NEU calls for two week closure for secondaries and colleges following leap in infections

[noblegiraffe]

The NEU has called for a two week closure of secondary schools and colleges following a more than 9-fold increase in the infection rate in secondary school children in a month.

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-teachers-demand-2-week-school-closures-after-cases-jump

The infection rate in Y7-11 was 0.5% last week, according to the ONS survey of random households, but this nearly doubled to 0.93% in the latest set of figures. This rise cannot be ignored or passed off as relating to university students as has happened so far.

In other, entirely unrelated news, 61% of teachers report that if a student doesn't wear a mask in a school where they are mandated in communal areas 'nothing happens'.

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-61-staff-say-nothing-done-if-pupils-wont-wear-masks

And Teacher Tapp data from yesterday had 26% of teachers reporting that their schools were partially closed to students.

In the meantime, the testing positivity rate in 10-19 year olds is 17%, which means that this group is severely under-tested and lots of cases will be missed. The rate should be below 5%.

Yet the insistence continues that in any lockdown scenario, schools will remain open. Idiocy.

Right now, they are staying away from me. I'm still allowed to come in to school. They're not. I taught 7 out of a usual 140 students today.

Anyone who wants the current situation to continue for schools like mine must really not want kids to get an education.

Nellodee sounds bad, are you on half term or another week to go?

I am not saying all schools have higher than community transmission. But mine, and many others, absolutely do. We do not need to read a study from a different country, with different conditions, for you to try to prove to us that our own experiences are invalid

1.5% of a school is a lot and I do think personal experiences are important. The reason why studies from other countries are important just depends on whether they happen to have opened schools in a way that allows to see the effect. Do you have dozens infected in the same year/class?

For example, in Sweden they opened lower secondary schools but closed upper secondary schools. Or in Germany they opened schools at different times in different parts of the country,

In the UK the data is hard to interpret as, at least in England, all schools were opened at the same time. So we don’t know if the reason that 1.5% of the children in your school are infected is because they went to school or another reason. Or maybe your school is the most unlucky in the country.

Both my DCs are in school and there are cases but in very small numbers. If you have two people infected in a year it doesn’t look like it is spreading within the school.

@notevenat20

Wow some teachers are desperate to keep away from kids

To be fair to teachers, MN chat seems to have attracted half a dozen particularly extreme and angry people who are teachers . I don’t think they are a fair reflection of the profession in general.

As well as a shedload of Us4them fanatics. Unfortunately.

I don't see any extreme and angry people at all.

I see excellent teachers trying to make sense of nonsensical government policies while being attacked by a small handful of at times very unpleasant and unreasonable posters who want schools open at all costs, whether or not teachers or anyone else gets hospitalised in the process.

I'm not by the way a teacher.

Perhaps the most interesting fact from the Swedish study is that infection rate of parents only increased very slightly between those with a child in school and those whose children were at home. This does suggest at least that teachers may be at very little additional risk.

We're on half term now, thank god. I hope all the students who are supposed to isolating actually do so over the holidays, though I do feel very sorry for families who have booked holidays away.

I'm expecting to see maybe a week or so respite when we come back (if that much) followed by a steady decline. I predict that the situation will be totally untenable again by mid to late November, because whatever it is about our school that is causing the swift spread is not going to change between now and then. If anything, it's going to get a lot worse. I had my coat on all day today and came home shivering. We can't keep on leaving the windows wide open, so that's going to make it more conducive to transmission.

I'm in a school with a very effective SLT. We have made quite a few modifications to the school and effectively isolated the various year groups during the school day. They really did an excellent job of implementing the government guidelines. The issue is, the guidelines don't confer enough protection, mostly because you can't fight the nature of teenagers with a few hand sanitisers.

As well as a shedload of Us4them fanatics. Unfortunately. I don't see any extreme and angry people at all.

I don’t know who Usthem are but I can maybe guess from the name.

When you say you don’t see angry people, just look up in this very thread at those swearing and/or having their posts removed by mumsnet.

I think it's the right thing to do. I know it's going to create a nightmare for childcare but it's necessary.

@notevenat20

I am not saying all schools have higher than community transmission. But mine, and many others, absolutely do. We do not need to read a study from a different country, with different conditions, for you to try to prove to us that our own experiences are invalid

1.5% of a school is a lot and I do think personal experiences are important. The reason why studies from other countries are important just depends on whether they happen to have opened schools in a way that allows to see the effect. Do you have dozens infected in the same year/class?

For example, in Sweden they opened lower secondary schools but closed upper secondary schools. Or in Germany they opened schools at different times in different parts of the country,

In the UK the data is hard to interpret as, at least in England, all schools were opened at the same time. So we don’t know if the reason that 1.5% of the children in your school are infected is because they went to school or another reason. Or maybe your school is the most unlucky in the country.

Both my DCs are in school and there are cases but in very small numbers. If you have two people infected in a year it doesn’t look like it is spreading within the school.

I posted this on another thread, the figures have gone up since then. I calculated that there was a 1.6 chance in a million that a school in my area would have as many cases as mine did, unless the school was generating its own additional risk. Since there are not that many schools in the UK, yes, my school would have to be the unluckiest school in the UK. Probably the unluckiest school in Europe.

