Government removes statement schools are not considered "high risk settings" in guidance.

[IloveJKRowling]

Reported in the TES

www.tes.com/news/Covid-dfe-cuts-schools-arent-high-risk-line-guidance

From the article:
"The government has removed a paragraph from its Covid guidance stating that schools are not considered "high risk settings".

The Department for Education (DfE) previously stated in its guidance for schools that Public Health England (PHE) and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) advise that schools are not considered high risk work environments, and it is "therefore appropriate for teachers and other school staff to return to their workplace setting".

But following an update to the guidance today, this detail has vanished."

*As a teacher and long time poster on MN I have seen very little to absolutely fuck all parental attention paid to class sizes, funding, actually anything to do with education in general until Covid. Teachers were and still are the ones raising the issues.

It has been individual issues with teachers (relevant and genuine or not) or pissing and moaning about snow days/ strikes/ how long the holidays are and I can't wait for school to start/ INSET/ uniform/school dinners/ report this teacher for giving my lively child a detention, etc. etc. etc.*

I'm not sure that you can judge what you see people moaning about on mumsnet as a true reflection of how people feel. Once again this looks like a case of tarring a group of people with the same brush.

But there are a few layers to this.

I think that a lot of people parents or otherwise, don't really think much about school until the time comes that their own child goes. Certainly in the circles I mix in there is an awful lot of panic and fretting about how bad schools are. But people then often focus on trying to get their child into what they believe to be the best school they can. Because that's within their control. Most primary schools seem to be happy environments and children make progress. It seems to be secondary when the shit really hits the fan.

I was personally shocked that there wasn't some kind of mass building project over the Summer to get portacabins, extra sinks, even tents set up, using community spaces such as church halls. To assist social distancing. Even fast tracking of TAS. Whenever I've suggested such things I've been asked where would it all come from, where would the money, materials come from.

As a parent you are stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I was personally shocked that there wasn't some kind of mass building project over the Summer to get portacabins, extra sinks, even tents set up, using community spaces such as church halls. To assist social distancing. Even fast tracking of TAS. Whenever I've suggested such things I've been asked where would it all come from, where would the money, materials come from

The money comes from the government, so you need to lobby your MP

As a parent you are stuck between a rock and a hard place

No you're not: see above.

Laughing at "where would the money come from."

The government paid 80% salary for millions of UK workers to sit at home and bake bread for months at an estimated cost of £14 billion per month.

Please tell me again about how the government's plan to safely return the nation's children to already overcrowded and underfunded state schools en masse is such a priority when all most state schools seem to be able to afford to make them "covid secure" is some handgel and tape on the floor.

The money comes from the government, so you need to lobby your MP*

I have, I write to him a lot. He doesn't seem to care, he's more interested in Brexit.

I didn't ask where the money would come from, I said this is what other people say.

The government paid 80% salary for millions of UK workers to sit at home and bake bread for months at an estimated cost of £14 billion per month.

I have said this numerous times, including to my MP. Imo the furlough scheme was abused and a terrifying amount of money was wasted.

@Autumnleavestime

Sorry, I wasn't disagreeing with you, just laughing at the absurdity of it all.

For anyone who truly cares about the education of this generation of children, the current plan is not good enough. Those who think the current system is by and large acceptable are just happy their own children are back and haven't been affected (yet) by the shambles that the return to school has been for many many other children.

Oh I see. I think the idea of putting lots of money and effort into schools is just too much for people to comprehend.

Plus it mainly effects women and working class people so who really cares?

Ecosse - the time course of education is different from corona.

You can have longer to mitigate for education than corona. Education was disrupted during and post WW2. If you change the education system, give time for retakes and discounts for tuition fees for students and more learn-as-you earn opportunities, it is possible to mitigate.

Hospital capacity is not the only factor for nhs performance. Availability of staff, having COVID and non COVID ward space (in the appropriate speciality) and other factors like oxygen infrastructure are important (in April, some hospitals were drawing the limit of oxygen as pipes would then start to freeze).

My child was sent home this week until after half term as they do not have safe staffing levels for two year groups in school. It’s the same for a secondary down the road. Year 7s and exam years are in as they have been prioritised but the school will still be classed as open. Perhaps you class that as a success story @Ecosse, Sadly, I could see this coming. We’re in a tier 1 area too.

What a mess! I can’t believe that people are happy to except this situation. The government have done nothing to support schools opening safely. Where is the funding? Where is the world beating track and trace?

