Safe to reopen schools

[askmehowiknow]

Article from oxford professor summarising new data that it's safe for children to be in school. Great pre September reading!

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/18/children-covid-19-english-schools-virus-safe-reopening

• should read all children are entitled to have access to education

To be fair to them. They've not really got a plan A. So they can't even begin to think about a plan B

Place marking

The biggest problem in schools is going to be fuckwited parents either not following the rules themselves or not making their kids follow them. Seems that’s the case in Scotland already. Probably the same ones screaming and shouting about school not being “safe”. Not sure how we get round that as even if they are part time kids won’t SD and fuckwitted parents will still break the rules.

Hi Gavin Williamson, I see your much anticipated campaign to convince parents that it is safe to go back to school has kicked off with a soft piece in the Guardian.

I’m sure that parents across England will be fully confident in your abilities to manage the return to school as well as you managed the exam results.

@RaspberryRuff

The biggest problem in schools is going to be fuckwited parents either not following the rules themselves or not making their kids follow them. Seems that’s the case in Scotland already. Probably the same ones screaming and shouting about school not being “safe”. Not sure how we get round that as even if they are part time kids won’t SD and fuckwitted parents will still break the rules.

I do agree with this. Whatever measures are enforced in a school shop etc. People immediately stop as soon as they leave.

I believe that's what happened in the sandwich factory. It was spread during staff break times.

So fed up with comparisons to Sweden. Shows that someone hasn't looked very deeply and thus the rest is suspect.

Everyone wants schools to open. Most people want schools to open safely. There is a demented fringe group who want them open at all costs with no safety measures at all for teachers and older pupils.

They are best ignored.

Does anyone trust Gav to open the schools safely?

[quote Uhoh2020]@latticechaos but there aren't enough teachers to be able to do it!
Say 1 secondary teacher has 5 different classes each with 30 children thats 150 children. At school that teacher is there in person teaching every class at the same time can answer all questions during that lesson etc. If only half are in the classroom that day there's 75 children she can't help. Of course the children at home who require help can email the teacher but when does the teacher have time to email back upto 75 children when she's got a day full of teaching in the classroom?[/quote]
They won’t have. Under the blended learning plans that were produced for our school we were told that as the teacher would be teaching the other half of the class not in there would be no or limited teacher support on home days. Which is obviously understandable as the teacher can’t be expected to do both at the same time.

Our blended learning plans were actually pretty good and I would have been happy with them as a temp measure. However there were plenty of schools who couldn’t have kids in 50% of the times and there were many who would have had senior pupils going in only one day a week. That’s no use at all to exam pupils. Yet it was the best who could be offered. Meantime private schools with lots of space and tiny classes see no difference in their day to day and all kids get back as normal and the attainment gap increases. It’s a mess with no real answer.

I think the important point with Sweden is there was no community spread with schools being open. Children were mixing in and out of the classroom plus at home with families and friends.

I'm not sure the class size is relevant to this

Yep @askmehowiknow. The school cases appear to in at least some cases be caused by indoor social gatherings, kids going to school with symptoms, and also parents not quarantining. It is so frustrating that infection rates were low enough that a return to school would have been fine and parents can’t even act in a responsible way to try and protect that. I have been so strict with all the rules as I have told my kids that this is what we need to do outside school to ensure cases are low so they can get back to school. What we can about parents who don’t care I don’t know.

There is a demented fringe group who want them open at all costs with no safety measures at all for teachers and older pupils.

Here’s a handy checklist on how to spot them:

1. They will assume that anyone arguing for the safe re-opening of schools actually wants them to remain closed

2. They will suggest that any parent unhappy with the lack of mitigation measures deregister their child

3. They will suggest that any teacher unhappy with the lack of mitigation measures resign their job

4. They will slate teachers at any opportunity.

Eyes peeled.

It summarises all the evidence so far that points to being safe. That's a good thing smile

No it doesn't. It repeatedly says that there are questions about what could happen and uncertainties about risk of infection. The only positive is that most children aren't seriously affected but it doesn't say that vulnerable children or adults, both in school and the wider community, are safe.

@noblegiraffe

5. many of them are anti vax loons who go on about Bill Gates and Big Pharma wanting to kill us.

I may be the only person here who knows the details of how the PHE sampling was done as I have two friends whose DCs were included.

Firstly, it's not finished (WILL it get finished now PHE has been dumped??)

Secondly, (I am really disappointed in The Guardian for this as it's more right wing press territory), this is important : IT's NOT FINISHED! In particular, they have hardly any data for anyone over 11

Thirdly, there were vanishingly few vulnerable children in the sampling because they, on the whole, did not return to school during the sample reopening

Lastly, the survey was conducted when class sizes were halved and social distancing was at least partially being enforced both in schools and in the community , and when shielding was still in place.

I think things coming out of Georgia (which he fleetingly mentions , almost flippantly), and Canada and various other schools in the US rather suggests that the findings may be contradicted at some point.

Even Alasdair Munro of 'Don't Forget the Bubbles' (and poster boy of Us For Them) has had ot update ghsi recent online met research to acknowledge the Georgia stuff is a concern.

