Parents of secondarily school DC, so you feel you're in a bubble of hundreds, and act accordingly?

[Chaotic45]

My DS is at a large secondary school. His bubble consists of his whole school year, almost 200 children. For anyone that this is news to I think it's fairly standard for some secondaries as they all study a mix of subjects in different streams so they share classes with many different children of the same year.

The school year bubbles are kept separate and I take my hat off to the school for managing this.

They do of course mix before and after school with questionable or impossible social distancing on busses, as siblings, in clubs etc.. But that's for a separate thread.

I'm not criticising the way schools are managing this, but I'm conscious that we are all part of this enormous bubble of 200 families and that feels risky. So I am not meeting with any of my older relatives, parents, or friends who are at increased risk except for outdoors at a large distance.

This is going to become more tricky as the days get colder. I work outside every day all day, but my parents are already struggling with the idea of meeting outdoors and they want to come inside. Technically they can as we are a family of 3, and they are divorced so would visit mostly separately, but I don't feel it's sensible as our risk hangs in the balance of whatever the 200 other families that we have bubbled with are doing!

Dad is already talking about Christmas as without us he would be totally alone, he lives alone, is increasingly frail and sees very few people. But bringing him into our home feels so risky, even if we keep a good distance.

How do other people who are part of a large school bubble feel about this,?

Ours is basically the whole primary as they have before/after clubs so 400+. Not really acceptable because they could have grouped the clubs by year group.
They are also all going in the canteen for lunch.
My dc got ill within 8d even with her actually only have direct contact with the 31 other people in the class.

We calculated more than a 1000 to be in "our bubble". So we didn't send him back. I see no other option.
I was thinking the other day though that I might be doing my kid a disservice, but next day got 2 pieces of news:

• 6000+ cases
• out of 15 in gcse specialist subject class 4 were present. I know 3 who are off. They are sick: sore throat, sick up or/and down, fever. They've been sick for 2-3 days, neither can get a test. SO... because they haven't been tested > officially they are not off with covid (let's assume for argument that they do have it) > officially school is not notifying parents > they are not isolating bubble or even close contacts > school goes on as normal.

Now if that is safe by any measure, I'll eat my non-existent hat.

Although in the case of my DS school they are not mixing within school. They have separate toilets, separate break areas, and use seperate classrooms and routes. Teachers are supposed to be at the front of the class only and SD at all times.

Yes same at my dc's school. Some classrooms make it impossible for teachers to always keep 2m away though. I teach one class of reception to year 2 once a week. The first day back, two of them came and tried to hug me!

@IdratherbeatPorthcurno I agree with you that your school's way is better atm. It's a shame that some things have been compromised, but if it makes bubbles smaller then this is good for a myriad of reasons.

A lot of schools claim it's not possible- which is true, unless they are able to consider a huge amount do change and compromise.

All very worthwhile IMO.

This is exactly why I’m not seeing my parents at the moment. A couple of Children in the bubbles Are awaiting test results. And the delays mean that it could already be spreading unknowingly.

A pp had a good idea about xmas which is what we will do. Ensure the dc finish 2 weeks in advance so we can keep apart from anyone prior to seeing parents on Xmas day.

My kids are in large secondary bubbles. Things is, ds already caught a cold. So all the measures aren't stopping viruses. Plus we have a confirmed covid case anyway. We're seeing our parents inside on the grounds that they don't have much time left.

DC's school has organised the students so there is "bubbles within bubbles". So if someone in DC's year tests positive the whole year group doesn't automatically have to self-isolate, they will also look at level of contact.

Like OP I'm conscious that just sending 2 children to school is creating a huge number of possible transmission points, so I've also taken the decision to minimise as many other contacts as possible. We are going to see my vulnerable PiL at the weekend, and I've suggested to DH that we might have to accept that this is the last visit for a while (FiL is too ill to go outside a lot of the time so we don't even have that as an option).

I think my view can be summarised as
Having 2 children in secondary school is already extremely risky, so I don't feel as a household we can take on ANY additional risk unless necessary.