Sixth forms

[Jamdemic]

I don't see how the advice applying to primary schools can be applied without adaptation to sixth forms.

It is a totally different structure of education. A primary school class can be readily limited to a bubble.
A sixth form of 200 in year 12 and 200 in year 13 all doing only 3 or 4 subjects in relatively small class sizes is entirely different. The bubble is not really 200 pupils. A pupils will probably only be in a class room for longer than 15 minutes with a few dozen people since they only do 3 or 4 A levels and those are in fixed classes. I guess you can add their tutor group to that.

But if one pupil who does none of the same subjects as another pupil and is in a different tutor group gets a positive test result , it makes no sense for the other pupil (or all 200 pupils) to automatically lose 2 weeks of in-school education. It is perfectly possible to only ask those pupils who were actually in close proximity for longer than 15 minutes to stay at home.

And as I mentioned on another thread, the statistical threshold for quarantine of an entire bubble is different for different schools and should not be just a fixed figure. One pupil out of 30 (3%) is much higher percentage than one pupil out of 200 (0.5%).

The fixed figure of one pupil or two pupils makes no sense if the bubbles are not the same size. A bubble of 200 or 300 pupils in a large state secondary is going to be massively more disadvantaged in their education than a small bubble of 30 in a primary or a small year group in a private school.

Surely a fixed proportion or percentage of the bubble would be more appropriate as the threshold for quarantine.