If you don't think schools should reopen...

[TeaInMyStoneCup]

...what do you think should happen? Genuine question. I work full time (from home), as does DH (though not at home) and we have a soon to be 5 yo (in Sept). Do you think that we should just carry on as we had to in lockdown when nurseries closed, when we were at breaking point attempting to work and simultaneously look after him? It was shit for us and it was shit for him because I could never give him my full and undivided attention. I'm still catching up with work now and he went back to nursery in June.

I understand concerns but they don't seem proportionate to what we know is the mortality rate for this illness. Genuinely - what do you think should happen? Parents should just home school?

My two sisters and my mother are all teachers and can't wait to get back.

I agree with OP, I have seen people saying schools should stay shut. These are generally miserable old fuckers whose connection with education ended many decades ago. Funnily enough they don't want children out and about when not at school either...

Page 2 of your thread OP and not one person has said they don't want schools to reopen.

What should be happening for older students is a blended learning approach. They will do far better with 2 guarenteed days a week in school and 3 at home consolidating their learning

What age are you talking about?

If children deregister the school lose funding. No surety children lining up to take all those places.

I think you’ve got this the absolute wrong way round.

Not saying I want to deregister my child just replying to the person who told others to as if that would allow more funding. Which is wrong

@WhyAreWeHardOfThinking

What about the students from chaotic homes, those whose parents barely tolerate them in the house? What about those without internet or a laptop, anywhere quiet to study? What about young carers or those with parents who will expect them to work if around in the family business? What about those whose parents don't value education. These young people escape to school, they may not be poor enough to have fsm, they may not be on the radar of social services but they are vulnerable

Let's not derail the thread. I'm waiting for the genuine posters to come along to say they don't want schools to reopen as the OP has asked this specific question.

I suspect the OP is also talking about people who don’t want schools to open full time to all students.

Of which there are many on here.

@TeaInMyStoneCup

A 14 day isolation would be fine. I just don't want to be trying to work full time and homeschool for months on end. Again.

But a 14 day isolation isn't really "fine"

Some students will never have this. Some will have it repeatedly.

Some schools have better facilities for online learning.

Some schools have vast numbers of students without IT equipment at home.

Vast numbers of people will lose money they can't afford to by isolating because they are already in poverty.

It really isn't fine just because some people will manage.

It really isn't fine that for 6 months nothing has been done to make this work as best as possible.

It really isn't fine that schools are opening with no real national plan and teachers and unions are being blamed for blocking opening.

Schools should go back. I don't know many who don't think they should. But they should be going back with far better measures and the funding to give them the best opportunity to provide equality if education to everyone dependent on school location, social economic status of its cohort and local transmission rates.

[quote minnieok]@WhyAreWeHardOfThinking

What about the students from chaotic homes, those whose parents barely tolerate them in the house? What about those without internet or a laptop, anywhere quiet to study? What about young carers or those with parents who will expect them to work if around in the family business? What about those whose parents don't value education. These young people escape to school, they may not be poor enough to have fsm, they may not be on the radar of social services but they are vulnerable [/quote]
This is it isn’t it. School has been allowed (as our bar is so low for intervention) to become the place of safety for so many children that I can’t even begin to imagine how awful these past months have been.

Without fining parents you won’t get a lot of those kids in, they are too useful at home to look after other siblings or do chores.

Not dependent on location etc 🤦‍♀️

I think there should be remote learning and leave schools open only for where all the adults in the household are keyworkers.

To go from a few children in to all back with no safety measures (bar hand washing which for a virus that’s and staggered drops offs is going to cause cases to soar. All those that were shielding have to face the choice of fines or losing school places, staff have to work in conditions others aren’t expected too and we don’t know the long term effects of the virus.

I think there should be remote learning and leave schools open only for where all the adults in the household are keyworkers

Forcing hoards of tax payers (who generate money to fund education) out of jobs and onto benefits and causing child poverty and homelessness to soar.

Not the smartest option, is it?

I'm also interested to see these posters who don't want schools open in the wild. So far, we haven't had anyone on this thread. This is strange, as I have heard lots and lots of people talk about them, usually posters who object to any kind of distancing measures more than a general encouragement to wash hands more regularly. I am really curious to see how many people support full school closure, or even just keyworkers attending.

My guess is that there are less of them than reports of proven cases of student to teacher transmission on an UsForThem twitter feed.

[quote minnieok]@WhyAreWeHardOfThinking

What about the students from chaotic homes, those whose parents barely tolerate them in the house? What about those without internet or a laptop, anywhere quiet to study? What about young carers or those with parents who will expect them to work if around in the family business? What about those whose parents don't value education. These young people escape to school, they may not be poor enough to have fsm, they may not be on the radar of social services but they are vulnerable [/quote]

1. Since March we have remained open for a large majority of the students you mention, or we gave them staff laptops and memory sticks with the work (a few also got a dongle that their form tutor bought for them). With a blended learning approach we could have a few rooms that will allow a space for them to do their 'homework' within school. There is never, ever a blanket approach when it comes to students with difficult home lives and we do what we can. Christ, I've even bought Prom dresses for these students.

1. If we remain open for everyone full time, we are more likely to end up with the local lockdown, for well more than the 14 days people are mentioning, which will be much more damaging to these students. I'm in Manchester, we are already struggling. A blended learning approach will allow for these students to get more support from us. We have much more understanding of home lives then you seem to think.

