To think schools should be shut during lockdown.

[Ilovegreentomatoes]

So shutting down everything but keeping schools open.AIBU to think that a lockdown should involve schools closing as well.Have been about six cases in my dds secondary zero social distancing and is just defeating the object of a lockdown as it has now been proven that schools,colleges etc can easily spread the virus.

echt Did I ask who made the ruling? No, I don’t.

Didn’t

Please stop talking about giving Zoom lessons, they aren't suitable. Reasons I cannot and will not do live online lessons from home include
I have a 3 year old who needs looking after whilst husband and 12 year old work/study.
I have BPD and cannot deal with phone calls, even one to one meetings online freak me out; I can't even speak to my own parents on the phone it is that bad.
My subject is all about nuance and thinking, developing own ideas and opinions, impossible to do virtually.
Topics are sensitive and require careful and considered response and an ability to deal with a student who is struggling - if they are on zoom, I can't deal with them as they will run away and hide. I have to discuss death, suicide, jihad, morality, gender and all sorts.
Not all of my students have access to the technology or are in households that don't or can't support. Students at A Level who have 7 siblings - their only chance of study is away from the home.
Students need us to be there in a way that parents cannot, no teenage girl wants to confide in her mum for fear of disappointing her. We are there for them when they need to offload are stressed, anxious or just need a reminder that they are ok.
Please do not shut my school, I love what I teach and mostly love the actual teaching (marking I hate, feel free to take that away). I just want some vague normality in my life.

@Nicknacky

Perfect28 How do I manage to “look after my children” when I’m at work? And I can guarantee you probably don’t give a fuck or a thought to my safety at work.

You are bright enough to understand that people work, aren’t you?

If schools do close then you'll just have to figure it out like the rest of us.

I managed to look after my children whilst I was teaching online live lessons from home and managing all my staff.
It was shit and very very stressful but doable.

I would hope that your work provides you with social distancing and/or PPE when required. Unlike schools where this isn't allowed...

echt Did I ask who made the ruling?

No you didn't but your ellipsis implied some doubts you appeared to be having about the percentage of key worker children, as if that mattered. That's what I called you on, and you haven't responded.

I cut to the chase to identify who made this ruling. Helpful like.

@callistography not everyone works from home and can just ‘figure it out’ though. There is not enough childminder or nursery places to look after large numbers of kids who would normally be in school?

callistography Unlike you, I can’t work from home.

No social distancing for me and very limited ppe.

Very difficult to “work out” like you suggest,

@Perfect28

Glad you all care so much about school staff, many of whom are vulnerable. But who cares right? As long as you don't have to look after your children all day.

I do care about school staff, and don’t want them working in environments that could be made safer and aren’t being.

But if your attitude to parents is that they only want children in schools because we’re lazy whingers wanting to avoid our own children, that’s probably not going to help the conversation much is it?

One of the most surprising things from early lockdown was hduscivsring how many people clearly think if the whole school system as just some sort of luxury service for parents, not an essential service for children. And parents’ jobs as frivolous self-centred hobbies rather than things were doing to feed and house our kids or because we’re also doing something that matters, even if we don’t work in schools. It was pretty disheartening.

And I can guarantee you probably don’t give a fuck or a thought to my safety at work

Start your own thread about your work H&S issues and then you find out how many fucks are given.

echt The difference is I get on with it rather than endlessly post about it. My job is high risk at the best of times and I accept that.

[quote AlaskaThunderfuckHiiiiiiiii]@callistography not everyone works from home and can just ‘figure it out’ though. There is not enough childminder or nursery places to look after large numbers of kids who would normally be in school?[/quote]
I have no childcare provision either. As a shielding teacher I couldn't risk sending my kids to school and have no family within 400 miles of me.
Yes, I was at home but trying to work with them there was impossible.

If you have to go to work during a lockdown, you are a keyworker. Therefore you should have a school place if schools 'closed mixed to the majority.

It's all very very shit but teachers should not be put at significant risk for anything. PPE for both staff and all children has to be mandatory, like in other countries.

echt The difference is I get on with it rather than endlessly post about it. My job is high risk at the best of times and I accept that

Good for you. But you still posted about it. And if you don't like teachers posting about, er... teaching issues, then you know what to do.

So let’s wait it out

If the figures and stats don’t drop then there’s no other option than to close schools.

And I think gov know this and are deliberately waiting until dec 2., which falls on a Wednesday

Thursday 3 dec we may then go to stricter lockdown, with parents blessing ( as 4 weeks didn’t work so most parents resigned to schools must now close, we tried) so we lockdown for the next 2 weeks which brings us to Christmas and then there 2 weeks off as well.

It’s effectively pushing us to a stricter lockdown over Christmas. Not many will comply

Brings us to new year and those from Christmas meet ups start to get sick, stats rise

Lockdown again....... schools open or closed?

callistography I would suggest it’s slightly easier if you are at least working at home than not there at all.