I hope all the school staff who are ill or self isolating recover and actually take the time to recover properly before going back to work. I’m furious on their behalf that they have been treated so poorly by this government. I work in primary with no distancing which is hard enough but I fail to see why secondaries are treated the same given the amount of data on the rapid rise in cases in 10-19 year olds.

My infant school now has 6 out of 9 classes closed. 9 teaching staff have tested positive across the school - some are feeling more poorly than others.

The only way you'd know this is if you have links with the school. Staff haven't even been told about all the cases. I know as I oversee the home learning so know exactly who's not in, which staff are able to sort their own home learning, etc.

It isn't mentioned on the website or on our social media. There is a general letter uploaded about what to do incase of a class closing, and one reference to home learning on our SM from the start of the week.
It certainly hasn't been in the local press, like what was happening in the first two or three weeks. I think class and year group bubbles closing is far too common now for that to happen.

I'm in the US where according to most of Mumsnet the education is nowhere near as good as in the UK.

Yet in my state the students have all been given laptops, they are doing blended learning 5 days per week (teachers here actually are capable of teaching both online and in-school groups at once), they're taking their exams as normal, they're being given space to socially distance at school, they're wearing masks throughout lessons and still learning, and they're almost never having to isolate because of Covid outbreaks.

In our school system of 2000, we've had one positive Covid case. 15 people have had to isolate.

In another school system in my state that did have a Covid outbreak, they tested every person in the school over 2 days, and found 13 cases. They went to all-online for 2 weeks, and are now back to blended learning and have had no more cases.

Our teachers are heavily unionised. These are state schools. If we in the US can do this, why on earth can't the UK system manage it?

HoldMyLobster

Look to the UK government not the schools.

I've name changed for this as it's potentially outing but I've worked in schools in both the US and UK so following the difference in how it's been handled in both countries is really interesting to me.

I think one of the main differences is probably funding. In my experience schools in the US are on the whole much better resourced and funded than schools in the UK. I think they probably had a lot more to work with to put safety measures in place.

The teachers' unions also seem much more powerful. I can't believe the UK teachers' unions are not speaking out more about the working conditions for UK teachers. UK teachers on the whole are not paid as well and as a result the turnover seems much higher with a generally younger and less experienced workforce.

I also think the culture of the US is different in that there is more fear of accountability of institutions and lawsuits etc generally. The UK in general doesn't worry about that as much and so I don't think the government or even individual schools would be as worried about the ramifications if they are later seen to have acted negligently.

None of that is particularly scientific of course, just my own impressions when comparing both systems

@Namechange5757

I've name changed for this as it's potentially outing but I've worked in schools in both the US and UK so following the difference in how it's been handled in both countries is really interesting to me.

I think one of the main differences is probably funding. In my experience schools in the US are on the whole much better resourced and funded than schools in the UK. I think they probably had a lot more to work with to put safety measures in place.

The teachers' unions also seem much more powerful. I can't believe the UK teachers' unions are not speaking out more about the working conditions for UK teachers. UK teachers on the whole are not paid as well and as a result the turnover seems much higher with a generally younger and less experienced workforce.

I also think the culture of the US is different in that there is more fear of accountability of institutions and lawsuits etc generally. The UK in general doesn't worry about that as much and so I don't think the government or even individual schools would be as worried about the ramifications if they are later seen to have acted negligently.

I've found it interesting too, being married to someone who's taught in both countries and with kids who've been to school in both. I agree with a lot of your perspective.

The issue of funding is valid - although given that it costs us $300 per year to supply each student with a laptop, isn't that still cheaper to the government than propping up industries that are failing due to Covid, not to mention all the additional benefit that the students get from laptops even in non-Covid times.

It's also got me thinking about accountability. Where I live at least, schools are answerable to their community because of how they're funded. They get less than 50% of their funding from the state, and more than 50% from local taxes. Expectations are high.

They also don't tend to wait for the government to make decisions - school districts got on with decision-making themselves quickly and practically. In May or June they started planning for reopening in September, and that included plans for 3 levels of reopening - fully open, hybrid, and all-online.

They are still bound by CDC and State Dept of Education rules - if your county is in 'green' then you can reopen fully, if it's in 'yellow' then you can only go back in hybrid, and if it's in 'red' then you go all-online immediately. But they have plans ready for each of those scenarios.

I'm really struck by how teachers in the UK keep insisting that teaching a class that's both in-school and at-home is impossible. Our teachers had 3 days of training early September, then they got on with it.

