Secondary schools are fucked, BOFFINS ADMIT

[noblegiraffe]

Latest ONS random sampling data shows that secondary school children in Y7-11 are now the age group with the highest infection rate in England, overtaking sixth form and university students.

In Wales "Schoolchildren are more likely to catch and spread coronavirus than previously thought, experts have warned... It was also discovered that while children were far more likely to be asymptomatic and not become seriously unwell, they were more likely to be the first positive case in any household."

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/health/schoolchildren-more-likely-catch-spread-19275959?fbclid=IwAR0kpoikv0D_nkwHx3lVyQX_cyDj6Ycy1d6gE3aRx6syxUKzFQsYzMDSqPw

English boffins are a bit slower on the uptake though
"SAGE’s report found that prevalence of Covid-19 in school-age children had “risen significantly” in the first wave, and that the rise in prevalence was “first visible around the time that schools reopened”.

However, it said that while this “may be indicative of a potential role for school opening, causation, including the extent to which transmission is occurring in schools, is unproven and difficult to establish”.

schoolsweek.co.uk/child-infection-rate-rise-began-when-schools-reopened-but-direct-link-unproven-says-sage/

It must indeed be difficult to establish whether there's transmission in a high risk environment where kids are packed in like sardines with no mitigation measures. A real head-scratcher. Especially if you spent the whole summer insisting that it would be fine because the kids are facing forward.

What do we want? Well, one of the major teaching unions has called on the government to:

1. Demonstrate that they are following the scientific evidence and advice.
2. Strengthen the guidance to schools and colleges on ensuring COVID-safe and COVID-secure working practices.
3. Secure the updating and publication of health and safety risk assessments and equality impact assessments by school and college employers.
4. Publish weekly data on positive cases of COVID-19 infections of school/college staff and pupils by local government area
5. Ramp up inspection and enforcement measures in schools and colleges, including more comprehensive use of spot checks and visits by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE).
6. Take swift action to protect public health in the event of an outbreak.
7. Protect vulnerable teachers and support staff and pupils.
8. Strengthen the guidance to insist on effective social distancing in schools/colleges.
9. Establish a national plan for remote education/blended and distance learning.

10. Provide significant additional financial support for schools and colleges urgently to ensure the safety of staff and pupils, including extra funding for cleaning, personal protective equipment (PPE) and supply teachers

www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/plan-to-keep-schools-safe-during-pandemic.html

Oh OP I knew this would be you yadayada...yeah that's why I chose the same thread title as before etc etc.

Why do we need another thread blah blah: it's because secondary school kids are now infected at the highest rates in the country. This has implications for lockdown. How effective will it be if the most infected subset of the population are mixing freely? And it's also the first hint from scientists that they might have been wrong about exactly how safe schools are. There's also a strong suggestion that kids are bringing the virus home from school which parents should be aware of.

It's also causing chaos in schools, but there's another thread about that.

I’ll be willing to bet if they tested all the students they’d find loads of cases.

What makes me so angry about all of this ia the fact that the government are trying to pull the wool over our eyes... they think we are thick! And some people are falling for it.. of course covid spreads around schools and of course children/teens are carriers! If adults are and dogs/cats are and doorhandles are etc etc.. then yes, children and teens can also spread it!!! Anybody who thinks otherwise is being ridiculous. Of course it'd be best for schools to stay open but if this can't be done effectively then they should be closed.. like a pp said, this is a PANDEMIC! Not your average issue.. nothing is ideal at the moment... the government should just admit that it can spread in schools and just admit they dont want them closed because it would mean less adults in work paying tax into the system, that's what it's all about for them MONEY not the child's best interests!! Its the lies i cant stand! And i also do agree with PPs that have said missing a bot of school isnt going to harm children as much as the lasting effect of the pandemic getting worse and lasting longer with children potentially losing parents/teachers/ grandparents to a covid death.....the economy will eventually fix itself but lives are lost forever

My daughter had two learning partners go off sick. She was fine, didn’t eat for a week and probably had COVID. It would be strange if they had it and she didn’t but that symptom didn’t meet the threshold. Secondary, they’ve had 5 closures and that’s a low incidence area.

Hundreds have just been isolated in various bubbles at the secondary because a parent sent a symptomatic child in, via public transport because they were waiting for test results.

Two cases of COVID in our school at the moment (children, primary age). Bubbles closed, it’s ok though; our displays are on point for our mocksted next week. Oh and another case in a local primary? Only discovered because the child needed a swab for a hospital appointment, they were in school prior. It’s interesting to watch all the fussing whilst Rome burns. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

Aragog

Yes, please do wear a mask, as you say it's the only protection you have and it is an important one. The director of the CDC thinks masks are more important than a vaccine and they have been proven to reduce viral load (which will lead to milder disease).

