Pupils sent home in half of England's secondary schools

[herecomesthsun]

...which are of course supposed to be covid secure. Nice that the BBC is covering it,though.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-54614111

and still there are posters here sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "there are no cases in our schools". I posted less than 2 weeks ago that schools would HAVE to shut for a couple of weeks because of rises in cases but I was shot down. I will keep saying it. Once positive cases start up in a community schools WILL shut. It only takes a small % of teachers to be off either ill or awaiting test results before it becomes impossible to keep the school open. There is very little give in most schools - limited time on teachers time table where they are available for cover and only so many supply teachers out there.

Wales and N Ireland have already reflected this with the circuit breaker. I really don't think that England will be too far behind.

The opportunity to prepare for this was there. Schools could have had blended learning - year groups in on rotas, proper online learning set up. The opportunity was thrown away.

I agree with you here comes the sun.

I am a scientist (not that should matter) it’s just I do know my way around data, epidemiology and research. And I’m not convinced at all that we know what the risk is around children and schools. Conclusions have been drawn too quickly to say children don’t really transmit that often. I fear that we will never really know as there is so much obfuscation.

For example, near me I happen to know that there is no contract tracing to speak of in the local schools. If there is one case in a child, it is likely that no one in the class, teacher or Head will even be informed so it is only if the parents tell them. If there are two cases, they will be treated as two cases in individual households, who likely contracted it in their individual households (and listed as ‘household transmission’).

As 50% of younger children are aymptomatic. That class could then potentially have spread to say 2 more children, but their parents will develop symptoms and as those children don’t, their role in that transmission will not be seen at all.

So in this example - 4 cases in children in a class who transmit to their families. Who passed it on to each other. Only 2 will be symptomatic. These will be ‘presumed’ to have got it from their families. Even though no meaningful testing to see ‘who transmitted to who first’ will occur. 2 will be asymptomatic, and their families who contract the virus will be presumed to be nothing to do with the class at all.

You can see how this small scenario would not even appear on any data, any category that even mentioned school spread.

@Aragog

Billywilliamv

And that's fine. But we do need to be ensuring the more vulnerable adults and children are being cared about. We can't pretend schools are Covid secure when they're not, not,whilst ever their are vulnerable and extremely vulnerable staff working in them.

Agreed but whole schools shouldn't have to close for the minority of ECV families, its abhorrent that the 2 aren't treated separately for both sides of the coin.

At least into double figures before I even consider using the word rampant.

Some absences will be whilst waiting for test / results, I had three children off last week for 2 days because of this.

@3littlewords

Did anyone (apart from you) discuss that all schools should close?

Also just to say I am all for schools being open.

I am just a bit horrified now to the lack of good, achievable protection strategies. Washing hands occasionally is not enough.

It’s odd because to be honest more vulnerable people or families, who need school more than most would benefit if there were smaller class sizes (say if parents were allowed without penalty to take their children out for a certain period of weeks to ‘break’ for example).

There are ways of ensuring that all are supported here. Also even in strict lockdown in March vulnerable children continued to go to school. They had smaller classes and I think in a way it meant some kids got a lot more individualized care. It’s not all doom and gloom!

The headline of the thread looks shocking then I read into it and

"Almost half of secondary schools in England sent home one or more pupils because of Covid incidents last week, the latest attendance figures show."

I originally read it as half the pupils but under half the schools have one or more pupil so much less than headline suggests. It means that it isn't spread amongst pupils together in schools socially distancing that much since if it was they would all be sent home not just one or more.....

[quote herecomesthsun]@3littlewords

Did anyone (apart from you) discuss that all schools should close?[/quote]
@Aragog was responding to @BillywilliamV comment about keeping schools open

Our local school has had one pupil out of 1250 test positive in 5 weeks! The closest pupils and teacher of the one were sent home and that's it so far..... much, much better than anticipated!

It is relevant that posters are pointing out that there are no cases in their schools when the OP is declaring that covid is rampant.

We need to drill down the figures? It seems to be one/ two cases in most schools then an entire bubble is sent home. Does it then follow that 20 children test positive? No.

Have we seen any schools where it is rampant? This was always going to happen. The key is whether it is spreading like wildfire.

@Delatron

I think the difference is whether you look for the negative or the positive with this.

So almost half of schools have pupils sent home because of covid issues

or

In under half of schools one or more pupils have been sent home with covid issues but the schools have not needed to shut and most children are continuing to receive an education. Well done to the schools for coping with this really difficult situation.

