School re-opening may not go well.

[jomartin281271]

Here's an article from the New York Times documenting what happened when the Israeli government decided to re-open their schools. They thought they had beaten the virus (which this country certainly hasn't) and within days it was spreading again like wildfire. One section of the article is particularly interesting. It reads:

'Public health experts worldwide have coalesced around a set of guidelines for reopening schools.

A major recommendation is to create groups of 10 to 15 students who stay together in classrooms, at recess and lunchtime, with teachers assigned to only one group. Each group has minimal contact with other groups, limiting any spread of infection. And if a case of Covid-19 emerges, one group can be quarantined at home while others can continue at school.

Other key recommendations include staggering schedules or teaching older students online, keeping desks several feet apart, sanitizing classrooms more frequently, providing ventilation and opening windows if possible, and requiring masks for staff and students old enough to wear them properly.'

Our government are going to be cramming the kids into the same old classrooms, students won't be wearing masks, and the older students won't be able to study remotely. And this in a country with one of the highest mortality rates from Covid in the world.

You can read the full article here.

www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/world/middleeast/coronavirus-israel-schools-reopen.html

Of course it's not going to go well. Especially secondaries. Ours is reccomending children who have to use public transport travel at non peak times but lateness will be treated with an automatic detention. What a joke considering busses are driving past stops when they're half full. The school bus is oversubscribed and has children standing up against each other every morning. That's before they're actually at school where the safety of the 250+ bubble awaits

If your family has a vulnerable working age adult, you should make preparations to educate at home rather than demand everyone else disrupt their child’s education.

What if that person is a teacher?

tara it's not true anyway : there have been lots of school shutdowns in all 3 of those countries.

@moretolifethanthis2020

It fascinates me that most people on Mumsnet ignore the fact that for a huge proportion of children in the UK, that schools are their place, that schools are their first line of support for child protection, that schools had to provide breakfast for them as they weren't getting it at home. These children have been totally and utterly forgotten about. Not all pupils come from nice middle class homes! You shut these schools down for any longer and there is a MASSIVE safeguarding risk. There already is a massive issue. Viruses are not new to 2020. The flu season kills thousands upon thousands each year, and that's WITH a vaccination. The whole reaction is ludicras. I am a teacher btw.

Well said I can't believe some of the comments on here !

lazylinguist

It is much easier to social distance in secondary schools so bubbles could be larger, as long as facilities allowed the space if you also added in masks, the risks would be massively reduced at social distancing of 1 meter.

I never suggested retired teachers. Very specifically didn't suggest retired teachers. And yes, I know there is a recruitment issue, my DH is a ex teacher.

Another option, particularly for secondary is more blended learning. It isn't ideal, but it could be done.

Also utilising private schools - I know the government would obviously not go for this option, but it would be possible for some children to go to a local private school with state funding, to reduce state school populations. It isn't ideal, but it is a solution.

There are lots of solutions. But the only one anyone seems to be coming up with is ignore the fact there is a pandemic.

Piggywaspushed well yes, but I don't like to make statements like that unless I can back it up and I couldn't quickly find the evidence on the number of closures.

Worried about this as well, dc1 is going to uni in England in September, they have asthma and we live on the isle of man where we have been covid free for 2 months, at the moment we are watching the situation closely and will have to make a decision at some point.

It fascinates me that most people on Mumsnet ignore the fact that for a huge proportion of children in the UK, that schools are their place, that schools are their first line of support for child protection, that schools had to provide breakfast for them as they weren't getting it at home. These children have been totally and utterly forgotten about.

Not by schools they haven’t. Please let’s take a minute to remember that the government had to be shamed into feeding hungry children by a celebrity footballer.

And I think secondaries and primary schools should be treated differently, as secondaries are harder to manage due to sets, public transport used to get to and from school etc. An increase in school buses would help though.

Primary schools would be easier to bubble. At least it would mitigate some of the spread.

I agree with most of what you say tara apart from this :

It is much easier to social distance in secondary schools

Have you seen the pictures that came put of a typical high school In Georgia yesterday?