Which is quite strange, since there are several other teachers on Mumsnet quoting similar figures.

Here's my working from the other thread:

My personal school data:

Local area cases per 100,000 = 184

Cases in my school = 16 (of which the local paper has reported 4)

Cases per 100,000 for school (approx) = 800 per 100,000

You would expect to see 4 cases in a school my size.

The probability of having 16 or more cases in a school of my size if the infection rate in my school is the same as the infection rate in the local area is 0.000 001 673 based on p(x>15) B(2000, 0.00183)

@Nellodee I like a bit of maths :) But I am afraid it is flawed as it assumes people are infected independently of each other. The question is where did the children get infected and I can’t answer that. But it’s not many children so it’s plausible it was out of school. Are their patents also infected.

You've got it! The cases are NOT independent of each other. Bingo!

And it was only 11 students on Monday. It was 23 by Friday. 3 of which were in the same class, on the same row.

They probably caught it somewhere other than in school though.

• But you don’t hear of school years where 50 children have tested positive in the same week. This is what I would expect if it was extensively spread within schools and is exactly what is happening in university student halls right now"

Well in student halls it has been found that 80% of people who have it have no symptoms so they are clearly doing mass testing or proactively encouraging everyone in halls to go for tests when there are positive cases.

In schools this is not happening. Hell we are not even testing all the staff when there is an outbreak. By outbreak I don't mean 2 cases in a fortnight either! Hell where I am we get this many every day

I honestly dont care about anything apart from my DC being at school!

And it was only 11 students on Monday. It was 23 by Friday. 3 of which were in the same class, on the same row.

It’s looking pretty bad! Wasn’t the whole year sent home when the 11 tested positive?

In schools this is not happening. Hell we are not even testing all the staff when there is an outbreak. By outbreak I don't mean 2 cases in a fortnight either! Hell where I am we get this many every day

Are you not sending whole classes/years home?

Nope. Only close contacts which seems to be pupils directly next to cases. Whole year groups only get sent home when there are so few left left there'd only be a handful in each class. One year group was sent home after 5 cases confirmed over the weekend and 3 more confirmed in the isolating bubble afterwards.

some limited cases in 3 other year groups. One class I teach had 4 pupils who sit within 2m of the positive case still in school. Only kids within 1m were sent home.

Do we know the numbers from school though? Separate from uni numbers? I suspect if you take uni numbers out the whole thing looks different

We have community cases where I live but cases in our schools - large schools - are very very small and not spreading. That’s secondaries too but the way

I think lots of school kids had it in March and that’s possibly a factor

I think teachers have been amazing - the unions less so!!

I'm not a teacher, just a parent, and I support a break. I always wanted and still want part time school for secondary. Schools were obviously going to drive transmission and here we are.

I see the usual loud voices posting on every thread, attacking teachers.

for all teachers, I think schools have been absolutely shafted by covid denying numpties and I think you all deserve medals for continuing to think of the kids through all this.

@notevenat20

Schools have been told not to close bubbles unless there is a significant outbreak. We have had two cases and no bubbles closed. PHE keeps telling us to stay open at ALL COSTS.

I wonder what people think ‘all costs’ actually is. Because it increasingly looks like massive unemployment and a much higher death toll amongst the under 60s. Not to mention the increase in incapacitated adults as the effects of Long Covid start showing.

But it’s okay as long as teenagers are never asked to take any responsibility for their own learning or taught to be self starters. What are these kids learning from this situation? That they cannot be trusted to do anything off their own bat.

some limited cases in 3 other year groups. One class I teach had 4 pupils who sit within 2m of the positive case still in school. Only kids within 1m were sent home.

This looks like a bug change of policy from PHE. For primary schools I do agree with it. It gets more and more difficult as they get closer to 18.

big change...:)

I wonder what people think ‘all costs’ actually is. Because it increasingly looks like massive unemployment and a much higher death toll amongst the under 60s. Not to mention the increase in incapacitated adults as the effects of Long Covid start showing.

Unfortunately all options have the chances of catastrophic outcomes. From all the studies and leading scientists I have read, it does seem schools are not a major cause of the increase in infections. In fact a recent German study showed a slight decrease in infections from opening schools. The point being that if schools are shut, children infect each other even more freely.

"This looks like a bug change of policy from PHE. For primary schools I do agree with it. It gets more and more difficult as they get closer to 18"

I'm at a secondary. To be honest I'm not sure this is official policy. More likely when you ask schools to contract trace cases sometimes for multiple cases a day within school it is easier to sit in you office looking at seating plans and apply a simple rule than go around the rooms working out how far apart the desks are.

Then again schools gave been told to contract trace with no training on top of everything else going on. Some schools might do it properly. I don't think mine does.

I think kids being sent home are being minimised because it is the best place for them. Ultimately this might lead to more cases in the year group more instances of groups of kids being sent home, higher staff absence and more cases in families. Then again if whole year groups were sent home the only people in my school would be the staff who haven't caught covid or who have ( and recovered).

Still a bit scary when in the space of a week you go from 2 staff cases to 1 third off.

You've got it! The cases are NOT independent of each other. Bingo!

They wouldn’t be independent if they caught it out of school either. Infections within a small geographic area or amongst people who know each other are never independent. You expect to see clusters.