@TheGreatWave

so

• we are into double figures of children being off school

• we have a situation where it is particularly hard to get children tested

• test and trace at least for a while were not pursuing children's contacts

• the test and trace app has been recommended to be turned off in at least some schools

• SAGE seem to think that cases in the community are a good 2 or 3 times higher than confirmed cases by testing (this goes with testing not being very good)

• teachers have been told that the D of E is not interested in collecting cases reported from schools.

• of course asymptomatic transmission also makes it harder to keep track of what is happening with cases.

So as well as a documented rise of over 1900% in less than 2 months we have a likely significant under reporting of cases.

Remember we also have exponential growth, as R is over 1, so it won't be long before we have more cases...

It wasn't me who first used the word rampant on this thread, but it's growing on me.

Indeed

"Overall attendance has worsened from 90% to 89% - but very few schools, about 0.3%, have been completely closed."

Wow who would have imagined that 5 weeks in school for England and this very low figure of children off. The predictions of mass closures of schools was thankfully incorrect since only 0.3% have had to close completely Perspective and actually looking at the figures and not the inaccurate doom and gloom headline is everything

@TheGreatWave

It is relevant that posters are pointing out that there are no cases in their schools when the OP is declaring that covid is rampant.

oh right, someone else introduced the term rampant.

We do have a graph that shows a more than1900% increase in secondary school children since 28th August however.

So if you people want to use the term, well you certainly can.

Agree @TiersTiersTiers I actually think it’s a positive situation considering the schools have now been back 5 weeks. Could be a lot worse.

Don't the figures show the systems are working?

@TiersTiersTiers

Indeed

"Overall attendance has worsened from 90% to 89% - but very few schools, about 0.3%, have been completely closed."

Wow who would have imagined that 5 weeks in school for England and this very low figure of children off. The predictions of mass closures of schools was thankfully incorrect since only 0.3% have had to close completely Perspective and actually looking at the figures and not the inaccurate doom and gloom headline is everything

lol lol lol they are fining ECV parents and threatening them with prosecution you know. And still the figures are dropping,

Over half of secondary schools have had children off in ONE WEEK.

The schools are doing the best possible job in the circumstances, kudos to them.

The Government after only 5 weeks face a crisis exacerbated by their choice to ignore scientific advice.

Perspective is everything.

I am suspicious that they have suddenly changed reporting from 21% of secondary schools are only partially open to '46% have at least one kid self-isolating'.

Given how they have been persistently fudging the data by not giving numbers of cases in clear age categories so that people can claim that the incredible rise in the 10-19 age group is only down to universities, or that infection rates in the 0-15 group are not an issue (averaging out the above average 15 year olds with the below average 5 year olds presents a group that looks fine), I am suspicious about how they would go from reporting something useful (pupils sent home due to positive cases in school) to something not useful (pupils self-isolating which can be blamed on close contact elsewhere).

You can already see the minimising going on on this thread.

The main crux of every school thread on here is about the potentially fatal effects it has on ECV pupils teachers and families. A better educational option for them would be of massive benefit not just to those families but everyone else aswell.
Many families (myself included) are not worried about the effect of covid if our family gets it, statistically ,the odds are very much in our favour that it would be mild and we will recover and move on. The consequences of repeated isolations, loss of earnings, quality of our mental health is a much higher concern of mine personally. We see many times on MN how horrendous it would be for a child to lose a loved to covid, of course it would be no one is going to argue with that, but what about children who lose loved ones to mental health due to job losses and being kept away from their loved ones ? Are those losses not relevant because its not a loss to covid? I dont know for sure but my guess is suicide is also at a high rate like covid. The mental health in this country is a pandemic in itself that no one likes to talk about.

@RunBackwards

Don't the figures show the systems are working?

no, how do you work that out? We are only in October, we have only had 5 weeks of this, how do you imagine this is going to keep going over the winter?

Thanks for starting this thread herecomes, it means that people opening it with their pre-written 'I knew this would be you noblegiraffe' posts ready to go have had to bin them and engage a bit more

I try to do my bit .

My dc's school has no case. So are other schools near by. I felt shocked reading a title of this thread. But it does makes sense, if half of secondary sent one or more children home.
If there are cases in community, it will certainly spread in school too.
From my pov, at least my dc's school is doing the best. And sounds like there are many schools that hasn't had a case at all according to other thread going on atm.