Right, we all want schools to open to everyone, and to stay open - so what do we need to do?

[cantkeepawayforever]

Whether we are parents, or teachers, or employers, we all want schools to open to all pupils, and then to stay open absolutely reliably for the next academic year.

We want all children to be present, and we want their regular teachers - class teachers or subject specialists - to be in front of them.

The question is how we achieve this. It is very difficult to imagine how schools, especially secondary schools, can be made fully Copvid-safe to prevent transmission within the school..

Therefore, there is a very obvious thing to do - and usefully, it is something we can all do immediately. We have to do our personal best to make sure that Covid doesn't come into the school. If we are parents, we do our best that it's not our child who brings it in; if we are teachers, we make certain as far as we can that we don't bring it in; as interested MN readers we can also do our bit.

I am not talking about shopping washing or permanent isolation. I am just saying that if everyone - absolutely everyone - does their level best to drive Covid out of the community surrounding their school, just by scrupulously following existing rules, it is more likely that that school will stay open.

So, for absolutely everyone in your household, make sure that you:

• Wash your hands properly, with soap, every time.
• Social distance properly - measure out 2 metres, and really get used to how far that is. Do this everywhere, with everyone. Step back from friends, remind family.
• Wear a mask properly, whenever and wherever 2 m distancing isn't possible, unless there is a reason that you can't.
• Teach your child, if of an appropriate age, to wear a mask properly. You have taught your child to wear pants, or a seatbelt. A mask isn't impossible.
• Follow the rules about meeting other people - no more than 6 households outside, no more than 2 inside, still following social distancing guidelines if the guidelines say so (or whatever is currently in force where you live)
• If you arrive at a place that turns out to be crowded, leave.
• If you arrive at a place which doesn't appear to have safe practices in place, leave.
• If invited to an occasion that doesn't match guidance, refuse the invitation.
• Leave your real name and number for track and trace.
• Follow instructions to isolate or quarantine if asked to. Support anyone who has to isolate or quarantine in any way you can, to make doing the right thing easy.
• Get a test if needed.

- If you are 'stretching the rules' at all, don't do it in the final two weeks before schools open.

If you are already doing all of this, then you could take it further by lobbying your MP for money for cleaning in schools and for increasing school transport to allow SD. But if EVERYONE does their absolute personal best to drive Covid out of the community surrounding their own school, just by scrupulously doing what they are meant to do and ensuring that their whole family is doing the same, then we will all be 'doing our best' and ensuring that schools will be able to open safely and stay open reliably.

@Bananabread8 they would get a test straight away

@MissEliza

Coronavirus is here to stay. Children's education cannot suffer any longer. Apart from the human right to an education, a poor education has public health implications. We must stop this mindset that COVID trumps everything else. Our dcs have already sacrificed a lot. It's time to put them first.

How is the children's human right to an education going to be met if corona runs rampant through schools and families, killing and maiming teachers and parents, leaving children gasping for breath from permanently scarred lungs?

How is it putting children first to put them in a position of knowing they were the person who carried a killer virus into the home and infected their mother? I have students who will carry that around with them for ever.

You don't seem to get it. Covid DOES trump everything else. That is nothing to do with a mindset, or a decision, or something we "allow". That is straight forward biology.

Until it is gone, children and children's education will continue to suffer.

Until people like you change YOUR mindset, covid will not be defeated

We have rapid testing in my city for the above scenario (colds and coughs). At the moment our local children’s hospital down the road will test at 10:30 am and results by 7:30 pm so if you are clear you can go straight back to school.

Key to reopening is investment in public health measures such as contact tracing and constant and rapid testing.

Imagine all the parents ring their boss saying I can’t come in due to X having a cough. It’s just not viable.

It is what it is . It doesn't matter whether we consider it "viable" or not

@GhostTypeEevee

6 households are allowed outside? I thought it was only 6 people

Current status is as the attached graphic.

6 from multiple households, or up to 30 from 2 households, outside.

People from different households must maintain social distancing throughout - teenage DD, for example, meets up with 4 friends (2 are twins) and they solemnly lay out distanced picnic rugs and each sit carefully in the middle of theirs, except for the twins, who share.

So can be 6 people from 6 households, or 6 from 4, or 6 from 2, but the maximum is 6, socially distanced, outside.

@MissEliza

Coronavirus is here to stay. Children's education cannot suffer any longer. Apart from the human right to an education, a poor education has public health implications. We must stop this mindset that COVID trumps everything else. Our dcs have already sacrificed a lot. It's time to put them first.

Yes. By following the rules and guidance as set out in the op. That's what you mean right?

@ChaBishkoot that sounds reasonable and as safe as can be expected. Unfortunately British parents are insisting on full time school with no masks. The government isn’t paying for additional facilities to wash hands and take temperatures. Imo this insistence on no safety measures will result in no school.

I’m interested to know how parents of children at your school are managing to work when their children are no longer in full time school? British parents are saying they can’t work without full time school, but clearly American parents are managing?

@LegoMaus

The question is how we achieve this

-Government needs to give money to schools instead of giving cheap dinners to grown adults
-Invest in Portacabins as additional classrooms and mobile bathroom facilities
-Parents need to accept the necessity of wearing masks in schools
-Realise that schools can’t stay open reliably in their current format and look into alternatives such as remote learning, part-time hours to enable social distancing, etc
-Stop letting kids play outside in groups with no social distancing

This is much more realistic than the ops post.

Simple answer

Only socialise and mix in :

shops
pubs
schools
work
outdoors

stop visiting people at home and stay at least 1m away from them

Parents need to accept the necessity of wearing masks in schools

Do parents really have an issue with this? I know I certainly don't

This is much more realistic than the ops post

What was unrealistic about the OP’s post?

