The government is encouraging covid spread in schools

[noblegiraffe]

Bear with me, because if they're not, you have to explain this:

1. Schools will stay fully open end of. Even when they're not.

1. No masks allowed in classrooms where teachers and pupils spend the most time. The expectation that they would be mandated in corridors is fudged at the last minute to lockdown areas only.

1. Pupils are not allowed to be tested for the symptoms that kids are most likely to get.

1. Teachers (who in secondary will teach all bubbles without masks) are not to self isolate if there is a case in a class they have taught.

1. Fudge any data that may show teachers getting ill at a higher rate than the general population and Chris Whitty lying about it

1. Fudge data that may show school pupils having a higher infection rate than the general population

1. Not permitting / trying / mass testing in schools where there have been cases in case they find out how bad the spread is.

1. Actually sending letter to parents to tell them to stop getting kids tested.

9 Fine parents who try and keep their kids off when in contact with a known positive case.

10. Launch a propaganda campaign to convince parents that schools are safe using data from schools in lockdown, which every news outlet dutifully publicises. Continuing that propaganda campaign by releasing a video of socially distanced school kids wearing masks in classrooms.

11. Hide Gavin Williamson in a cupboard so that no journalist can accidentally ask him how his aim to reopen schools safely is going.

12. Announce that one of the school safety measures will be children in bubbles which will burst when there are cases. Stop this midway through September and start sending home as few kids as possible. Remove the schools remit from PHE control and put DfE in charge to enforce this.

13. Produce a Tiered system of responses to infection levels (rotas, masks, closures) to reassure parents, and shut the unions up. Then never mention them again and in fact state that they are not to be used.

14. When Hull begs for rotas due to imminent collapse of system, send a letter to all local authorities re-iterating NO ROTAS

15. Have some strange control over the media so they don’t mention any issues, or if they do, it must be accompanied by a picture of a jumbo classroom containing max 5 kids.

16. Tell teachers to ignore the app when it tells them to isolate, or to turn off the app completely

17. No funding for schools to implement any covid safety measures

Any other explanations for this list?

@noblegiraffe

But acting like there's this major cover-up

Did you read the Twitter thread about the ONS data? That's the clearest evidence yet that the government is covering up the real situation in schools.

Yes, I did, and I do believe that we are at a very high risk of catching covid.

What I don't believe is that schools, as a rule, are telling people not to test their children and fining them when they're staying off as a result of being a close contact.

I don't disagree with what you're saying, and I don't disagree with the majority of your points. But I think you should have left at least point 9 off your list, as you say it wasn't even from you to begin with. Saying things like that gives posters who think teachers are being hysterical more ammo. It's essentially hearsay, while I understand you clarified that there wasn't corroborating evidence.

Thanks noblegiraffe. Another one here who is full of admiration for your persistent and clarity of thought.

I agree with you.

After reading about the massive cover up with the ONS data on Twitter hopefully something will be done to acknowledge the situation in schools. Or at least people will start to accept what is happening.
It really is worth emailing your mp. And I say that when mine is a conservative and did vote against free school meals for children. I got a very positive response and told it would be forwarded to Gavin Williamson and when he got a response he would let me know. Seeing as Gavin seems to have disappeared I’m still waiting for that.

What I don't believe is that schools, as a rule, are telling people not to test their children and fining them when they're staying off as a result of being a close contact

No, the government is telling people not to test their children when they have the main child covid symptoms, not schools.

You're right I should have amended point 9 to make it clearer in the OP and not just the second post that it was hearsay. But it was 2am and I had had quite a bit to drink tbh.

@noblegiraffe

What I don't believe is that schools, as a rule, are telling people not to test their children and fining them when they're staying off as a result of being a close contact

No, the government is telling people not to test their children when they have the main child covid symptoms, not schools.

You're right I should have amended point 9 to make it clearer in the OP and not just the second post that it was hearsay. But it was 2am and I had had quite a bit to drink tbh.

Yes, I see what you are saying. It's a shit situation all round in schools, to be honest. Completely understandable re: drink

@noblegiraffe I applaud you for your posts. Thank you from a fellow teacher and parent.

@noblegiraffe

What I don't believe is that schools, as a rule, are telling people not to test their children and fining them when they're staying off as a result of being a close contact

No, the government is telling people not to test their children when they have the main child covid symptoms, not schools.

You're right I should have amended point 9 to make it clearer in the OP and not just the second post that it was hearsay. But it was 2am and I had had quite a bit to drink tbh.

As I said before, local councils are starting to override the government on this one and are asking people to test for all symptoms not just the main 3. There is now a special tick box on the form to book a test because your council has asked you to have one.

This is a sign of local change and if enough councils use this option then the national guidelines will have to change to reflect it (I hope!)

Imo schools cannot be closed again because so many children live in abusive households. I think the Government knows they can't fully control Covid whilst keeping schools open but are choosing the children over the older people. After this is over, they need to establish why society is so broken imo.

Our school has had couple cases of teachers being off isolating with covid , no students yet.
Some schools are handling this better than others , all schools here are sending whole bubbles home also supposedly on advice from phe , but there are 100's of these threads , we all know there a risk ,but children also need an education and there are other risks with closing school
My som says he has friend of evc who has been advised to stay off ? So are some now getting these?
Re : masks also in classroom the countries that do this such as france etc , are they actually seeing less incidences than here?

Thank you for this post. I do wish more parents would read and empathise with school staff. It’s not just us who are at risk but their children too. The school crisis is a shocking cover up and I do wish someone in power would recognise this. And to all the parents who just want their kids in school as it’s too much hassle to have them at home (be honest), please try to see the other side.

Great posts @noblegiraffe The ONS coverup is a disgrace.