If you get any pushback do look up what the CDC has to say about it and send to your headteacher. The US are actually better at masks than the UK (bar the one obvious example - and look what happened there). There is increasing evidence of their effectiveness.

I wrote to my DDs school in response to their covid risk assessment where they said teachers 'could if they wished' wear a mask when doing close care of little children and said I thought they'd be failing in their duty of care to their staff if they didn't insist upon/mandate masks when wiping bums or comforting crying little ones (also suggested gloves for the wiping bums bit). Sadly, I don't think they listened to me.

Fortunately my headteacher is very supportive and I think the vast majority of our parents would be.

I've had some special school masks made with my name, bright colour, everything :)

Look, I'm going to jump in here...I'll be honest ...I home ed my dcs...my friend who has dc in local high school has just tested positive...well of course I'm not surprised...only a matter of time etc...she's devastated...he has asthma and they are now having to isolate...her partner is not a nice person...is nasty to her etc...I feel bad for her...

Erm?

@Feministicon

I’ll be willing to bet if they tested all the students they’d find loads of cases.

I suspect this is exactly why they aren't. Look what happened with universities!

We know there are asymptomatic cases and cases with different symptoms in schools. There appears to be deliberate efforts on the part of the government not to find them.

Totally agree.

[quote Clavinova]The biggest increase in cost is paying for supply though (where they are available). A supply teacher costs a school around £200 a day. That will really quickly eat through any money saved in the summer, or money refunded from exams.

Balanced by savings earlier in the year? Tes - 3rd November;

"Exclusive:1/4 supply teachers forced to skimp on food."

"Survey reveals despair of supply teachers in pandemic as work dries up."

"The research, carried out by the NASUWT teaching union, also reveals that 23 per cent have been forced to take other jobs outside of teaching, mostly on lower pay, since the pandemic struck."

"While 80 per cent were not able to secure any supply teaching work between March and the end of previous school year"

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-exclusive-14-supply-teachers-forced-skimp-food[/quote]
Supply costs are lowest in the summer term though- firstly, because there are less illnesses, and secondly because when exam classes leave, there are more internal staff available for cover. A lot of supply teachers take on exam marking to cover this period, which also stopped.

In my school, departmental budgets have been cut (not that we were rolling in it before) to help fund supply- and we are not a badly hit school. We also do a LOT of internal cover- I lost 3/4 PPAs to cover last week, and a colleague lost both of hers as well. Most of our part time teachers are also working extra days to help with cover- which is cheaper than using internal supply. (Of course, in the medium/longer term, making staff do lots of cover probably increases time off).

We are not a school which is badly hit with Covid (which is maybe part of the problem as all year groups and most students are in school). But every time a staff member has a cough, it's 3-4 days off. Anyone having a routine operation in hospital has to take 2 weeks off before to self isolate. Obviously staff get told to isolate via track and trace, too.

We are keeping the school open and doing our very best, but we have basically been told that we may run out of money in the summer.

[quote Clavinova]worriedaboutrecording
Say 200 children enrolled in Y11 gives £18,000 refund per school.

Plus refunds for A-level and AS exam fees if the school has a sixth form - another circa £14,000 for 200 pupils taking 3 A-levels.

Do you know what that actually equates to in the running of a school?

I know that school funding was increased this year;
"School funding allocations 2020-21"

dfemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/10/11/school-funding-allocations-2020-21/[/quote]
Not if a school doesn't have a sixth form, Clavinova.

Our three local secondaries don't have sixth forms for example. My ds's does, with 66 pupils compared to 200 or so in each year. Many of these students do BTech qualifications, which offered no refund.

School funding was increased by 1.8% per child in 2020 in his school.
So if previously £5,000 per child, a staggering increase of £100 per child per academic year, well below the rate of inflation.

As others have said, that equals half a day of supply teaching.

It seems that you have a point of view to argue and are googling trying to back it up, except everything you link to actually disproves the point that you are trying to make.

Given what we know about the virus and how it spreads ie shit loads more than we did in March, routine testing of everyone in potential 'super spreader' situations would obviously be an effective way of identifying asymptomatic cases and hence cutting off routes of infection.

This is exactly what the govt have just implemented in Liverpool.

Everyone in schools, hospitals, clinics, care settings, retain, transport and any other occupation routinely coming into contact with people indoors for longer should be routinely tested and financially supported to do so and isolate if necessary.