Invest in Portacabins as additional classrooms

I think this one is as unrealistic as the proposal that schools could manage to reduce class sizes to safe levels by using community buildings.

An average-sized primary (2 classes per year group) would need 14 classroom-sized portacabins.

A secondary with, say, 8 form entry and a similar-sized sixth form, would need 40 for Y7-11, and another 16 for sixth form, even before considering any subject-specific needs.

The community in which I teach - small suburb - would need 80+ Portacabins to create sensible class sizes for both primary and secondary schools. The town as a whole would require many hundreds 9count up the number of classes in all the schools, and double it). I genuinely don't think it's feasible, which is why the best option is to prevent covid coming into the school.

This has the great advantage that all those spending energy campaigning for schools to open, and all those trying to explain the risks, can instead devote their energy to a single common goal - driving down Covid infections, 1 family at a time.

The OP's post is pretty much the guidelines and is what people should be doing.

So which bit is unrealistic @Morfin? Because if people don't do this then schools won't be functioning very well at all

An average-sized primary (2 classes per year group) would need 14 classroom-sized portacabins
£3.8bn (the cost of Eat Out To Help Out) buys a heck of a lot of Portacabins.

@cantkeepawayforever

Invest in Portacabins as additional classrooms

I think this one is as unrealistic as the proposal that schools could manage to reduce class sizes to safe levels by using community buildings.

An average-sized primary (2 classes per year group) would need 14 classroom-sized portacabins.

A secondary with, say, 8 form entry and a similar-sized sixth form, would need 40 for Y7-11, and another 16 for sixth form, even before considering any subject-specific needs.

The community in which I teach - small suburb - would need 80+ Portacabins to create sensible class sizes for both primary and secondary schools. The town as a whole would require many hundreds 9count up the number of classes in all the schools, and double it). I genuinely don't think it's feasible, which is why the best option is to prevent covid coming into the school.

This has the great advantage that all those spending energy campaigning for schools to open, and all those trying to explain the risks, can instead devote their energy to a single common goal - driving down Covid infections, 1 family at a time.

portacabins? Where are we supposed to put them?Completely impossible

[quote Yetiyoga]@Bananabread8 they would get a test straight away[/quote]
It’s all time consuming. You have to order a test. Tests results have to be processed. Mean while parents are off work. Honestly is this realistic every time you have a bit of a cough? You cannot just get a test straight away.

Face masks will probably need to be mandatory for secondary school pupils, and arguably should be for the top year, at least, of primary schools too. It’s unpleasant may be prove to be necessary. In China kids wore masks for more than a month, and there school day is nearly twice as long as ours. But they were always stringent in trying to beat/suppress it which is why China is now virtually mask free and getting on with things. The West in general has this, “yes let’s fight it, but but but....” attitude. Come September I fear that ain’t going to work.

If people aren't doing all that already, then listing it all out on MN isn't going to make it happen either.

It is very normal that most people DO NOT take their medication as directed, DO NOT always prepare their food perfectly safely, DO NOT manage their chronic health conditions as directed, DO NOT engage in preventive health measures they are supposed to like keep their weight down (etc). This is normal & you're fighting human nature to think all these other plans and instructions that require so many little behaviours will be effective. Any programme for pandemic control needs to be designed such that any essential measures will be the only/easiest possible things for everyone to do.

@Bananabread8 time consuming? Yes, but it is necessary. It couldn't be clearer, symtoms = test. How else can we get it under control? The alternative is that people don't test and then you'll be off work as the virus will be spreading quicker so schools will have to shut. It isnt hard to get a test now and results are overall fast.

Honestly is this realistic every time you have a bit of a cough? You cannot just get a test straight away.

But what is the alternative? You cannot keep a child with a cough that might be Covid in the classroom, can you? Is it realistic to say that everyone in that class should remain at risk just because you don't think getting a test is 'realistic' / convenient?

Certainly every child who coughs in my classroom next term is going home to be tested. Why on earth wouldn't I send them home? I have a duty of care to them and to every other child in the classroom, even if I put aside the risk to myself (remembering that if i get a cough, I too have to isolate and get a test, depriving the class of a teacher until I get back).

Imagine all the parents ring their boss saying I can’t come in due to X having a cough. It’s just not viable.

And this is one of the reasons it's not going to work. In normal times parents send kids in dosed up on calpol to disguise temperatures.

If you send your child in because you don't want to lose 2 weeks pay / anger the boss then your child is sat within 2m of about 50 different kids for the 7-10 days that they're contagious. Can you not see the potential for exponential growth here?

Viral load is also related to prognosis, so if the 40-50 kids they've infected take the same approach, then anyone near them in the week after is likely to be very ill.

Great post by the way OP. If we’d all followed strict but common sense guidelines from the beginning and if we didn’t have such a complacent and idle prick of a PM thousands of lives might have been saved and the economy wouldn’t be quite so hard hit.

@lljkk

If people aren't doing all that already, then listing it all out on MN isn't going to make it happen either.

It is very normal that most people DO NOT take their medication as directed, DO NOT always prepare their food perfectly safely, DO NOT manage their chronic health conditions as directed, DO NOT engage in preventive health measures they are supposed to like keep their weight down (etc). This is normal & you're fighting human nature to think all these other plans and instructions that require so many little behaviours will be effective. Any programme for pandemic control needs to be designed such that any essential measures will be the only/easiest possible things for everyone to do.

Then stop shouting at teachers on MN that 'schools must open', as if it is the teachers' fault that infections in the community are high and going up, and that infection control measures in schools are at best insufficient.

If you can't control your own behaviour and that of your family, then schools will close.

I'm assuming many bosses might be sending people home with a cough rather than risking having a whole department having to self isolate for 2 weeks