1. You do know that older and/or vulnerable people work in schools? Or live with children?
2. Abuse is terrible and, yes, a very good reason to keep some children in school. But it doesn't happen between the hours of 9-3 Mon - Fri, term time only. Children in abusive homes should be removed, not sent to school for a few hours a day and that's fine.

The vast majority of people want schools to stay open (bar maybe arguments about circuit breakers, early for Xmas etc).

What we also want is for schools to be safer.

We won’t get safer schools while the main government narrative (with fudged data to fit) is that they are already safe.

However, because they are not safe, the wheels are already starting to fall off. This is also being ignored but may become critical.

I just wanted to add from my own experience, that not sending close contacts home has happened in DD's school so I imagine number 9 to happen if they tried to self isolate without being told officially to do so. I posted in a previous thread about it but this is what happened;

Boy tests positive and some of his close contacts are told to isolate, DD's best friend sits next to this boy in 4 classes, so that's 4 hours she was sat next to him but wasn't told to isolate. DD has some lessons with her friend and obviously they hang out at lunch, break (with several other friends) and after-school revision club (which has about 50 students attending each evening). So if her friend is now asymptomatic she is spreading it to a lot of people around the school and not all of them will be picked up as contacts as they won't be part of a seating plan (friends outside of classes, the after school club etc).

Another thing that has made me pause for thought this weekend is that DD's art teacher has been off for nearly 2 weeks, DD's key worker (she has SEN) has been off this week with a mystery illness and another SEND assistant has been off since Wednesday and her form tutor has been off since Tuesday. This has made me wonder if they are self-isolating rather than ill (as normally they don't have so many staff off all at the same time). DD spends a lot of time with the 2 SEN members of staff and it made me wonder, what if DD is asymptomatic (having caught it from her friend who caught it from the boy who tested positive) and she's passed it on to all those staff members (or someone similar has who has covid and doesn't know). It just seems like an endless cycle of transmission because the government are burying their heads in the sand and screaming schools are safe, schools must stay open, etc and only close contacts are being sent home (or not as in the case of DD's best friend), it's madness!

I don't know what I want. Just some acknowledgement, maybe, that we've been flung into this situation and that we were never safe. Just some acknowledgment that we continue to do our jobs knowing this. I've almost stopped talking to people about what it's like in schools - they don't really want to believe it.

Exactly. And not to be called work shy and lazy when in fact we're working harder than before. Increased duties, serving lunch in our classrooms, staggered starts so a longer teaching day, increased cleaning. Usual expectations of children making huge progress. Fussy parents. Fewer resources to stick to guidelines. Filming a Christmas play for parents. Assessment drops. Parents evening on new software that's fiddly to use. 60 hour working weeks and nothing to look forward to at the weekend except cleaning my house, getting my kids off their screens for a walk then it all starts again on Monday. More spaces at desks as more children isolate due to positives in their family and associated workload of setting and sending home differentiated work for them. Phone calls home to make contact. When children come back to school, looking at their mental wellbeing and seeing if they've actually completed any home learning. Children worried about family members being ill.

I bloody love my job but it's hard at the moment.

My som says he has friend of evc who has been advised to stay off ? So are some now getting these?

That’s amended guidance for the national lockdown. He may well find himself shunted back into school on December 3rd despite the increasing infection rates in schools.

Yanbu of course education is vital, however schools can only be open if they are open in a way that is as safe as possible for kids, staff and the public they come in contact with.
We should have put money into remote learning for high schools, laptops and dongles fir disadvantaged children and hubs for the vulnerable.

Round here secondaries are sending home whole year groups as bubbles on advice of phe

Teachers are having to do more work at home than before now, too. Workspaces in school are limited to allow for some form of token social distancing, so there is no guarantee of access to a computer during non-contact time. This means than planning, recording of date, report writing, data analysis etc has to be done at home in the evening, on top of marking.

DD's art teacher has been off for nearly 2 weeks, DD's key worker (she has SEN) has been off this week with a mystery illness and another SEND assistant has been off since Wednesday and her form tutor has been off since Tuesday. This has made me wonder if they are self-isolating rather than ill

They could have covid. You wouldn’t be told and because staff are supposed to maintain 2m distance they wouldn’t trigger any kids to self-isolate.

@timeforanewstart

Round here secondaries are sending home whole year groups as bubbles on advice of phe

There’s an urgent inquiry to stop this happening.

It’s pretty much the only thing the DfE have done in response to the doubling in schools affected by covid in a week.

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

Agreed. It's a joke. My eldest was expected in school despite having contact with two confirmed cases. The school said this was based on PHEs advice. It's rampant in our secondary and the school is more concerned with attendance figures. I am absolute dreading January after people have been mixing in December.

@noblegiraffe

DD's art teacher has been off for nearly 2 weeks, DD's key worker (she has SEN) has been off this week with a mystery illness and another SEND assistant has been off since Wednesday and her form tutor has been off since Tuesday. This has made me wonder if they are self-isolating rather than ill

They could have covid. You wouldn’t be told and because staff are supposed to maintain 2m distance they wouldn’t trigger any kids to self-isolate.

And that is part of the problem, they are supposed to stay 2 metres apart but I'm sure the people who make these guidelines have never been in a large secondary school and seen the actual space available.

@Popcornriver absences because of Covid, either for self-isolating or having tested positive, don’t affect attendance figures.

More DfE propaganda. This is from their Facebook page. There are no smaller class sizes unless you count because of multiple absences due to covid.

There’s also no strict social distancing. Schools are crammed, particularly in corridors because a mask will be all the protection needed when you are squeezing past Y11 (this doesn’t count as close contact although physical contact should).