Schools MUST stay open.

[motherrunner]

I hear this a lot on MN.

Schools maybe ‘open’ but they’re not really depending on where you live.

I’m in Tier 2, due to go into Tier 3 next week prior to the lockdown rules.

Since Sept Yr 10 have isolated twice (4 weeks out of a 8 week half term), Yr 12 and 13 three times (6 weeks of a 8 week half term). My own DS is isolating due to being in contact with a positive until next week and I am isolating until next week as one of my pupils tested positive (and before anyone asks why I wasn’t 2m away well let’s just say, that’s school life).

Before lockdown in March my school had to close just to the numbers of staff off, at one point admin staff were supervising classes.

This morning I read a comment from a poster on the ‘lockdown my thread that teachers just have to ‘hope’ they get a mild viral load. Have we become so disillusioned with this virus that because “schools must stay open” then we minimise they health of school staff?

I am happy to be back teaching my pupils, I’m not happy that I feel unsafe. I am not happy that other workplaces have ‘Covid secure’ measures but I have sanitiser and a ‘hope for the best’ attitude.

So, if you really want schools to stay open then please email your MP and voice concerns about safety and hopefully we can stay open in a meaningful way because there’s a difference between ‘schools open’ with us delivering a quality education and ‘schools open’ with a body providing childcare.

@Glitterynailsthat seems a reasonable compromise but not for the exam years.

If schools are a major source of recent infections (I’m not sure) then it would make sense to close them.

@Piggywaspushed

It might be catchy, but it's also bollocks, given that other countries ARE managing to stop cases rising while keeping schools and childcare open

Name them.

Ireland, Scotland, to name two of England's close neighbours.

So many European countries are now closing secondary schools.

Victoria in Australia closed all schools to get numbers down.

Austria is closing its secondary schools

ARE managing to stop cases rising

This is the key bit.

Name the countries who are managing to stop cases rising with schools fully open.

But should probably change teaching to two weeks in school for half the school and two weeks online .. for the other half .. alternating half way through.

@Piggywaspushed

ARE managing to stop cases rising

This is the key bit.

Name the countries who are managing to stop cases rising with schools fully open.

I did?

No neither Ireland or Scotland were good examples as cases are rising, plateauing at best in Scotland.

Here: new cases in second wave in Ireland and in Scotland.

As someone who works with schools
Why not a compromise of two weeks school closure as a circuit break and then only schools re-open in the two weeks after that?

Because there has to be more done than this, more proactive, creative and government thinking, otherwise there is no long term effect.

The government missed their chance. The summer should have been spent admitting schools will not be safe and planning everything possible to ensure they are and they can stay open.

Boris' lack of leadership and the big pretence of 'schools are safe, schools will stay open' was just madness. I picture him with his 'fingers in his ears and a LALALA'.

We all knew what was going to happen. We are back to square one, struggling to keep schools open due to lack of staff.

Hospital admissions are on the rise in Scotland. Show a fuller graph of Oreland (which btw is in lockdown) ad you'll see a country well into a second wave.

I think we all acknowledge that Sturgeon is a better leader then Johnson : but she is banning travel soon and is clearly alarmed. New mandates on masks being introduced.

I can name far more countries than that who are shutting down entire education sectors. I am not saying it is desirable.

Or Ireland even!

I'd like to see secondary schools only open part time for each year group. From taking to my DC the issue is the volume of pupils in the corridors ... so a mix of 2-3 days online learning with 2-3 days teaching at school should make them a lot safer.

I also always make sure DC has mask and sanitiser.

I think primary is better, DC is only in one classroom and one outside area in their bubble of 30 + teacher and assistant the weakpointis are the lunchtime supervisors. ... they have no reported case as far as I know.

Surely it would have been better to have called this before the bloody half term break

No neither Ireland or Scotland were good examples as cases are rising

Nope. Significant reduction in Ireland for the last week or so.

Today’s numbers were super low, more than halved from our peak about 2 weeks ago.

"Hospital admissions are on the rise in Scotland"

Generally it takes what 2 to 3 weeks for hospital admissions to be affected by measures? Rises in Hospital admissions are pretty much" locked in until mid november.

Scotland's hospitals admissions will hopefully level off in the next fortnight

Schools should close, but of course they aren't.
We're back to childcare or saving lives.
It really sinks the way this has been handled.
Let's all lockdown apart from the superspreaders who we'd like to take it back to their families.
They are a bloody joke.

Have we noticed the wording that we've been getting?

Schools and Universities will be allowed to stay open.

Does allow mean the decision to remain open or close will be placed into the hands of the school itself? What does open mean?

It just strikes me as the same kind of weasel wording as "The government has no intention to cut benefits.*

Then it cuts benefits.

"Yes, but we didn't originally intend to."

In Ireland all secondary age pupils are wearing masks. In Northern Ireland they are not. Northern Ireland has had massively higher cases than the rest of Ireland even though it's only 6 counties.

@anniversarywoes

I work in a school and absolutely think they should stay open. I say that as somebody who hasn't been able to live with my clinically very vulnerable dh since September, thanks to my job!

How would you feel if living apart wasn’t an option? Schools need to be safer.

I am living apart (within the home) from my extremely clinically vulnerable husband; I can't afford to move out altogether to a hotel or anything, but I'd certainly feel safer if I could to protect him from the 1000+ contacts I have in school.

I hope the word allow doesn’t mean that it is up to individual schools. I have little faith that ours which did pretty much nothing in lockdown would do anything this time round.
However, I do think schools should have protective measures and additional funds plus a 2 week break maybe, shambles this wasn’t arranged for half term.

Sounds like the plan is that schools stay open with rapid on the spot testing.