When did people start believing teenagers are biddable mini adults. Teenage years are the years of hormones, rebellion, aggression, risk taking and romance! All they ever do is paw each other! The also believe they are invincible.

I dont think i do want schools to open 'as normal' but since they seem to be and the government has said it could fine me if i dont send my children in, i do spend time thinking about what can help my child's specific school September. Ive consistently been impressed with them btw.
I go from thinking the government has done this so individuals will get disrupted as children isolate or their bubble closes or their school closes but the government can say 'schools are open' and blame individual, to thinking maybe all the things that have openend up will close again and we were just given a summer of fun but schools will open, to thinking that by October schools will be 'closed' again.

whale the great inconvenience of universities is really not being discussed is it? Epidemiologist think they will play a very large part in transmission.

When will people consider schools to be 'safe'? The concept of safety from a virus is bizarre, even if it is a clever campaign.

What do you mean by 'it is a clever campaign'? It's pretty obvious that in this context, safe means 'with sufficient measures in place to majorly minimise the likelihood of transmission of the virus'. And yes, that's a pretty vague standard.

But when you compare the plan for schools (bubbles of up to 250, 30 kids in small rooms, no masks, plus the added fact that children are less likely/able to stick to safety rules than adults) with the situation in other places of work, it's not surprising people judge it as unsafe.

You are comparing apples with a dumpster fire

Japan does neither widespread testing nor does it do lockdown. SK afaik didn’t do a lockdown either, though it set early standards in testing.

There have certainly been school closures and lockdowns since school returned and a study which came out of South Korea about children's role in the spread

And yet they still feel fine leaving schools open ...

A better comparison for schools here internationally would be Israel. Go on, tell me how that went

Why do you think Israel compares to the U.K. or US more than East Asian countries?

And about Israel:

In Israel, schools closed for a single case, and close contacts of every infected individual were tested and quarantined, Aflalo says. By mid-June, 503 students and 167 staff had been infected, and 355 schools had closed temporarily. (That number is a small fraction of the 5000 schools across Israel.)

That means a vast majority of students could continue their education with little disruption.

Here’s a level-headed article about school openings: www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/school-openings-across-globe-suggest-ways-keep-coronavirus-bay-despite-outbreaks

And yes, we need to learn to live with COVID, I don't dispute this. But we need to have an adequately set up NHS to manage the increase in admissions which it will cause on an ongoing basis, and we aren't there yet. At the moment, we can provide a most NHS service on a slower and more limited basis AND manage the current level of COVID admissions. If we stopped our current measure, we would have to reduce NHS services again. If we continue with our current measures, we give the NHS time to manage BOTH 'normal' service and increase capacity for COVID which will allow the infection rate to increase in time, allowing us to resume closer to normal daily life. But again, that requires money.

I started this thread to flag up the fact that there is a lot we can do to make our schools safer. Like a lot of parents, I think reopening schools is the right thing to do. Our children need an education and the best people to give that education to them are teachers. But sending them into the same environment they fled from in March is not an option.
Most children won't be affected by the virus and most healthy adults will get over it without too much trouble. But there are a lot of people who will be terrified by the prospect of the school reopening.
The government say that every child and every teacher has to go back in September. This includes immumocompromised children, pregnant and vulnerable teachers, teachers who are in their fifties and sixties and other staff who may have underlying health problems. It will also include secondary students who may have sick and elderly parents and grandparents living at home who are fearful of the virus being brought back into the house.
I think a lot of the controversy about opening up schools would disappear if the government showed more compassion to these groups and accepted that putting people in fear of death is something we normally see in authoritarian regimes like China.
I'm sure everyone on MN thinks the vulnerable in society should be protected and shouldn't be forced to put their lives in danger. When we post that we want schools to reopen and we're looking forward to our kids getting back into the education system, we should also add the caveat that this compulsory attendance should not apply to those whose lives may be at risk.

