Some reassuring news about schools being really safe

[TheAdventuresoftheWishingChair]

I know there's a huge amount of (justifiable) worry about schools going back soon and I saw a piece of news today which deserved it's own thread in case people wanted some nice news.

Public Health England has looked at the evidence from June when 1,646,000 pupils went back to 23,400 schools in total. They found just 67 cases of the virus as a result of that. Only 0.01% of schools actually experienced an outbreak. That means that not only are children exceptionally unlikely to suffer any serious effects from catching the virus if they do get it but they are also really, really likely to catch it or spread it around in school. I know that won't reassure absolutely everyone, particularly if you have a child with additional health needs, but it is so lovely to be able to look at the evidence and say that, in terms of this virus, schools are actually really low risk.

Story from here www.gov.uk/government/news/study-finds-very-low-numbers-of-covid-19-outbreaks-in-schools?utm_source=01ce0967-35e6-401b-92c7-8d5c486b1fe3&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_content=immediate

The temperature will be dropping soon in autumn. Covid loves cold temperatures. Another factor to consider

I wonder if there is any/much data since nurseries went back to normal in late July?

The regulations changed when English schools broke up so private nurseries (including ours) were able to go back to full numbers. I know ours was pretty much at its normal complement for August and suspect we weren’t alone as so many working parents rely on nursery. That’s class-sized groups of 1-4 year olds with zero social distancing, bubbles only. It would be interesting to see whether there were many infections linked to these settings in hotspots in particular.

Holiday camps are another interesting data point - the one that my 8yo went to was full and oversubscribed.

In Crépy-en-Valois, northern outskirts of Paris, two high school teachers got covid. It went undetected for 4 weeks in February. The virus had been spreading freely at the school. 38% of pupils, 43% of teachers, and 59% of nonteaching staff had been infected. (By then, several people associated with the school had been hospitalized with COVID-19 complications.)

I also distinctly remember on the 'you are mad to send your kid back on June 1' threads that people were adamant that September was going to be some magic milestone where everything was going to be OK and it would be fine to send your kids back by then. The R number would be low, we would know more about the virus, I don't even know what people thought!

Part of the reason that I was so keen for my kids to go back in June was because I knew that September was going to be a shit show and I wanted them to get a few weeks of normality back in if they had the opportunity to do so.

Recently in Germany:

www.ctvnews.ca/world/coronavirus-cases-reported-at-41-schools-in-germany-s-capital-1.5073458

In Berlin pupils don't have to wear masks inside the classrooms.

So 41 schools out of 800ish in Berlin in a week or two. Shows full classrooms are higher risk than socially distanced ones compared to 30 out of 25,000 here in June.

Out of interest, anyone know how many outbreaks there were in schools here in July?

We hoped that by September we might have a tracking app, and a fully functioning test and trace program. We also hoped that we may have kept cases really low over the summer, rather than opening up as much as possible until R was already hovering around 1. We hoped these things, because that was the best route to getting kids back to school as fully as possible.

We got Dido Harding.

Everyone? I wasn’t on here in June. Didn’t send as one got offered a place and one didn’t and because of vulnerable family member. Completely understood why people sent them. Completely understand now too. Schools aren’t safe and there is a lot of propaganda being spouted in the press and even on here. That’s what motivates my posts.

Well Scotland have just opened and there has just been a major outbreak linked to a school in Dundee. It’s breaking news.

Scottish teacher, been back a week. 9 kids off in my class of 30. 8 staff members off today. Whole thing is a joke tbh.

With small numbers in they were able to socially distance. Completely different from cram 30 pupils in a classroom and hope for the best.

@Sassenach85

Scottish teacher, been back a week. 9 kids off in my class of 30. 8 staff members off today. Whole thing is a joke tbh.

I hope you're ok, and everyone is mild.

This is very worrying though, are they confirmed cases or symptoms?

Another difference between now and June.
We now know kids can spread it to each other.
We now know that kids can spread it to teachers.
We know that teenagers catch and spread it at the same rate as adults.
We now know that it is airborne.

I disagree OP.
For lots of reasons others have already stated.

I am sending my child back because I really have no option. For him it is absolutely the best choice. I’m not sitting around “worried”, I’m getting on with my life but I am concerned and this article doesn’t make me more reassured at all.

You haven’t pointed to any specific data except the headline number of kids and number of schools, so I’ll deal with that.

It averages at 70 kids per school (all schools primary and secondary ). Obviously most had far less and some more.

Even for our tiny village primary (which only had 3 during full lockdown) , 70 would be 50% full.

But most of these kids were part time and most were only in towards the end when some schools relaxed a little and let more in.

So it’s more like 35 kids per school.

@latticechaos thanks we haven’t been told why the other staff are off I am off due to my child being ill. She’s been back a week and is off with a cough. I guess once someone gets a positive result then we need to be informed. No news on that yet. Schools are a breeding ground for germs. Fact. And even if all these people in my work are off with a normal cold or whatever, it’s happened on a wide scale as we are all crammed back into school. We follow SD as much as poss and have staggered breaks and all that but it makes no difference. It’s crazy.

It's just been announced there's been a large school outbreak in Scotland.

@teta yeah I saw that but that’s nowhere near me. We have loads of kids and staff off at the moment but no confirmed cases yet. Testing takes a few days.

The problem is that people just think schools.

A small primary with a very small catchment area is very different to a secondary that maybe up 2000 pupils with a very wide catchment. Colleges of 2000 plus have even wider catchment areas.

The small primary will have a lot of pupils walking or being dropped off by carer.

The secondary / college may have most pupils using public transport and/or school bus. Some school buses will be transporting kids of more than one school . And some of those 'kids' will be bigger than the teaching staff.

So what defines really safe?

A school in Dundee has just had to close after 17 teachers have tested positive . All pupils and staff now self isolating. It's going to be chaos with such random shutdowns.

Yeah.. I've just finished a term of online teaching. Unideal but safe.
I had a meeting with my line manager last week over Microsoft Teams because the School Risk Assessment doesn't kick in until Sept 1st. So I'm not allowed in the premises yet because... I don't know. Presumably a distanced meeting with my line manager isn't that risky.

Particularly considering that on 2nd September (so next week) I will be teaching 2 x year 8 classes, 2 x year 7 classes and a year 13. All in the same room because Drama is a "specialist" room and therefore exempt from the same protective measures as are put in elsewhere in the school (kids staying in one classroom where possible/desks 1m apart /facing forward)

In drama we have no desks. Kids will be starting the lessons in a circle.

There are still drama games and physical theatre lessons on the lesson plan.

In one day 5 different classes crossing three year groups will be in my drama classroom. There is no time to clean between each one. I cannot possibly distance.

The risk for me and those kids in the summer was close to zero. The risk for me and those kids next week is off the charts.

These things are not comparable. I don't want to teach like this and am bracing myself for illness. So, OP, your reassurance hasn't worked. All of the above is govt compliant.

Yeah. Dundee.
Any thoughts @TheAdventuresoftheWishingChair?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/24/seventeen-teachers-at-dundee-school-contract-covid-19

That Dundee school has also impacted other schools I assume through siblings and teachers’ children.

Well currently siblings of the Dundee school kids can still go to school if they're at other schools. So we'll see how long it takes to spread to other schools I guess.