I don’t fit the criteria for a keyworker place last time as they required both parents to be key workers. “Luckily” h closed his business so he was home but he wouldn’t be able to do that again.

Please think outside your bubble. If neither of us are home, who looks after our kids during school hours?

PPE for both staff and all children has to be mandatory, like in other countries

This is the case in Victoria, where I work, though the introduction of masks for all secondary students all the time is recent, as was their phased return to the school, so we'll see how this pans out.

The infections rate is, of course very different from the UK. It's down to trackable levels but the watchword for greater social freedoms is slowly and by increments. Fingers crossed.

I feel for my UK teaching colleagues who have been put under extraordinary and entirely unnecessary pressure.

@Nicknacky

callistography I would suggest it’s slightly easier if you are at least working at home than not there at all.

I don’t fit the criteria for a keyworker place last time as they required both parents to be key workers. “Luckily” h closed his business so he was home but he wouldn’t be able to do that again.

Please think outside your bubble. If neither of us are home, who looks after our kids during school hours?

It's a very difficult situation and I hope you manage to get a school place when they do close. The reality is that they will at some point, no matter what tripe the government are spouting.

The bottom line of all of this is that they need to be safer. They are not the 'Covid-secure' environments that you are being told. It's a fallacy and teachers are being left unprotected.

Lockdown is not going to have the effect needed if schools stay open

I don’t want schools to close but I do think they may need to, sadly. Shutting down almost everything else will be very telling. If the measures over the next 4 weeks do not see a significant reduction in cases, then maybe the government are hoping to show that schools need to close. We’re all very aware of the wider consequences of schools closing but I think the government are very aware of public opinion and are possibly using the next 4 weeks to get people more on board with closing schools. It’s crap. I think I’m going to take my youngest child out of school, there’s so much disruption. Despite other me and her dad working at home, I think she’d her a better quality education at home at the moment.

Wow so many nasty comments.Can you not conduct a discussion without using fuck off or are some ppl so thick that's the only response they can use.

Looks like the unions are getting involved anyway so I'm sure things will change by the end of the week.

I'm a Primary school teacher and i really don't want our school to close. Unfortunately I'm in the NW where cases are rising exponentially. So far we haven't had to close any bubbles but I really can't see this continuing. I work in a deprived area and few of my children have access to the tech they would need for remote teaching and in March the parents said they didn't want it anyway. I would very much rather see my children, many of whom are vulnerable, every day. We posted work on class dojo last time and parents posted the work for us to mark but less than half of my class did anything. We posted work to those who asked but many of those children say they didn't even see their work packs. My class are so much better off in school but I just don't see us able to stay open for much longer. Maybe if test and trace was working properly we could stay open for longer. Perhaps with regular testing of school populations to really check the spread. I don't know.

I think.secondary schools should be on a rota . Half learning from home to their normal timetable watching live classes and half in school then swap
All staff in school delivering the lessons.

Any children not logging in from home to bless monitored and told to come into school instead. This would reduce the number of students in at any one time by at least a third, ( allowing for those who can't or won't log in tho lessons from home) upto Masks to be worn at all times inside buildings at school except when eating

Primary schools all back as they can bubble more effectively and the children can't stay home alone, whereas second students can be home alone for at least part of the day. Special schools also open for obvious reasons.

@ShandlersWig

None of our teachers have caught covid, only children, and each time that year group self isolated and controlled the infection spread. I'd be interested in seeing the data on how many adults in school settings have caught covid and wether it's as much as the Union's expectations. Not being goady. Genuinely curious.

I caught it at school, as did my former colleague. She is a former colleague because she was ill for more than 6 months and has now lost her job and is still ill. HTH.

I’m a key worker- frontline hospital. DH keyworker- different field. My kids went to keyworker school on days we both had to work- they got no teaching (childcare not education). On our days off our young primary aged kids didn’t want to sit down at a computer and do the worksheets set. Reception/Y1 children don’t really work well in this environment and they don’t want their parents trying to teach them. On top of this they were miserable, scared and worried. They even hated keyworker school because of the strict social distancing which was enforced.

I’ve been working on the frontline throughout and I am now. I’ve seen the impact of covid19 and I still think we need to prioritise the education of children and that we should do all in our power to prevent schools closing. This means I can’t go anywhere bar work and that’s ok. If teachers want PPE I’ll support that. Primary school spread is likely to be best prevented by preventing staff mixing rather than students though.

Teacher here.

I'd like schools to stay open for the mental well-being of the students but with proper PPE. If not, then it's unreasonable in the extreme to put teachers' lives at risk. So they should close.

Some of the attitudes to teachers on this thread are sickening.

Agree Op but they are going to close anyway.