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?

Piggy Thanks. It seems the way forward to me if they won't invest in preventative measures/deep cleaning etc as they also have a responsibility for the health and safety of staff and could end up facing legal action.

1. You do know that older and/or vulnerable people work in schools? Or live with children

They also pay taxes and let's face it we need all the taxpayers we can get at the moment.

@noblegiraffe

If everyone who read my threads emailed their MP about their experiences, we might have a chance.

@noblegiraffe

Thank you got your threads & posts on other threads. I always feel you're an informed voice in all this madness.

My MP is a useless twat & his office responses are generally late & laughable.

I have emailed him re schools, but pre Sept.

I do t suppose you have a link to some kind of template I could use to email him again?

I feel pretty crap & trying to write something that has any impact is beyond me right now.

I honestly don't know how you keep this up & stay so patient with some posters - who really just need to shut up & fuck off.

Ooops 🤣

That corridor photo is completely standard to what it looks like in all of the six secondary schools my dh and I have or do work in in the last decade. Including right now.

@ChloeDecker

I was about to jog on a few posts ago as I was getting pissed off. noble’s threads don’t turn into bunfights and regularly reach 1000 posts. The only posters who try to turn it into a bun fight (but rarely succeed because of the evidence and knowledge used to counteract that) are the ones who keep posting the same sentences over and over again and deflecting the replies given, without giving any evidence to back themselves up.

Thank you. I was trying to find a 'tactful' response, but couldn't.

Lots of people try to derail these threads. Thankfully because Noble replies and I try to sit on my hands, they tend to stay on track

@CallmeAngelina - that was the reply I got pretty much word for word. Standard bullshit.

I am a teacher and in RL don’t know anyone who are desperate for closing schools the way a minority of teachers or people who claim to be teachers on here are

I'm a public health consultant working with teachers and schools dealing with risk assessments and high infection rates.

They need to be closed for a short period of time to allow for us all to get to grips with controlling this infection. Every single one of my colleagues across the country think the same as me. though guessing there will be random consultants on here who disagree but in real,life they are jn the minority

@Susanwouldntlikeit

Or, it's a balancing act because there is more to life and death than Covid. And whilst everything has been turned on its head for this one virus, as a small compromise with some level of sanity, it's been decided that educating children has some importance. This. And those schools de facto closing by keeping whole year groups out are egregiously damaging the progress for those children. Teenagers can’t socially distance -well there’s a revelation! Anyone who expects them to clearly doesn’t have a clue. But schools need to stay open because far greater damage was caused in the summer term than had been caused by them remaining open. Teenagers simply congregated unsupervised, or withered away at home. I am a teacher and in RL don’t know anyone who are desperate for closing schools the way a minority of teachers or people who claim to be teachers on here are. And to claim that they want schools to trending open but ‘safely’ is disingenuous. Their version of ‘safety’ is impossible in a school setting, so effectively by attempting to make it a binary choice they are lobbying for school closure

People asking for schools to be made safe are not asking for them to close.

You are the person artificially making it into a binary issue (to close or not close schools). This is disingenuous.

Hope this helps.

@kremeshe

There are a lot of people working hard to try to make me stop posting, that's for sure.

That may be the case but it doesn't detract from the point that these threads end up with just teachers posting. Which is fine however if it's parents you want to reach in order to challenge their MPs etc I'm not sure it's the best tactic.

What do YOU suggest then? Because continually trying to derail them isn't the way forward!!

@kremeshe

the need for teachers to speak as loudly as they can, when they need to. Nobody should deny anyone that, surely?

I certainly wouldn't deny them that but my point is how effective is it of it just teachers talking to other teachers? I presume teachers are already communicating with their MPs & unions, it's the wider population that needs to be reached surely?

I'm posting, I'm not a teacher.

It would be more effective if people didn't try to derail it.

They are very difficult issues. Someone saying above schools should be closed. Would it be okay if teachers were not paid if schools closed, and if it meant that parents could not work so taxes were not paid and hospitals had to close would that be okay too?

This is the problem - we are doing a balancing act at present. Closing schools may cause more deaths and damage than keeping them open.

@SecretSpAD

I am a teacher and in RL don’t know anyone who are desperate for closing schools the way a minority of teachers or people who claim to be teachers on here are

I'm a public health consultant working with teachers and schools dealing with risk assessments and high infection rates.

They need to be closed for a short period of time to allow for us all to get to grips with controlling this infection. Every single one of my colleagues across the country think the same as me. though guessing there will be random consultants on here who disagree but in real,life they are jn the minority

That’s really interesting-thanks for posting from another stance. It must be a very stressful time for you and your colleagues, fighting all these fires. It’s appreciated.

No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer
No one is saying close schools. Just make them safer

@Xenia: "Would it be okay if teachers were not paid if schools closed,"

Come on, Xenia. You are not a stupid person. Why are you therefore ignoring the fact that school buildings closing for a short period as a circuit-break, does NOT mean that teaching and educating ceases altogether? So why on earth do you suggest that teachers should not be paid, if they would be continuing their role via a different route?

