Secondary schools are totally stuffed, WELL-RESPECTED SCIENTISTS ADMIT

[noblegiraffe]

I don't normally get asked for an encore, more usually 'urgh, not another bloody thread', but per a request we have a follow-up to the resoundingly popular:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4078722-Secondary-schools-are-fucked-BOFFINS-ADMIT

Feedback has been received and acted upon re the title so hopefully that will temper the urge to complain.

Quick round-up of where we were at:

1. the infection rate is now highest in secondary school pupils in Y7-11, higher than uni students and sixth formers. They're not catching it at the pub...

2. The government/ONS put out misleading figures to suggest that teachers weren't at higher risk than NHS frontline workers, where actually looking at the data, they may well be. They fudged this by calling the largest group of teachers, who are at higher risk than frontline NHS staff 'teachers of an unknown type' and pretended they were irrelevant.

3. The DfE have changed the format of their attendance statistics report to remove the reference to how many hundreds of thousands of kids are currently isolating due to exposure to covid at school.

4. Boffins are cool

New info: The Guardian reports that teachers are being instructed to ignore app notifications to self-isolate by the school helpline and this might be a bad thing. They can't help themselves though, and have a lovely photo of a socially distanced classroom of lies at the top of the story.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/16/union-says-teachers-in-england-being-told-to-pause-covid-app-in-school

Yes, a private school is not the average state school, but I have friends who have children at local state schools here in West London and they also have not experienced signifiant numbers or children of staff being affected.
Also W London. We hadn’t had many cases either. Notified of just 2 between start of term and last week. Since then multiple cases, no way of me (a parent) knowing exactly how many. They only send home close contacts when possible but now there are so many cases that entire chunks (bubbles is meaningless term) of school have been sent home. I reckon 350 chn are now stuck at home for 2 weeks from the closures I know of.
As they say on the investment ads, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Why do t you look at what’s happening in Hull Hakecod

Not all schools have their own testing facilities.
Here I don't know of any, private or state.

There IS Covid in both primary and secondaries schools.

I'm in the north, well Yorkshire, and most schools have had issues with positive cases and SI.

All three private schools locally have had closed classes. Infact the boys private school was the first to close - their sixth form closed in the first week. That's despite smaller classes, lower numbers, more space, etc.

Most primaries and secondaries have had closed bubbles. Our last class to be affected return tomorrow - infant school. The local secondary only has 3 year groups fully in right now.

My friend's DD is in her third isolation period in year 11. Can you see how this might mean these children could be disadvantaged cone exam time next spring?

The information about children not transmitting Covid changed a while back iirr.

Unfortunately not all schools are being affected equally in this. We know that the south isn't as badly affected as the north, overall rather than specifics. We know that the data being provided by the government isn't showing us the full picture.

My only agenda in this is to have safer schools for staff, children and their families.

I don't understand why I need to retract my statement when people on this tread have stated that the data is incorrect because it is not complete. If data is being presented which is not correct because not all points are being presented correctly, it is false/inaccurate.

Hull council are worried that they can't offer key services because the children of key workers can't have a solid place at school any more. If you can't imagine how that is going to look, you will probably see very soon and it won't look good. Supermarkets, police, fire, NHS.

I’m just going to join in with my ‘anecdata’.

My school is really rural. Before last week we had one positive and he hadn’t been in school all week so no isolations.

Last week we had three positives. Two of which were asymptomatic and only caught because they were siblings and part of The government study. Then their head of year tested positive. So now we have one year group and the whole pastoral teams out.

But no teachers. We were told that PHE advise not to send teachers into self isolation unless they had been standing next to the kid for more than a minute. Except our classroom windows don’t open properly. They aren’t testing anymore kids and staff can’t get tests. The nearest mobile testing unit is 30 miles away and always booked up.

So we’ve been left to wait to see who catches it next and worry endlessly about our vulnerable colleges and family members.

I am so angry. I’m tired of being treated like rubbish.

We are not seeing whole scale school closures like some are making out

www.google.com/search?q=whole+school.closed+covid&client=ms-android-ee-uk-revc&prmd=nsiv&sxsrf=ALeKk00yfqLTh2eqy-G69Jid-fmGlIdxww:1605640812028&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj4ivORportAhWrSxUIHeu0DnEQ_AUoAXoECAMQAQ&biw=360&bih=648&dpr=3

@ Piggy - what tat addressed to me? My son had to self isolate twice at home despite testing negative, but all classes were attended on line. His education was not impacted. He would tell you himself he felt no impact.

I get that some people were so invested in schools being fully open that they like to pretend that they were right.

But it isn’t working. It might still be okay for some people but as an education system it is failing.

