Is a change beginning to happen regarding schools?

[Covidfears]

I’ve been noticing more articles lately in the mainstream press about the difficulties in schools (which will come as no surprise to most people). There’s also been some research which has basically confirmed that schools are driving infections. So, along with it looking like this lockdown has been a waste of time (due to schools being kept open to continue the spread) and people in power calling for Hull schools to be closed do we think that schools will be closing early for Christmas?

Is there any chance that blended learning or rotas will be coming in after the Christmas holidays?

We are a vulnerable family with children in primary school and the risk that sending them every day with no safety measures poses to our family is causing me huge amounts of stress.

it's just lazy thinking to call for schools to close

It’s just lazy arguing to pretend that’s what’s happening.

@canigooutyet

No of course not. If a person has a contract as a teacher of course they should be paid as a teacher. I'm not sure where you have that idea from.

But most people who are qualified teachers but no longer work as teachers also no longer want tonwork as teachers, whether they are paid or not! We cannot expect TAs HLTAs to work fulltime as teachers when this is not what they are trained for or paid for. Teaching is about much more than a lesson plan and being stood in front of a class. Ironically, we also have less support staff to use because of government funding cuts...

Would make it easier if more went back to it. They tried the out of house approach for a long time, before deciding to go back to it centralised. Used to dread the pay time of the month as they always screwed up massively.

Wasn't the whole MAT thing supposed to also help resolve some of the issues? (My memory of the mat thing is very vague, might not even be that, when it came into the school I was in the midst of a breakdown. Might have been one of those ridiculously bad amazing ideas))

What is happening then @noblegiraffe. Do you actually possess any data to show that schools are driving infections?

What is happening, MissEliza is that there are lots of calls for the government to admit there’s an issue in secondary schools in particular and to put money into schools to improve mitigation measures and make them safer.

Everyone wants to keep schools open except the government who seem happy to drive them into closures through neglect.

And see the photo for the evidence you need.

Have you noticed during your extensive worldwide research how many school systems are falling overeliza?

@noblegiraffe one graph tells you absolutely nothing.

To prove schools are driving the spread of Covid, there needs to be evidence of clusters of infections with a school setting at the centre.

There is week after week of graphs if you'd like to look at the PHE surveillance reports.

What evidence do you ahve to the contrary?

School systems worldwide are now acknowledging the role of schools in spread. To believe they have no role is, frankly, bizarre.

[quote MissEliza]@noblegiraffe one graph tells you absolutely nothing. [/quote]
It really does tell you something, though I suspect it's not the nothing you were hoping for...

Are you an epidemiologist misseliza?

Really, misseliza because it tells me the infection rate in secondary schools has been steadily rising since September except for a brief dip when schools where closed for half term and is now continuing to rise again now that they are re-opened. This pattern is not matched in other age groups.

Now explain that if they’re not catching it at secondary school?

Eliza, anecdotal but we have different codes for isolating due to contact with positive case at school, isolating due to positive case elsewhere and positive result. I've seen several of the former turning into the later so yes it is absolutely spreading at my school.

I've also got one of my vulnerable, exam year students on his 3rd period of isolation, many more on their second. He'll sit the same exam as his peers that have had no disruption at all.

We're live streaming to those at home but the connection is so bad it's hard for them to access the lesson.

Eliza

If you don’t like noble’s graph, where is your evidence that (particularly) secondary schools are not driving infection?

[quote MissEliza]@noblegiraffe it's just lazy thinking to call for schools to close. I work in a school but have two vulnerable family members. I thought very carefully and did research. I'm satisfied with finding from across the world regarding the safety of schools. Moreover, information is shared to us weekly regarding infections in our local area and I have yet to see more than one infection in one bubble at a time. [/quote]
We are an infant school of 270 children, 9 classes.

Within a month:

11+ staff tested positive - across the school. These are the known ones by me. There may be more but even within school we weren't being updated on tests and results. Until I return from absence I wouldn't know full numbers
2 trainee teachers
Several parents 20+ (that I know of, right across school abd classes, coincidently the first were in the same class as the first affected staff)
A handful of children with known positive cases, mainly symptom free but tested through T&T after family member was positive.

What are the chances of those being all isolated and unrelated cases?!?!

I posted about an email I received at my school earlier this week and MissEliza might find it interesting to read:

There are 12 secondary schools in total in my borough. This is a London Borough.

School 1 have about a third of each year group isolating with the exception of Year 8
School 2 have Year 13 isolating and have had to postpone their mock exams
School 3 have Year 12 at home due to staff shortages and the rest of the year groups operating on a rota system
School 4 have Year 7 and Year 12 at home
School 5 have Year 9 and Year 12 at home, in part due to staff shortages
School 6 have some of Year 13 isolating
School 7 has closed temporarily
School 8 has 4 year groups at home
School 9 have multiple classes of Year 10 and some Year 13 at home

None of these are my school, which takes it up to School 10 and we have one class isolating and 9 staff at home including me.

This situation is getting very worrying. This borough has also gone from one of the bottom 5 to one of the top 8 boroughs in London for the biggest increase in positive cases.

Can you honestly say, MissEliza that these Secondary schools have had no impact on this borough’s massive rise in positive cases, where currently a lockdown is taking place?

ChloeDecker No we cannot say that schools have no impact on positive cases, however we also cannot say that they are driving it.

Noble was rather spiky with me last night. But the reality is that the positivity rate in schools is, on average, the same as within the community, in the range of 0.5 to 2.0. Of all those years and classes that you list, only approx. 2% of the students and teachers will be positive.

None of that is ideal, obviously, and I don't think anyone is saying we don't need extra measures in some schools, especially masks for all. However, we also cannot say that schools are driving the increase in all areas, when in many areas cases are going down.

Of all those years and classes that you list, only approx. 2% of the students and teachers will be positive.

Oh bloody hell someone doesn’t understand that covid will appear in clusters.

only approx. 2% of the students and teachers will be positive.

That we know of, given a testing regime that only tests for 3 symptoms, known not to be the most common in children, and given children are thought to have a much higher asymptomatic percentage than adults.

When there's whole school testing and it shows that positivity, then I'll believe it.

What I can't believe is that - given there are 60% of children off school in Hull - there is no whole school testing at the very least in Hull. It's almost like there's something to hide. Why not, otherwise?

What would be really interesting is collecting data on adults who test positive who live with / teach / have close contact with school age children (vs adults who test positive who don't have any contact with school aged children).

Plus whole school testing.

And until we have that data (and even then) why no masks? If you don't know whether an environment is hugely risky or not, you have a lack of data, and you have an easy cheap mitigation, why not use it? It's just incomprehensible.

It's like teachers are going to work on a building site and they turn up and the bosses say 'you don't need a hard hat' and the teachers are saying 'erm... there is a lot of evidence they prevent injury' and the bosses say 'nah, if a brick falls on your head the chances that it'll kill you are virtually nil - no need. It will make your head hot and more difficult to work... just crack on...' and the teachers say 'but what about all these other building sites where they use them....' get ignored....

ONS figures are based on modelling from the pool of people who are being tested. Hence the confidence intervals.

I don't think anyone is saying we don't need extra measures in some schools, especially masks for all

Many are saying exactly that. The government especially.

@Baaaahhhhh

ONS figures are based on modelling from the pool of people who are being tested. Hence the confidence intervals.

Yes and?

Noble was rather spiky with me last night.

I wonder why!?

I wonder why!?

It’s because noble is ummm baying for schools to close, probably permanently, so she can gulp gin in her garden on full pay. The disappointment is making her spiky.