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

Do you know how the school has been impacted despite this shockingly lax attitude to safety? Based on what you are “seeing”. It must have been heavily impacted by the COVID cases, and increasingly so in today’s climate. More so than most other areas of the U.K. with all those children taking public transport to get to school.

Parents are not notified of cases unless their kid is a close contact. Basically have no idea. What I do know is that my son is the only one in the year group being kept off since sept and 5 other parents were thinking of it 3 wks ago. I see online that since half term there are usually 1-2 other names, not just my son alone online. But that can be due to anything else as well.

A total of 4 cases. All cases acquired outside of school and no spread within school. All parents in the school were notified of the cases, not just close contacts and not just the year group.

This is a school with about a thousand children in the senior school and an attached lower school on site.

You teach there?

I am a parent.

I do think you should qualify that as no school spread 'that anyone knows of'. When Sedbergh School did some mass testing they uncovered 53 cases, mostly asymptomatic. As a boarding school, it seems probable spread occurred within the school.

In terms of obtuse, yes it is an angle type, but also means slow to understand.

Piggy, of course. But impact would have been felt by staff, families, and increased spread to other students. SPS is only nominally a boarding school, so impact would been felt by the wider community as spread would have occurred and impacted outside. It may have, but not in any significant way as positive cases at home would have required students to self isolate.

@Mominatrix

In terms of obtuse, yes it is an angle type, but also means slow to understand.

Never heard it used that way, thanks. :) Can I ask which year group?

Piggy is right: I should have said that we officially know of. Having multiple discussions with the school it does come out that there are more kids off, but many don't bother to test. This is anecdotal though, but from staff members.

"All cases acquired outside of school and no spread within school"
How do they know this?
And you are right, it's on the parent portal, but not in my email that's how I've missed it. My sentence's second part on who is being informed was from school staff in last week's phone call, but it doesn't really matter. (really just for record so it doesn't look like I'm trying to be an ass towards them, when I'm actually not. In general I quite like them :))

@Mominatrix
errr... there were times when half the class was online in october....
But also, non official info from school was that even they are amazed that there are year groups almost totally unaffected - at least before half term. Which baffles me.

[quote NeurotrashWarrior]I've found this random article.

No main newspapers were interested in her story.

www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/28/ukpr-o28.html[/quote]
It's a good article. I am baffled by the lack of media coverage on the schools spreading COVID through the community.

We’re all baffled by the lack of media coverage. And when there is media coverage, it has photos of socially distanced kids in massive classrooms, or kids wearing masks in classrooms or kids getting temperature checks which is all stuff the govt has said not to do.

I had this response to my most recent complaint to the bbc about lack of media coverage on spread in schools.

The reply to the BBC is: the amount of coverage is less an issue than the need for accurate and transparent reporting.

@TheSun, if you are a parent, you should have known that half the year group was never on line at once. There was one bubble in the Sixth Form and one in the Lower eighth. A bubble is not 100 boys but far fewer! If you were unaware, I would contact the school as you are not receiving the multiple mass emails from the school.

Sorry, pressed send too soon. These emails come several times a week and inform of a wide variety of subjects, including any cover notifications. How do I know that the vases were acquired outside of school? Because I know 2 of the 4 boys and I know where they got Covid - one testing positive at the end go Half Term.

Curious that you are having such deep conversations with staff as parents cannot enter the gates of school and have not been able to all term - even parents of boarders.

covid, not cover

mom, please don't patronise me . I am fully aware of what Sedbergh is as I know someone who works there. The cases were largely in a boarding house which was closed down and the boys were all sent home to SI. There may well have been further cases in those families.

My point was that the boys in the school spread it within the school.

We found out about 3 new positive cases in one year yesterday. When I say, "We heard of" I mean, "We pieced it together through gossip from the people who were directly affected and could possibly be wrong."

I mean, staff don't need to know if 1% of a year group get infected over a single weekend, do we? That's not important information for our safety, or anything.

1% may not sound that much, but if we scaled that up to nationwide, that would be the equivalent of 640,000 cases over the weekend over the UK.

They probably all caught it outside school, though, of course.

Oh, and an interesting titbit of information.

We had someone who went off due to diarrhoea and then developed Covid symptoms two days later. The school were advised to time contact from the onset of the diarrhoea, not the onset of the official Covid symptoms. So, the bastards do know that the symptom set needs widening.

My DS cannot visit the orthodontist with nay of the wider set of symptoms.

Genuinely because of the mantra that the virus is not harmful to the vast majority of children, the government - and the scientists- really could not care less about the crippling effect on education, or about the safety of school staff.

They seemed to get momentarily worried when Professor Semple pointed out than an alarming number of those in ICU were young women working in close contact jobs , so they produced some rushed ONS garbage to prove to themselves that they were not putting teachers and school staff in harm's way.

We haven't had many cases nellodee but the ones we have had all began with diarrhoea.

We seem to be having a tummy bug go round - but it is sickness and nausea not diarrhoea.
What's the odds on it being Covid or just a tummy bug?

Unless a few have concerned parents who decide to get a test, you will never know!

I ahve a boy repeatedly off with 'flu like symptoms' who never gets tests. To be fair, he was off a lot last year, too. But while he is off, I reckon his mum could take him for a test. All this time, his sibling sits in another one of my classes.In my front row.

Latest note on the register is that his cough, headache and sore throat 'might be a reaction to his flu jab'. It is certainly hard to know with him whether this is generalised sickliness, or covid..