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

Is it not important to consider the risks to adults associated with the schoolchildren and older schoolchildren , or are they acceptable collateral damage? be careful what you say here...

Universities concern me , too. What about you OP?

Spin, spin, lie and bluster....

Is it not important to consider the risks to adults associated with the schoolchildren and older schoolchildren , or are they acceptable collateral damage? be careful what you say here...

Of course it is but at some point kids have got to go back to school, end of story.

The biggest risk factor, over everything else, is age. The most affected age group by far are the over seventies. The risk to a 50 year old teacher is still pretty negligible.

I don't disagree there were safer ways of doing but I am not convinced that blended learning/part-time schooling is the way to go.

Piggy - don't be daft, teachers don't count as actual people you know!

@Piggywaspushed

Is it not important to consider the risks to adults associated with the schoolchildren and older schoolchildren , or are they acceptable collateral damage? be careful what you say here...

Universities concern me , too. What about you OP?

That will be the role of local lockdown closing bubbles etc.

Sadly risk cannot ever be eliminated

But if the evidence points so far to schools being safe for children, then no I don't believe they should be denied access to school any longer.

Every parent will need to decide what is best for them and their household though. Some difficult decisions for sure

I said adults, not teachers.

@WhyNotMe40

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.

This is how I feel. I'm not officially clinically vulnerable (though I am overweight and middle-aged). Those 'if you don't want to do it, resign' comments really boil my piss because as you say, we could only leave at Christmas once we've taken all the risk anyway and then only to another KW job on lower pay (but with PPE and SD at least).

As the May deadline passed I knew I was making my 'choice'. What I didn't expect was the absolute contempt for my own and my family's safety. I have no intention of battening down the hatches in a self-imposed lockdown in September if society is happy enough for me to take this risk for the sake of the economy the children.

Do you have childrenOP? What age?

@Piggywaspushed

I said adults, not teachers.

Sorry. I'm just getting cross now and need to step away. Taking my kids out for an outside socially distanced activity...

He has obviously never been in a school during flu season!

Yep. I don't think anyone writing guidance has been in a school between Oct and Feb half terms. Literally everyone is ill. EVERYONE. Kids get dosed up with calpol and sent in unless they are bleeding from the eyes. Like I said upthread, it's going to be the hokey cokey winter.

I'm much more stressed about the reality of trying to do a normal teaching job in the face of repeated absences etc, than I am about being in a school environment in times of covid. To the point that me and my partner have decided that if it's too mad, then I'll resign to leave at Christmas.

'Just how likely this is has been the study of speculation this week based on unpublished data from a school-based, PHE swabbing study, with reports suggesting that very few children attending reopened primary schools at the end of the last academic year had detectable virus. Given the very limited reopening of secondary schools before the summer holidays the situation in teenagers is less certain. However reports from the Office for National Statistics have consistently shown that, even with schools closed, approximately one in 300 children and teenagers with no symptoms had the Covid-19 virus detectable on nasal swabs from April to July, similar to rates in those aged 50 and above.'

I'm not refuting the professor @askmehowiknow
But read the full article and it is not reassuring in the slightest when considering secondary schools in particular.

There are already parents in Scotland furious because their child has to SI and miss two weeks of school because of who their own DC sat next to.

They will do anything to avoid closing bubbles. Which makes online learning for the few at a time who are away chaotic at best.

And ,a s for secondary, what is this bubble you speak of??

I don't believe they should be denied access to school any longer.

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

Every parent will need to decide what is best for them and their household though. Some difficult decisions for sure

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

Just waiting for unhappy teachers can resign.

@mrshoho

'Just how likely this is has been the study of speculation this week based on unpublished data from a school-based, PHE swabbing study, with reports suggesting that very few children attending reopened primary schools at the end of the last academic year had detectable virus. Given the very limited reopening of secondary schools before the summer holidays the situation in teenagers is less certain. However reports from the Office for National Statistics have consistently shown that, even with schools closed, approximately one in 300 children and teenagers with no symptoms had the Covid-19 virus detectable on nasal swabs from April to July, similar to rates in those aged 50 and above.'

I'm not refuting the professor @askmehowiknow
But read the full article and it is not reassuring in the slightest when considering secondary schools in particular.

I did read the article and found it reassuring

I give it a few weeks in Scotland til we’re part time in secondary. Should have opened that way IMO given the plans were made.

@latticechaos I agree completely.

Kids get dosed up with calpol and sent in unless they are bleeding from the eyes

Frankly that's part of the fucking issue isn't it. My DD started school this year and when she started the headteacher gave us a lecture about attendance, saying "don't keep them off if they're ill, just give them calpol and send them in."

Yes because what a great mentality to instil in children, that you have to soldier on infecting everyone else. No wonder you get so many fuckwits turning up to offices and coughing all over desks.

She's my child. I'll decide if she's well enough to come to school or not.

@inpontypandyallday

Kids get dosed up with calpol and sent in unless they are bleeding from the eyes

Frankly that's part of the fucking issue isn't it. My DD started school this year and when she started the headteacher gave us a lecture about attendance, saying "don't keep them off if they're ill, just give them calpol and send them in."

Yes because what a great mentality to instil in children, that you have to soldier on infecting everyone else. No wonder you get so many fuckwits turning up to offices and coughing all over desks.

She's my child. I'll decide if she's well enough to come to school or not.

Completely agree! Those attendance awards will hopefully become a thing of the past!

Not always you won't. She has symptoms of Covid, you don't decide.

@askmehowiknow I did read the article and found it reassuring smile

So you are reassured that approx 1 in 300 school children are carrying the virus asymptomatically and soon to be mixing inside with no SD?

Can you explain exactly what you found reassuring?

Even if they are going to reactively close bubbles and use harsher local lockdowns (the current ones basically just mean I can't go another house/garden but we are not locked down in any other way), those measures would affect children too. Wouldn't it be better to put more thought into mitigation measures to decrease the likelihood of bubbles closing or local lockdowns?

Not always you won't. She has symptoms of Covid, you don't decide.

Well obviously piggy. Not really sure why you felt the need to bold that out like I'm an idiot.

This is so blindingly obvious iam! Why why why can't people see this!??

@inpontypandyallday

Kids get dosed up with calpol and sent in unless they are bleeding from the eyes

Frankly that's part of the fucking issue isn't it. My DD started school this year and when she started the headteacher gave us a lecture about attendance, saying "don't keep them off if they're ill, just give them calpol and send them in."

Yes because what a great mentality to instil in children, that you have to soldier on infecting everyone else. No wonder you get so many fuckwits turning up to offices and coughing all over desks.

She's my child. I'll decide if she's well enough to come to school or not.

Totally agree with you.

This is exactly what’s going to happen. Parents who don’t give a shit about a poorly child being in school and just dose them up and pack them off. I know it’s a nightmare with work and childcare. I get all that I have a job and kids of my own but it’s not right. It’s going to require a change in all of us and our workplaces too to stay home and not “soldier on” when we aren’t well.