1. Parents that don't value education? That is at least 50% of my parents, so I can't really do much about that. I phoned home for my form on a weekly basis during lockdown and it became a 'fuck off bingo' with how many will tell me to fuck off with trying to suport their Year 10 children. Or demand I come and 'sort them out'. Or threathening to come and find me at home. Or screaming that I am a lazy cunt for not being in work (I was at least once a week btw). There is only so much I can do there; I was already responding to emails between 7am and Midnight.

We can't as a school be responsible for every single issue; we really can't. We try, but we have to do our best, and that is all we can do.

@WhyAreWeHardOfThinking

That is what I would prefer too for secondary students. Thank you for expressing it so clearly - I feel like I’m going mad with the constant rhetoric of people arguing “all” (everyone back in now or deregister if you don’t like it, and pretend the world is normal) or “nothing” ( saying that anyone would be advocating schools don’t open at all).

Schools need to go back as a matter of urgency. End of.

I think lots of people, given a choice between ‘schools remaining closed’ and ‘open part time’ would actually prefer them closed.

Until there’s a vaccine.

The thing is, they also know that’s not going to happen, so it translates as ‘open safely,’ knowing this isn’t possible.

I have two friends IRL who believe this. One has no children but wishes to protect her elderly parents. The other is an asthmatic teacher.

Just because they arent on MN doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If asked this question that the OP originally posed, I know that the one wishing to protect her parents would say it was selfish of us to ‘expect her parents to die for my children.’ Yes, I’ve asked her.

The teacher friend, when asked, has told me ‘it’s not safe, I don’t know how you resolve that.’

It doesn’t negatively impact either of them. Childless friend WFH and did so long before Covid. The main impact on her life is having to shop in a mask and that she can’t visit an elderly aunt in a care home, as the daughter is the main visitor. She is secretly pleased about this because she doesn’t like visiting but hopes to inherit some money from her, so actually she’s having a break from those dutiful visits.

Bit rich to describe parents as ‘selfish’ for wanting their children educated, but hey ho!

Teacher will be on full pay whatever the scenario. Didn’t find lockdown hard professionally, was on a 1:4 rota (in work 1 in 4 weeks) with worksheets uploaded to school website every Sunday night. Doesn’t mind carrying on with this scenario, however I doubt it will be allowed to carry on, which she knows really.

To be fair, the hard lockdowners won't come and contribute here, they'll just start a new thread with a scary title such as "Large doses of virus found on pencil cases in Papua New Guinea"...

@IrmaFayLear

To be fair, the hard lockdowners won't come and contribute here, they'll just start a new thread with a scary title such as "Large doses of virus found on pencil cases in Papua New Guinea"...

🤣🤣 That made me laugh.

The rules are ridiculous too. My kids aren't allowed to take a backpack incase it is riddled with covid. They are allowed a book bag and a packed lunch box though as they remain virus free apparently. Bonkers.

@bizmum1

Schools need to go back as a matter of urgency. End of.

Schools have been open throughout. We are also running summer catch up 3 days a week. Also, we have to remember that we need to walk before we can run. Any data from this country is based on very limited numbers of students in. Take a look at schools across the world, the US being the most recent. Cases are being found with ease in schools, closing them down.

For secondary, would you rather full-time for an uncertain amount of time, with staff being off repeately to be tested, with an increased risk to staff, students and families, or part time, with less students and more stability.

Your statement does not contribute to the discussion; we need a solution and 'Go back. End of.' really doesn't help. We are trying to make this better or everyone.

For secondary’s

I’m firmly In the part time camp. Eases everyone in, helps keep schools open for longer (hopefully) and is frankly safer. My eldest was in year 6 and learnt so much more part time then when they were full time

@TheKeatingFive

I suspect the OP is also talking about people who don’t want schools to open full time to all students.

Of which there are many on here.

No she said closed. Can people on here stop making assumptions, putting words in people’s mouths and having made-up arguments with straw men. It’s tiring.

I believe people want part time education as the answer if they don’t support reopening.

It’s actually something I could understand at primary since it would seem there is flexibility to cut the curriculum in half (just focus on English and maths), but secondary seems difficult with specialist teachers. Surely most parents offered two days school would want that to focus on the core of English, maths, science and maybe humanities and want pe, art, design technology, music, drama etc cut but could we redistribute staff to achieve this? Unless pe teachers can teach maths then I cannot see how cutting the curriculum in half works in a way which wouldn’t cause problems further down the line (we are world beating in our science research at the moment and genuinely this is the only bit of our covid response we got right! I am not sure we will remain so if we cut science teaching in schools by 50 percent for the foreseeable!).

I do think that the conversation needs to go beyond “let’s do part time” to a genuine conversation re how this works though. Parents like me are skeptical but if I thought they could cut 50 percent of what is taught in school and still deliver what we need children and young people to learn I could be convinced.

childcare when they are not at school would be me working from home while they play video games and watch Netflix while the older one possible met up and socialised with friends but it could in principal work so it’s mainly what do they learn if they only learn half of what they did before?

At our school they have to take book bags because they fit more neatly on backs of chairs. Back packs are bulky and considered a fire risk. This has always been the rule and nothing to do with germs.