Google something you can tell a doctor like siatica or similar. Something they can't test for and get signed off
Fraud. Interesting suggestion.

that schools are their first line of support for child protection

I think that this raises the question of why we, as a country, have allowed this to happen, and whether it is sensible for schools to do such a very large proportion of front line social services work.

If we consider the most important function of schools as being education, with teachers training to teach, why is that schools are also considered responsible for (not just a convenient way through which the service is delivered, but absolutely responsible for):

• Feeding children
• Identifying vulnerable children
• Documenting issues and referring them to further services (social, medical, dental) - often IME knocked back as 'threshold not met', necessitating significant further meetings etc if we really feel that this is wrong
• Delivering significant support and counselling to those vulnerable children in class and through 1:1 support
• Working closely with families
• Providing childcare

Many schools also deliver further services 'informally' e.g. through washing children's clothes, referring parents to services such as food banks and charities and supporting their applications, providing 'nurture groups' in which children e.g. clean their teeth, learn basic hygiene protocols etc.

ALL of the above, particularly in primary, are delivered by teachers or teaching assistants, not by specialist or 'extra' staff.

I know that school closures have meant that all of the above have been more limited - though many schools have staff delivering meal packs, meal vouchers, equipment for learning and then visiting or phoning or zooming specifically vulnerable families - but perhaps it is also an opportunity to ask 'is it right that schools have responsibility for delivering - or feel responsibility to deliver in the absence of other services - all of this'? Is this the norm internationally? Should we be better training teachers to deliver it as well as education?

I just don’t understand why people think that schools are some sort of sacred place where life can be paused indefinitely, whilst hospitals, GP surgeries, shops, care homes, cafes, dentists, warehouses etc find ways to keep working.
Me neither. Lucky for the cowering types the scientists and lab technicians, sewage workers, power station workers etc are taking public transport to jobs to keep the country going.

Trashtara
It is much easier to social distance in secondary schools Says who? I teach in primary and secondary schools and I disagree. See pp comments about teenagers!

I never suggested retired teachers. Well who then?

Also utilising private schools How? Where are the private schools going to find the extra teaching staff and rooms to teach a load of extra kids?

There are lots of solutions. No there aren't. Well, not if you mean ones which are actually possible.

The bottom line is that if you can't significantly increase teacher numbers (which you can't), then logically you have to reduce pupil numbers (through rotas and blended learning). That's the only way imo, but it will still be a problem for working parents.

hospitals, GP surgeries, shops, care homes, cafes, dentists, warehouses etc find ways to keep working.

None of these are working normally at full capacity with no effective safety measures. None. Yet schools are being asked to do exactly that.

What EVERYONE involved with schools want is 'find ways to keep working' - but in the same ways as GPs, hospitals, cafes, deitists etc are, we want to be able to do that WITH SAFETY MEASURES IN PLACE..

I just don’t understand why people think that schools are some sort of sacred place where the virus can be paused indefinitely, whilst hospitals, GP surgeries, shops, care homes, cafes, dentists, warehouses etc use a range of mitigation measures which are not allowed in schools.

Many private schools and universities in the United States are opening for classes in mid August. Regular classes will end before Thanksgiving, the fourth Thursday in November. The end of the semester will be online. Some universities and state schools will be wholly online. Private schools with smaller classes can distance more easily. Many private school pupils are in classes with fewer than sixteen students, especially in secondary.
I live in Rhode Island. Everyone without breathing or intellectual difficulties over two is required to wear a mask in public over their nose and mouth. Many stores have signs: no mask means no services.

There seems to be an assumption that if there is a 'case', then bubbles etc need to self/isolate.
Better solution is that if a child has symptoms they are tested with the new 90 min test and of posit r they go home. No one else dies unless they go through the same procedure. Children will be mixing on buses etc so pointless to isolate certain groups who are have not actually had a positive test. Those who are anxious can either de-register or work out a system of SD from their children and send them to school. Society must not be allowed to grind to a halt because of unrealistic demands from those who are totally disproportionate in their fears.

does not 'dies'