As I've said on another thread, a TA has died in one of the schools I work with this week. Mr J will be terribly missed, it has devastated his family, the children he works with and the community of the school No media coverage of this at all. I have. HT who is very poorly and numerous teachers. A Chair of Governors has also died.
Cases are rising, but councils are political. Mine is a conservative council, we very much have to 'toe the line'. LA jobs are politically restricted so of course on a political level we can't go against 'the message'...and that is that schools are open and safe.
We are also having to work to be positive, a 'positive spin' if you like, because we want children in school for their sake.
We are also under daily scrutiny by the DfE with a phone call every day to explain ourselves. We discuss LA pupil attendance, numbers of schools closed, reasons, home learning plans, etc etc.
And confidentiality, we can't go to the press with details of cases. In fact we have our own media team who are directed to put out positive school stories, to build parent confidence.
Yet cases have risen massively. I see the DfE data return. We have over 400 positive COVID cases in the LA schools ( low tier area). We have 42 outbreaks. We have 16 schools with full closure and 123 with part closures.
We're hoping that half term will slow the rise.
It is too simple a view to think that the press will be full of deaths and ill school staff.