Can we also note, this article is an opinion piece by a paediatrician, who have very different child health concerns to virologists. I am not sure one specialism should trump another , but I am certain the virologists have greater knowledge of the virus itself. DH's cardiologist ahs a lesser understanding of much around covid than one might expect, for example.

The idea that a child should return to school , and the vulnerable family member should isolate is laughably naive. I think it presupposes all clinically vulnerable people are pensioners. Many of them have lost the right not to work . Some of them might be the said child's actual parents!!

I am really disappointed in The Guardian for this as it's more right wing press territory

I wish government propaganda was clearly marked.

Yes I agree all experts will interpret the data and the situation differently. An economist and a virologist I'm sure would have very different but equally valid views.

This is an opinion piece summarising evidence to date which points to reopening schools being safe. He does include on going studies, however given how large the data and how new the virus I don't think that's necessarily unreasonable.

It will be years if ever before we get a definitive conclusion.

But it's very encouraging to read

Schools in Sweden used SD and halved the class size, so if we are using them as an example of what to do I would go along with that!

DS’s school is setting up webcams in their classes and are recording their lessons for pupils who can’t be in class, so this could help with blended learning.

A local MAT were pre COVID beginning to look at the possibility of one specialist teacher teaching their lessons across a number of schools using technology, to help with the lack of specialist teachers being available.

Sweden did not find any cases of transmission in schools, because it purposefully did not look for them. It kept schools open in its attempt to pursue herd immunity.

However, a scan of Swedish newspapers makes clear that school outbreaks have occurred. In the town of Skellefteå, a teacher died and 18 of 76 staff tested positive at a school with about 500 students in preschool through ninth grade. The school closed for 2 weeks because so many staff were sick, but students were not tested for the virus. In Uppsala, staff protested when school officials, citing patient privacy rules, declined to notify families or staff that a teacher had tested positive. No contact tracing was done at the school. At least two staff members at other schools have died, but those schools remained open and no one attempted to trace the spread of the disease there. When asked about these cases, Ludvigsson said he was unaware of them. He did not respond to a query about whether he would amend the review article to include them.

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/how-sweden-wasted-rare-opportunity-study-coronavirus-schools

I have read somewhere that Sweden never tests children under 16 as part of its contact tracing, but unfortunately, I can't find it. If anyone else has read the same article and can find links to it, I'd really appreciate it.

8OP it doesn't remotely summarise all* the research to date!

It summarise one unfinished piece of research.

Please be accurate in what you say.

The reason this is being trumpeted is because amongst the huge sea of research being done, it is the only research done, so far , in England.

I am dying to ask you how you know...

nellodee, this was huge frustration to the international community re Sweden. I believe they now are.

Andres Tegnell is a dubious figure to say the least.

@noblegiraffe

Hi Gavin Williamson, I see your much anticipated campaign to convince parents that it is safe to go back to school has kicked off with a soft piece in the Guardian.

I’m sure that parents across England will be fully confident in your abilities to manage the return to school as well as you managed the exam results.

I saw a great tweet about this, was along the lines of - Gavin Williamson had 2 jobs in the pandemic, don't mess up the exam results and get students back to school safely, he seems to be failing at both of these.'

I think a lot of people seem so keen on get students back to school they miss the safely (and this means for all, including staff and the wider community). I will only count schools back as a success if we don't have widespread closures. It is pointless opening schools fully in September if by doing so they mostly end up shut by October half term.

@latticechaos

Btw 1in 10 children have a vulnerable parent or carer.

It will harm those children greatly if their parent becomes ill or unable to work. Much more than it will harm my kids to study part time in distanced groups for a term or two more.

The plan to.open without SD is wrong imo.

The data from the pre-summer limited openings is not adequate. Many vulnerable families stayed away.

This! Exactly this. All the vulnerable families in both the school I teach at and the school / nursery that my children go to kept their children off and vulnerable teaching staff didn't go in. If there were vulnerable parents, those children generally didn't go back either.

So fed up with comparisons to Sweden. Shows that someone hasn't looked very deeply and thus the rest is suspect.

Yes - Sweden had a very different 'thing' going on outside school too. It doesn't matter that they officially didn't have a lockdown, because lots of people locked themselves down. Shops were closing due to lack of footfall. Parents were bullied almost into sending children to school. Their population is VERY different to ours in lots of ways - density, ethnicity etc. Their attitudes to stuff are just different.

Why don't we see constant comparisons to S Korea or Hong Kong? Is it because we consider them 'different' societally? Because we are just as different to Sweden. Just because they are closer doesn't mean squat.

I also liked that the article said something about staff being younger. That's not really the case.

The clinically vulnerable staff at the school I work at now have a sort of grim fatalism about September.
I also feel the same with a shielded FIL and DM.
I can't quit now until half term to leave at Christmas. There's nothing I can do. I can't even wear a mask. I will be teaching 200+ teenagers a week in poorly ventilated cramped rooms where they sit shoulder to shoulder and also will not be wearing masks.
It's crazy.