For the record, our staffroom is open with a limit on numbers and social distancing in place. We have so many duties at the moment, it is not being well used. I, personally, don't use it, except to grab a coffee in the mornings. Due to staggered lunches and maintaining a sixth form bubble, some staff don't have a classroom available to eat their lunch in, so I'm not sure what the alternative is?

We also have a subject base which is open but with limited numbers. There are two computers in there for us to work on during PPA if our teaching room is in use. Otherwise, it's not really being used.

We mostly eat lunch in our classrooms. We socially distance during staff meetings and whole school meetings are held remotely.

I've socialised with staff once, outside and distanced, at the very start of the Autumn term, when things weren't nearly this bad.

It's worth bearing in mind there is still a retention crisis in secondary teaching. If our lives are made unbearable, we will leave. And that will hurt the kids more long term.

There seems to be an agenda on here and anyone who disagrees is either ridiculed or silenced

Ridiculous views are ridiculed and the only silenced one was shut down by MNHQ for being a troll.

It’s just tedious to see the same threads come up over and over again

Yet here you are.

The problem that people face when suggesting that I have a hidden agenda contrary to what I am actually saying is that I’ve been posting for years, straightforwardly, as a bog-standard maths teacher.

Trying to paint me as some secret-campaign-running manipulator isn’t going to work.

I don’t think you’re a secret campaign running manipulator, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have an agenda.

Well obviously, Holly

My obvious agenda is to make people aware of the virus being transmitted in secondary schools, and the inadequacy of the mitigation measures, with the hope that we might get safer schools if enough parents see past the government propaganda.

You can tell this from my posts.

Here's the BBC news article I saw earlier -
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54937486

I don’t understand why this issue descends into us vs them with teachers and parents. We’re all just muddling through a horrendous situation and trying to get through this. Parents don’t not care about teachers but everyone has enough on during this time. Perhaps the parent clinging on to their job has a bit too much on their plate to demand that schools close? Which would result in them not being able to do said job? I think there’s a lot of ‘what about me’ on this thread without remembering that lots of people are having a shit time at the moment and it doesn’t mean that no one cares about teachers it’s just that there’s other things going on. Personally I’d love their to be more support and protection for teachers as I’m sure would most people.

Blended learning is absolutely meaningless IMO and I say that as someone who had all the resources available to try and make it a successful experience during lockdown 1 and it just didn’t work.

I don’t know what the answer is but school IS important and parents aren’t selfish for wanting it to continue.

Seriously, what is it about people not reading what I’m saying?

@Itisasecret

My daughter had two learning partners go off sick. She was fine, didn’t eat for a week and probably had COVID. It would be strange if they had it and she didn’t but that symptom didn’t meet the threshold. Secondary, they’ve had 5 closures and that’s a low incidence area.

Hundreds have just been isolated in various bubbles at the secondary because a parent sent a symptomatic child in, via public transport because they were waiting for test results.

Two cases of COVID in our school at the moment (children, primary age). Bubbles closed, it’s ok though; our displays are on point for our mocksted next week. Oh and another case in a local primary? Only discovered because the child needed a swab for a hospital appointment, they were in school prior. It’s interesting to watch all the fussing whilst Rome burns. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

This is what I find the most bizarre. If someone had said to most parents a year ago that they would be sending their children into school whilst an extremely contagious disease burns through the population at a rate of 1 in 70, causes 500 (probably soon to be 1000) deaths a day, people would have thought you were insane.

Now it’s like most of us are sticking our heads in the sand and pretending it’s not happening. I include myself in this because, when I have the occasional moment of clarity and I think what the fuck am I doing, I get told that I’m anxious and need to see the gp.

Last week we had a whole newsletter from school about which regulation items were allowed in pencil cases Really? Why the hell aren’t we more concerned about how many children could kill the extremely vulnerable reception teacher next week?

I don’t know what the answer is but school IS important and parents aren’t selfish for wanting it to continue.*

But who has said that education shouldn't continue or that schools should be closed?

Schools staff just want schools to be safer.

All of these threads and noblegiraffe's posts are about safer schools not closing schools.

Laughed out loud scathingly at
'Kids facing forward'

I personally work across 2 primary's have worked in secondary's and have a child in a separate primary.

Yeah, it was going to happen

The glitter/ nits/ chicken pox analogy's prove this 🤔

People who don’t agree with you are just a bit thick, giraffe

Due to staggered lunches and maintaining a sixth form bubble, some staff don't have a classroom available to eat their lunch in, so I'm not sure what the alternative is?

We’ve been assigned a classroom, office or cupboard that we have to eat our lunch in. Alone. It’s lonely that’s for sure.