Someone saying above schools should be closed.
Who exactly said that, word for word?

Would it be okay if teachers were not paid if schools closed,
I would be happy to be furloughed. Yes.
However, teachers can work from home. For example, I have taught every one of my lessons via live video link last week, whilst being at home as my primary aged child has to self isolate as someone in her class tested positive (and the selfish parent sent their child in whilst waiting for the test result so my DC has to do the full 14 days).

Teachers do still educate and yes, teachers are mostly parents too and also struggle just as much as the next person to have their child at home and not at school. Not sure why the two have to be mutually exclusive.

"Someone saying above schools should be closed."
^"Who exactly said that, word for word?"*

The only poster I can see who has said that is @SecretSpAD, who is a Public Health Consultant, not a teacher.

Since I started posting these threads I've had crap thrown at me. I'm overly anxious. I should quit teaching. I shouldn't be in front of kids when I'm so stressed. People are sick to the back teeth of me. Urgh not you again OP. I'm running a campaign to close schools. I'm working for the unions. I still actually want to close schools I'm just pretending I don't. I'm not really a teacher. I've got an agenda. And lately 'what is the point in these threads, what do you hope to achieve?'. It's weird how the narrative against me has steadily but consistently changed from flat out personal abuse to more subtle nagging to stop posting.

What they haven't done is explain why they're so resistant to conversations about making schools safer.

It really doesn't have to be schools closed or open fully.
There needs to be some mitigation. It isnt fair on small businesses like hair and beauty, gyms and hospitality, to loose out and possibly go bust whilst covid spread through schools!
I feel reasonably safe teaching in my schools now they have endured the teaching area is 2 m away and we have all rooms ventilated. But cases are reasonably low here.
I would feel safer if we had regular testing though.

The government are not trying to actively spread covid.

They are trying to avoid a politically damaging u-turn. Keeping the schools open is justified as economically not possible (though if restrictions have to be kept for longer because covid is spreading through schools, the argument is a false economy and utter nonsense).

They have form for refusing to u-turn on something despite mountains of evidence to the contrary until its politically impossible for them not to.

There is nothing that makes a u-turn on schools politically inevitable to this point because the majority public desparately want schools to remain open. The evidence there is that this is part of the problem, isn't getting enough cut through to shift public opinion or political pressure sufficiently.

And tbh, I don't see that changing between now and the vaccine rolling out now.

The only shifts I see possible are :
early school closures of a week in hard hit areas to help enable christmas get togethers
changes to exam plans in england (we will see this one get a lot more steam behind it in the new year - the current position of the government is untenable).

The government are not trying to actively spread covid.

What would they do differently if they were?

@noblegiraffe please keep saying it. Someone might listen to us before it's too late. Schools will close as staff are getting sick. And some won't come back. Because they have died. I'm 53 with a heart condition.
Telling students that their teacher has died of COVID is traumatising for everyone. I know. I had to do it in March.

@Xenia

They are very difficult issues. Someone saying above schools should be closed. Would it be okay if teachers were not paid if schools closed, and if it meant that parents could not work so taxes were not paid and hospitals had to close would that be okay too?

This is the problem - we are doing a balancing act at present. Closing schools may cause more deaths and damage than keeping them open.

Closing schools may cause more deaths and damage than keeping them open. But - probably - closing schools (for a deep clean and to reduce ongoing in-school spread) would reduce transmission, save lives, help the NHS and help us open up businesses sooner, and in those respects, would help society as a whole.

Telling students that their teacher has died of COVID is traumatising for everyone. I know. I had to do it in March.

I can't even begin to imagine how tough this was

My son's college has closed due to two students testing positive...including DS.

My son is autistic and struggles with things like social distancing.

I know for a fact that his teacher had a lot of contact with him in the days prior to him getting symptoms .

I will be so upset if she gets this virus.

I feel like teachers have been thrown to the wolves.

As for work...my son has already recovered from COVID and he will be online Monday morning as will be his teacher.

I expect her to be paid no matter where she works from,

It has been argued on here that is is vital for the economy for the 8% of working adults with children of primary age to keep schools open.
In doing so, they've put the hospitality/beauty/other industries at huge risk of going under.
How do many parents repay that bonus? Hosting play-dates and sleepovers because schools are open so what does it matter?
I would be REALLY pissed off if my business was going to the wall for this.

@noblegiraffe You've been around on MN a long time. Gave me some sound advice a few years ago. My DD is now a teacher in Hull a place where the local council leaders have begged to be allowed some flexibility in schools because the covid infection rate is accelerating at a terrifying rate. More than half the DC in hull are at home either because of positive tests or isolating.
All the things you say about schools she has told me. She was exposed to a positive case and not allowed to isolate.
I wondered if you had an idea of how to word a letter to my MP?