The unions do seem to have focused on making sure conditions are safe for teachers. We have some who are teaching entirely from home - we also have students who've elected to do school entirely from home.

I'm astonished that UK teachers are expected to go into schools that are really just Petri dishes, and that unions have allowed that to happen instead of looking at alternatives.

@FrippEnos

HoldMyLobster

Look to the UK government not the schools.

I agree - I'm just really astonished that the UK government is doing such a bad job compared to other countries.

I'm really struck by how teachers in the UK keep insisting that teaching a class that's both in-school and at-home is impossible.

I don't think teachers generally are saying that. Thinning out the school population in that way is the only way we might have kept high schools open all winter.

I think PP who mentioned it was pointing out the lack of staff and IT equipment if only part of a cohort was at home. There just aren't the resources in many schools to manage that. A lot of teachers don't even have laptops in my school.

I'm astonished that UK teachers are expected to go into schools that are really just Petri dishes, and that unions have allowed that to happen instead of looking at alternatives.

The unions are in a difficult spot. The government have batted the issue off to individual schools and just outright lied about the unions trying to shut schools.

Teachers are very reluctant to just strike because of the damage it will do to pupils but the government are utterly unwilling to engage.

@HoldMyLobster

I think US schools (probably as a result of funding) generally have better and more access to technology and teachers were more used to using it to facilitate learning even before COVID.

On the whole the teaching in the UK seems to be a bit more traditional/old school -- larger class sizes and lessons that are less adapted for each individual student, even pre-COVID. I've known brilliant teachers in both systems, but the system as a whole in the US tends to push for more differentiated/innovative learning whereas in the UK it is more traditional.

State schools in the UK do seem to have been given a lot of autonomy in terms of how they return to schools (similar to American school districts), but most don't seem to have the funding to have put much in place -- this why most seem to have just opened basically as usual.

I'm really struck by how teachers in the UK keep insisting that teaching a class that's both in-school and at-home is impossible.

It is really quite tricky IF the model required is full time simultaneous streaming of what is happening in the classroom - the only computer I have in my classroom has no camera or microphone and cannot be positioned (even if it had both of these) such that it captures me or the board, let alone both.

It is extra work, but not at all impossible, to provide a decent asynchronous offering for students at home as well as teaching 'live' in school. All staff at my school did this from 1st June, as we were in school with returned year groups, while also providing home learning - asychronous - to our own classes from other year groups. All work was uploaded at the weekend, for the following week, and students worked through it as they had throughout lockdown, with an online video meeting (in small enough groups for this to me meaningful) in the 'PPA' time we had off from our in-school classes, and with online marking and feedback every day outside school hours.

It is really quite tricky IF the model required is full time simultaneous streaming of what is happening in the classroom - the only computer I have in my classroom has no camera or microphone and cannot be positioned (even if it had both of these) such that it captures me or the board, let alone both.

I understand that teachers in the UK might need additional equipment. IIRC ours have a MacBook and were provided with an additional iPad each to be able to teach to both audiences at once (although the iPads hadn't arrived in the first week so they managed without). Each classroom has also an Apple TV installed.

It's the teachers on here who insist that it's just impossible to teach this way that make me wonder what magic it is that our teachers appear to have, given that they are able to do it.

I don't want to make this a teacher-bashing thread - I know UK teachers are working very hard in very difficult circumstances.

IIRC ours have a MacBook and were provided with an additional iPad each to be able to teach to both audiences at once (although the iPads hadn't arrived in the first week so they managed without). Each classroom has also an Apple TV installed.

I have an 8+ year old desktop computer, and a standard 'beaming' projector onto a whiteboard that used to be interactive but hasn't had that feature for at least the last 5 years..... this is quite normal.

During lockdown, as I say, we did everything asynchronously (and generally not in video form, to make file sizes and download times short) to make sure both that we could use whatever technology we had at home / in school, and also that the vast majority of students who shared technology with other members of their family could access it whenever it was 'their turn'.

But as I said above, wouldn't it make more sense for the government to properly fund the technical requirements for online schooling so that schools CAN do their jobs rather than what's happening now in the UK - people having to isolate, parents having to take time off work, lockdowns, damage to industry, NHS being overwhelmed, people dying unnecessarily?

Quick sum - you could give every pupil and teacher in the UK a MacBook for 6 years using the money that was spent on the Test and Trace system.

(That's based on what it costs us. We expect each MacBook to last 4 years but generally they last much longer so we have lots of spares.)