’t also true before lockdown and won’t be true when schools go back.

Provision of education is massively variable across the country. Some kids have great lessons with experienced, qualified teachers, some are simply given worksheets by unqualified adults who are basically hired as they have a pulse and are willing to enter a classroom.

It’s only now that parents are kicking off, because it’s been happening in their living room instead of out of their sight. It’s a feature of a woefully underfunded, under-resourced and increasingly fragmented education system completely lacking any leadership or even acknowledgment of the issues from the top. It’s not a lockdown issue and it won’t be solved by schools going back.

What interaction did you want? My class and I interacted plenty on Class Dojo - the parents who complained hadn't engaged at all.

@Feenie Any interaction. A phone call, ability to submit a piece of work, some feedback perhaps.

It’s really clear that once again- parents views are not welcome and are met with defensive responses.
I’ll leave you all your debating - I need to do more pleasant things with my time.

@noblegiraffe I really don’t think I’m kicking off.
I do feel the lack of provision is now apparent, I had no concerns previously with my own DC. I don’t know how you could expect me to know the school was struggling if it was?

It’s really clear that once again- parents views are not welcome and are met with defensive responses.

I disagree. I would love to hear from parents regarding the supposed lack of transmission from pupils to teachers, especially as the study linked on the first thread seems to directly counter this claim. As well as your views on the deceptive reporting of teacher's pay rises.

Parents' views are very welcome.

I wish that the parents and children who wanted to engage with home learning and were provided with very little from their schools could have switched places with the c 50% of students and families who did not engage with the amazing learning opportunities provided by their schools (tailing off to only a few children by the last few weeks...very frustrating to spend literally hours on a lesson which only 10% of a class completed!)

I think it is perfectly reasonable for parents to have wanted more interaction.

I also think it is perfectly reasonable for schools not to have provided interaction.

Who is at fault? The Government, who stated that the curriculum was suspended back in March, published a list of websites a couple of weeks later, and never offered any further guidance to schools as to what they should be providing, or to parents as to what they should be expecting.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-53191763

In this nursery outbreak children, staff and parents were affected. Although we don't know the chain of infection, the children must be part of this chain?

I really don’t think I’m kicking off. I do feel the lack of provision is now apparent,

You misunderstand, I think that parents should be kicking off. The state of education is unacceptable. But they should be kicking off in the right direction - blaming individual teachers for what is a systemic issue will result in nothing but resentment and defensiveness from dedicated teachers and you end up with parents and teachers shouting at each other instead of the people with the actual power to effect change.

The massive variation in lockdown provision isn’t down to individual lazy teachers, it’s down to a lack of leadership and guidance from the DfE, a lack of resources, a lack of qualified teachers and a massive variation between schools in what is actually possible because of their cohorts.

The government has continued its efforts to keep parents and teachers shouting at each other by rebranding a pre-agreed pay rise which was actually a frantic and desperate effort to stop haemorrhaging teachers, of which there is a critical shortage, as a ‘reward for lockdown’, knowing that would generate far more heat than light.

I think it's absence of evidence being clung on to here to make 'facts'. the Pasteur study would probably assert by looking at households that the children caught it from their parents, although quite how 23 people developed in a cluster without transmitting boggles the mind. I know at the time PHE seemed to be insensitively excited by the opportunity of a case study so perhaps they have done one and we will get some outcomes in about six months

For a long time I have felt that parents and teachers need to form a stronger alliance and stand up to a lot of the government nonsense. In particular - many of the things parents complain about stem directly from systemic underfunding. Parents rightly demand resolution to their own problems, but we need more consistent pressure to be exerted to improve things for us all.

I see little conflict between what the staff will want - a safe working environment and ability to teach - and want I want for my child.

I felt the wide range of responses from schools was not ideal, but there was no guidance and schools were not all equally affected by staff issues such as shielding and childcare problems. At our primary for example, the staff are fairly young - so quite a few didn't have children, so were not simultaneously teaching plus homeschooling. That was just circumstance.

I suspect the government is happy enough for us to blame schools, as it lets them off the hook.

The massive variation in lockdown provision isn’t down to individual lazy teachers, it’s down to a lack of leadership and guidance from the DfE, a lack of resources, a lack of qualified teachers and a massive variation between schools in what is actually possible because of their cohorts

This is a really important point. People who think it’s “individual teachers” must have no understanding of how schools work. I work in a school and my workload over lockdown was decided by my faculty leader, and the faculty leaders were directed by the slt/principal. So if my faculty leader assigned me to do live lessons every day, prepare curriculum material for next term, mark work or prepare powerpoints for home learning, my only possible response was “ok!” I couldn’t say “actually the weather’s lovely so I’ll be in the garden with a gin.” I would be disciplined and eventually sacked, like any job.

So equally, with the teachers that didn’t do anything, it was because this was dictated by the management. If my management had said I was not allowed to send out PowerPoints and contact parents, I couldn’t have done it, even though I would have hated not doing it.

If people (and I think it’s only a few!) seriously think that teachers were supposed to be working and just couldn’t be bothered, they are seriously deluded. I’m just glad I work in a school that did do a lot so I don’t have any residual guilt - even though not doing a lot would have been out of my hands!

@Pomegranatepompom That’s not directed at you as you are aware that it’s the school rather than the individual teachers, but there are some teacher bashers who think we have the power to decide whether we work or not, decide whether schools open or not and it’s honestly tiring. This rant is for them not you