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.

State 6th form smile

But dds are in state secondary

@Piggywaspushed

I can assure you we have none of those things in my school and nor does DH's private school!

My eyes have been opened.

State 6th form smile

Attached to a KS4/3 school or stand alone? I can understand why you’ve lost some understanding about exactly what the challenges are in an urban comp if you’re a little removed.

So far my ds school not had student case had couple teachers who were ok and had maintained the 2 m or not been in contact with students for whatever reason , so no year groups gone home
Expect it will happen before long though but grateful ds yr 11 as got this amount weeks in with gcse coming as they have a lot of catching up to do

Our primary bubbles are 60 children. We don't have enough toilets to do any less than that.

@timeforanewstart

Whole year groups tend go isolate here at secondary as kids go to various lessons throughout couple days plus they don't always know exactly who is with who at break or lunch as lets face it the ternagers when outside don't stay 2m away plus many of them walk to school together , better to send them all home than just guess who was close

Exactly.

We couldn't predict who else is likely to develop symptoms over the next few days or who may be asymptomatic but passing it merrily on.

I've got a projector and a computer in my classroom with a bog standard whiteboard and board markers. What's all this talk of visualisers and ipads?? I haven't even got a web cam.

I have done a lot of supply in local schools. I can't think of any who had iPads, or smart boards in more than a couple of rooms.. It's all ancient PCs and projectors.
This year, for obvious reasons, my current school had invested in web cams/ visualisers in all classrooms but we are still getting used to them. We do have a few smart boards but they are old and crap, I'd rather have a roller whiteboard!

I can't imagine a teacher in a classroom with a visualiser, white board, ipads and associated technology who wasn't up to speed with using them.
I have a visualiser and an IWB in my room. The IWB hasn't worked for years since a child kicked it in a rage. It's a perfectly adequate projector screen though. There are 6 other rooms on my corridor. We all have projectors but that's all.
Maths rooms all have IWB which were paid for when we were a specialist school. They don't all work. And maths rooms are now general rooms so the maths teachers who are used to using them are now scuppered.
We have no iPads and our ks3 students face computer science without computers due to bubbles.

couple teachers who were ok and had maintained the 2 m or not been in contact with students for whatever reason

Yeah, you might find they've been told that they maintained 2m distance.

There's a lot of that going around.

@Ginogineli

And whilst I don’t teach maths even I know 1/3 is better than 7/10

What do you teach?

Our school is well equipped and I am fortunate in having used a visualizer for at least 4 years. However, I am still getting comfortable with Teams etc and really feel for those teachers who are having to embed technological skills at the soeed of light.

Hull is smaller and more self contained than Liverpool. Figures in Liverpool can be skewed by distinct variations. I am sure in some parts of Liverpool huge numbers of schools were massively affected.

Why do PHE send home full year's in some schools and only close contacts in others? In my DS secondary school not once has the whole year been sent home yet in neighbouring schools some whole years have been sent home on numerous occasions

Some schools have reduced the curriculum offer so that students mix less because they're doing fewer subjects, or they're taught entirely mixed ability. Some schools have got students sitting with exactly the same people in the same rooms all day long. Some schools are confident that they know who is near who all day every day.
Others are more open about the fact that we can't control them every minute of every day. We don't know who they walked down the corridor with, who they sat with at break (because we saw how they struggled with not being allowed to mix), or who they sat with on the bus.
Arguably it's also easier to deliver high quality remote learning if everyone's remote.

I've been told they look at absences through the year group which may also have been Covid. If there's hints of it being a cluster, the whole year group is sent home.

@3littlewords

Why do PHE send home full year's in some schools and only close contacts in others? In my DS secondary school not once has the whole year been sent home yet in neighbouring schools some whole years have been sent home on numerous occasions

Depends on the way the school works, school layout, where and how the staff work across school, etc.

PHE dealt with our school in different ways each time.

KS1 they only sent classes home.
EYFS they had to snd the whole year group home as the classroom layout means the classes are linked with no doors and some half walls, and the only way to access two rooms involve moving between shared corridors and spaces, etc. Plus the toilet areas have to be shared in that area by all the classes.

In a couple of situations only a handful of children (and staff) were sent home.

When PHE did my case they sent no one else home.

In some schools it is easier to separate classes way more than in others.

I've got a rubbish whiteboard with a bulb that barely works and an ancient laptop. We have one visualiser in the school and two iPads. I have an old camera that I use for evidence that has a 3 second delay

@WhyNotMe40

I've been told they look at absences through the year group which may also have been Covid. If there's hints of it being a cluster, the whole year group is sent home.

Or maybe not.

Especially now the DfE is doing this urgent inquiry.

Sorry Noble - remind me?

"Academy trusts are being questioned over their protocols for managing Covid cases as part of an “urgent commission” for the education secretary, as the Department for Education (DfE) scrambles to understand a hike in children missing school.

New figures have revealed the number of pupils at home self-isolating last week had nearly doubled within the space of seven days to over 550,000 pupils.

Today and yesterday chief executives at trusts across the country received questionnaires from their regional schools commissioners’ office requesting information on Covid protocols – with responses requested by close of play today (Thursday)."

schoolsweek.co.uk/trusts-quizzed-over-covid-cases-in-urgent-commission-for-education-secretary/

They wouldn't be scrambling to understand the hike in children missing school if they just looked at the bloody graphs.

Ah yes I remember now. The "let's try to justify sending no contacts home" fact finding mission....

Too many children are being sent home because of covid in schools therefore the solution is to stop sending children home is exactly the sort of line they will take. Didn't work out for France I don't think, and they had masks.

@mrshamlet @Aragog his school has been split into sections for each year group each has their own entrance, toilets, start/finish/break times. Sometimes he can spend 4 out of 5 lessons in the same room although he's in different sets for different lessons so not always sat next to same people. Theres been 3 cases in his year so far I guess he's just been lucky as some dc in his year have been affected by isolation more than once

3 cases in the year sounds like it is spreading - just mostly asymptomatically.