And it didn’t have to be this way. But U4T sold us all down the river because they didn’t have the imagination to visualise a different form of schooling.

www.chad.co.uk/education/sutton-school-closed-circuit-breaker-after-confirmed-covid-cases-pupils-and-staff-3038938

Full closure

Hull has been mentioned several times in this thread (including by me). No one cares. No one is listening. Clearly not edgy or interesting enough. I was really shocked when I properly understood what their public health officials were saying: the risk of front line services collapsing because of the schools situation. Wake up, people.

This is from my county, which has had low rates compared to the rest of the country. And yet,

“For the week commencing November 9, a total of 209 staff and 1,772 pupils in Cambridgeshire are self-isolating because of these cases.

In Peterborough there are 163 staff and 1,818 pupils self-isolating.”

www.elystandard.co.uk/news/the-schools-where-staff-and-students-are-self-isolating-1-6933766

Anecdotally, 2 of Ds1’s (year 7) teachers are off with positive tests. Numerous kids at my school SI due to parents/family testing positive, or contact with positive cases in school. I wish I had the luxury of pretending it’s not that bad.

Let me be clear, I fully sympathise with the frustrations being expressed on this thread. It is a crap situation for teachers and parents and confusing for children.

Currently we are in a situation where schools are open because the experience of Lockdown I was unacceptable for children as they were paying a price which was disproportionate to the actual cost to themselves in terms of mental health and education based on their morbidity/mortality risk.

Lockdown II is trying to make up for that by having schools be open as long as they can to prevent further slide in education for the most vulnerable and those children in crux years. Posters here are saying that this is not adequate. What then, is the best solution balancing out the costs both long terms and short term? Keeping schools open until they can't seems to be what is going on. What is a better option for all?

No one is disputing that some DC are absent from school due to testing positive or self-isolation- 4% are.

Are you a bot? You keep claiming this on multiple threads, even when this has been discussed and refuted, with more recent evidence?

@ChloeDecker

That is the latest figure provided by the DFE for COVID absences.

The unions keep propagating the overall attendance rate, which has nothing to do with the issue at hand. DC off with the cold or a stomach bug have nothing to do with COVID.

There are always DC absent from school, particularly at this tile of year when seasonal viruses are circulating.

@Mominatrix

@ Piggy - what tat addressed to me? My son had to self isolate twice at home despite testing negative, but all classes were attended on line. His education was not impacted. He would tell you himself he felt no impact.

His education has been impacted. He will have been more passive and less active via a video lesson and will not have made as rapid progress as if a teacher was in the room and able to interact, adapt, and draw out better work, whilst providing frequent informative feedback.

hake do you know what attendance usually is in mid November?

@Mominatrix

There are loads of different solutions. This is not a solution. It is the lazy option which suits parents in wealthy rural schools at the cost of families on urban areas.

Essentially, this suits the people more likely to be able to cope with homeschooling at the expense of families less likely to have the tools to home school successfully.

Kids in deprived areas are suffering more damage to their education. But I don’t hear anyone clamouring to help them this time. Strange that.

Not really. He was in the classroom via video, and sent his comments vis e-mail the the teacher, who then got in contact with him to comment. Also, some of the video lessons were interactive and there was even an online debate. So no, he was not severely impacted.

Keeping schools open until they can't seems to be what is going on. What is a better option?

A circuit breaker to get numbers down, with key worker children only, probably followed by rotas week on week off so that children can be confident of regular time in school. Educationally, I think they can keep up with expectations like this - of course the social side will be missing. Unfortunately the circuit breaker will need to be longer now because we didn't act in time.

The bottom line is that education has just become twice as expensive and we either need to queue up or spend more on it.

That is the latest figure provided by the DFE for COVID absences.

And has been discussed and refuted as being the ‘latest’. 5th November is not today. You can keep repeating it hoping ‘new’ posters to the thread read it but it will still not be correct.

Another school that was fine until last Friday:

www.devonlive.com/news/devon-news/primary-school-tells-180-pupils-4709538

It's really easy to say "but my school is fine". Loads of schools that were fine last week are not fine this week. Loads of schools that are fine this week won't be fine next week. Most parents don't appreciate what is going on behind the scenes to keep schools functioning reasonably normally.

Global evidence is not really relevant to the UK, which is one of the few countries not enforcing mask wearing in the classroom and has some of the largest class sizes in Europe.

It is obvious from the data that secondary school aged students are driving transmission.

what have the temperatures been in the north - hull compared to down south - its been extremely mild down here, only on 1 day have I been cold.

go back and read the the many many posts from teachers who have been asking since before September for measures to be out in place to try and prevent the situation we are now in. Random sudden closures and/or self isolation are far more detrimental than well planned measures.

The unions keep propagating the overall attendance rate, which has nothing to do with the issue at hand. DC off with the cold or a stomach bug have nothing to do with COVID.

No, the reason the overall attendance rate is important is because not all children who are COVID related absent are included in the DfE official figures. The isolation code X is not counted. This massages the figures downwards.