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

I suppose time will tell!

I really thought my dc's headache, diarrhoea and sore stomach might be symptoms, but he tested negative. unless I fucked up the test, which seems possible

On LBC at 9.33/34 caller lambasts Shapps (transport secretary) about the gaslighting in education, the Covid hokey cokey and manipulation of ONS data. Didn't catch callers name. I was cheering from my garage whilst putting shopping away. It will be on repeat.

Shapps' response "We're doing all we can, we are not going to get everything right... increased testing will help teachers yada yada". Inept response. Hastily moved on by Ferrari.

Thank you thank you to that caller!

@Mominatrix
all correspondence with school is through phone.
The fact that half were off I can see from the gclass meet. None got tested. I know at least 3-6 kids who were off with various potential covid and most didn't even want to get tested and 1 couldn't get a test in late sept.
I think it would be important to get tested not just because of now/spreading, but for further reference if there are symptoms later on.
Since half term it has been better though that's a fact.

Regardless, this or any other school is not really safe. They can have these fancy processes, but until they have mandatory mask wearing and distance the kids it's not going to be safer.

Beeb just reported attendance fell to 78% last week (if I heard right).

@monkeytennis97

On LBC at 9.33/34 caller lambasts Shapps (transport secretary) about the gaslighting in education, the Covid hokey cokey and manipulation of ONS data. Didn't catch callers name. I was cheering from my garage whilst putting shopping away. It will be on repeat.

Shapps' response "We're doing all we can, we are not going to get everything right... increased testing will help teachers yada yada". Inept response. Hastily moved on by Ferrari.

Thank you thank you to that caller!

I was listening and cheering too! Then shouting at Schapps after for his shite response...

Ten percent of most of my year 7 classes are off with "sickness and diarrhoea..."

Not on main news page, mind.

No follow up to the attendance stats that I heard ( though I was vacuuming so could have missed it).

@TheEmojiFormerlyKnownAsPrince has your DS seen the latest attendance stats? They're surely worth a story now!

explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/attendance-in-education-and-early-years-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak

A tenth of kids out of school. 73% of secondaries with covid cases.

www.tes.com/news/exclusive-covid-school-rotas-banned-dfe-ends-tiers

Ended before they were even used. Schools open is the hill they are willing to die on.

Look at the ONS survey infection rates in secondary school kids. Then look at the number of secondary schools with kids isolating due to covid in schools in recent weeks. There seems to be a pretty clear correlation and no suggestion that things are going to get better, only worse as NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT.

73% - latest data.
64%
36%
---half term
55%
46%

disruption in secondaries getting worse by the week-
www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55057125

@NuttyinNotts

www.tes.com/news/exclusive-covid-school-rotas-banned-dfe-ends-tiers

Ended before they were even used. Schools open is the hill they are willing to die on.

The hill they are willing to kill school staff on. Bastards.

Hmm and yet my school is part closed

Schools collapsing in a pile of covid is fine, honey, it’s planned management of absence that’s a bad thing.

I'm beginning to think that this is all so blatant that really it's a message:

We don't care about the little people.

All the 'caring about education' has been exposed as the enormous lie it always was.

If they cared about education, they'd care about the endless disruption of constant isolations.

And about experienced teachers who know their students getting ill so they can't teach.

Supply is never going to be as good as the normal teachers. At some point it stops being education and becomes babysitting (and randomly interrupted babysitting at that).

Oh dear god. Apparently this is how a classroom looks. Was just on the news. We'd have 32 in there.

@mumsneedwine

😂😂 our medical room is busier than that!

@TheSunIsStillShining

The balance is approximately Full time working mum's of primary aged children: ~1,5m Part time working mum's of primary aged children: ~ 2m

That is a very small % of working adults.

I don't know where the data is on this, but I would bet a disproportionate amount of those working mums are teachers.

Threre's no good scenario for working teacher parents (of primary and lower secondary age anyway) at the moment.

1. Schools open as they are now - our DC are in school but we have to take leave if they are isolating, leaving our own schools short of staff.
2. Blended learning - how do you go into class every day when your own DC are at home some of the time?
3. Schools are closed - teaching from home with your own DC around.

I don't know what the solution is, certainly for primary schools. In my small school this term we have already had 3 bubble closures and an entire school closure due to staff shortages. My own DCs' small primary has had 3 bubble closures.

Blended learning and reduced class sizes could be a better option at secondary, although it would depend on the logistics.

Really, mask-wearing is the simplest and cheapest factor that could make a difference.

In small primary schools we have zero budget for supply cover either.

2 more staff went home for tests today. Concerned we are about to have our own 'second wave' within school right now.

Well this single working mum teacher is currently dealing with the majority of my students out because it's two year groups closed who I have to teach remotely, classes in school who I have to teach in school and my son out of school because his is one of the year groups closed plus he's isolating as a close contact so can't utilise my support bubble to check in on him.

But apparently schools will be ON/OFF. Hopefully they'll be explaining this to Reality who doesn't agree and is coming up with awkward things like errr you can't have a school fully open if there aren't enough staff to run it safely.

Honestly these people are shameless. They want to ban local government and health authorities from any part in decision making for the safety of their communities and let the dfe dictate instead? With their minimum wage call centre staff reading from scripts instead of elected local government, health experts etc?

That sounds great and oh so responsible and logical.

@piggy -no need to be rude. I certainly was not being patronising - please do point out where I was. I was simply point-ting out the difference between a school like sedbergh and SPS. If the children were asymptmatic and not spreading it to the outside world and the morbidity/mortality for asymptomatic children in that age group is extremely low, surely it is much more dangerous to send those children home where compliance to self isolation is not great is that age group. Difficult decisions are having to be made and the virus is here to stay, vaccine or not.