The rate of infections in schools is being suppressed from public knowledge

[noblegiraffe]

...claims Karam Bales of the NEU.

I’m pretty sure I agree. When the newspapers are going mad about university cases and 13,000 kids and 700 teachers being off school in Birmingham doesn’t make national headlines, then something dodgy is going on.

This twitter thread collates all the evidence and is pretty damning twitter.com/karamballes/status/1315067136394625032?s=21

My own thoughts:
Why are the government ignoring the WHO recommendations on masks?
Why have they stopped PHE deciding who is sent home when there are cases in schools setting up their own helpline instead which sends home far fewer kids?
Why are the figures not being presented in a way that makes it clear which cases are in schools and not universities?
Why did Chris Whitty use a graph of test positivity rates instead of actual infection numbers in his briefing when it came to claiming that schools aren’t an issue?
Why are they insisting that children only get a test if they exhibit one of the three main adult symptoms, ignoring that the majority of children who test positive don’t have any of them?
Why are they insisting on vulnerable children being sent in with the threat of fines for non-attendance?
Why did they spend the summer pretending that unions were blocking the re-opening of schools and then paying social media influencers to say schools are safe, without taking any steps to ensure that they are?
Why did they announce a Plan B of rotas for schools in tiers of lockdown and then never actually use it?
Why did they say that an effective test and trace system was vital to opening schools and then also say they were surprised when demand increased when schools opened?
Why do they keep saying schools are a priority and that be the only thing they say about keeping them open?

And where the fuck is Gavin Williamson?

@neveradullmoment99
Let's hope so, I was watching BBC news 24 earlier and they said Wales are considering something similar. I dare say that by the end of the day all 3 nations would have announced this except England, who will do so on the last day of term.

We are having our October break now sadly. I'm not sure if its too late here now. I suppose they could extend it.

We are back to school on Monday. I am really worried not just being a teacher but more so that my high school kids bring it back to us. I am.praying they do something

Hope so.

@Piggywaspushed thanks

I just despair of them doing anything.

I'd much rather the schools stayed open, but that we had a genuine choice about whether/when to send our children back, and real risk mitigation measures like funding for improvement to ventilation and for extra space so that classes could be more socially distanced.

If anyone wants to sign a petition about it, there's one here asking the government to stop fining parents for non-attendance and allow parental choice: petition.parliament.uk/petitions/551740

There's also one about masks in secondary schools but I've lost the link. You can search for it on the same government petition site though.

I'm also concerned about other infections.
My son and half his year group did not have standard Y9 vaccinations because of Covid. We don't even know when they will be given - they are y10 now and no sign of these routine vaccinations.

I think the writing is already on the wall, schools will close again to most pulls over winter.

There is no other way to get cases down or track and trace under control.

What remains to be seen is whether the government will wait too long again, thus prolonging the lockdown.

Why do you think schools will close to most pupils over winter? That’s quite a sweeping statement.

Schools will only close as a last resort. So, by this logic, we will all be in a full national lockdown over the winter. We can’t afford it.

If they weren't going to close to schools, they would surely be making greater efforts to reduce the risk in schools!

I think the problem is, they can’t.

They are too crowded. I think they should keep y12 in full time and switch other years to part time.

I think they should keep y12 in full time and switch other years to part time

Erm... and Y13 too, please, given they have exams next year! And Y11!

Maybe it would help if they kept Y10-13 in full time and the younger kids went in one week in and one week off. No idea how that would work from a childcare perspective though - a lot of parents are not going to be happy leaving a 11 year old home on their own all day.

This could be a matter of life or death.
Think of the disadvantage of losing one parent or better still your only parent.
They years you have mentioned are at most risk

This is overdramatising. And if we follow that we will never reopen schools because a child could catch any bug and bring it home to a vulernable parent. if you are vulnerable you are vulnerable to everything, not just covid. The flu vaccine isn't 100% reliable and there are other illnesses for which there is no vaccine (or not a commonly used one). For example, when my son was 3 he caught slapped cheek. I then caught it too, I hadn't even heard of it, but then I found out that it's not a good thing to get when you are pregnant (I wasn't but could have been). We can't protect against every illness and every eventuality. Education has to come first.

Sorry I’m not awake.

I did mean y11! And of course y13.

That would be a bit random, keeping 12 and nobody else!

if you are vulnerable you are vulnerable to everything, not just covid

This is an oversimplification to the point epwhere it is wrong. Not every infectious illness is as serious in each of the categories of exceptionally vulnerable. Also non-novel infectious may have been had (and enduring immunity acquired) way before the condition struck which led to the exceptional vulnerability.

And of course no other infectious disease is circulating as readily or in such high numbers.

Flu jab may not be perfect, but it reduces incidence considerably. Treatments for many other diseases are more fully established, and chances of survival rather better.

Noble do you mean your school gave you sheets from twinkle?

They found them for you?

They didn't just say, here is the twinkle link... Happy hunting( through thousands of resources and no link to what had been covered or not?)

Because that's what I had. They didn't print any sheets for us or do anything.

Are headteachers allowed to make the final call on what happens when a student has covid? It seems some schools are sending home the whole bubble and some are not.

@Autumngoldleaf

Are headteachers allowed to make the final call on what happens when a student has covid? It seems some schools are sending home the whole bubble and some are not.

I think they have to follow advice from PHE.

Clearly that's not acceptable, Autumn, if they didn't tell you what to cover.

I have, however, seen complaints on here about being given precise twinkl sheets. In fact I've seen complaints on here about pretty much any type of lockdown work.

Our lockdown work varied by dept as to what suited: premade videos, narrated PowerPoints, logins and links to online apps, photocopied textbook pages. It seems to have gone down well with patents because a) it was a varied diet for the students rather than all screen time or all sheet work and b) if they really didn't get on with one type, they at least engaged with the other subjects. We also marked/fed back on every single piece of work submitted with individual next steps advice.

And I've always pointed out that those posters were extremely lucky! Other dc on our road has sheets they gave us some.
Our school were deliberately belligerent. They wouldn't even give me some feedback on whether interventions that were new were working. Because pe had been cancelled.

So why would phe send home one entire class year for one case and another school only those in direct contact in spite of being in the same bubble?

"Sergei Sobyanin, the mayor of the Russian capital, announced on Wednesday that high schools would remain closed next week after an extended autumn holiday, with about half a million students moved to distance learning.

But primary schools will reopen, with trainee teachers and recent graduates brought in to run some classes under the “remote supervision” of experienced staff. This would protect older teachers and those suffering from chronic diseases, Sobyanin said."

So Russia is closing schools and protecting older primary teachers. Who would have thought that they would have more concern for teachers' health than here?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/14/coronavirus-students-to-replace-older-teachers-moscow

So why would phe send home one entire class year for one case and another school only those in direct contact in spite of being in the same bubble?

A friend in another school just said they sent a year group home when PHE really would rather have not because their bubble mixed really freely (which was supposed to be the point of bubbles). Some schools have kids sat in the same room in the same seat all day.

Secondary should close and go remote. No reason it can’t work, the teachers could follow their usual timetable but just online. Primary could go part time.

Better to tweak education as it can be caught up on then the health of everyone.