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?

Universities didn't close either, did they? They went instantly online. Ds didn't have a single missed seminar from March to June.

@CallmeAngelina

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.

This is worth repeating.

A couple of families had a sleep over at half term which led to an outbreak in a local school.

12 here. Tier 1 prior to lockdown. As of tomorrow we have two year groups out including my son's because of staff shortages.

I've spent the weekend recording video lessons, producing resources and setting remote learning work on multiple platforms. This week I'll be juggling remote learning for two year groups plus students in other year groups who are isolating due to being close contacts or having symptoms and awaiting testing and teaching lessons in school to students who are in and trying to supervise my reluctant 13 year olds engagement with his home learning.

Trust me I'd prefer school open safely than this chaos especially having worked so hard with my classes for the last 11 weeks to get them on track and achieving well after a long break and being in zones and very different circumstances than usual.

I'm another who wouldn't mind being furloughed but we can't be because somehow we are social services, police, food providers and domestic violence shelters amongst other things including providers of education so we can never truly close. Makes you wonder how society survives the summer holidays

7 for me. But number 6 is basically all day every day!

Teachers are gonna bloody love the story gracing the front page of the Telegraph

Hopefully this makes it readable.

The gist is isolation to be reduced, but contacts of positive tests will be asked to test daily but allowed to go about daily business in the meantime.

Now, put that in the context of Joe in yr8 who tests positive and has 30 contacts at school. How the fuck does that work?

Or Mrs Jones the Maths teacher who tests positive and Ms Brown, Mr Pink, Dr Mustard and Prof Plum are all close contacts at the same school as well as the whole of Yr8. Miss Grey is clinically vulnerable and pretty distressed by this.

Or kid in Yr9 has a parent who tests positive but said kid and younger brother both turn up at school as normal as long as they are booked in for test at 4.30pm....

This one will be interesting to see how they decide this pans out.

Schools will probably just have an exemption on the testing requirement....

My score is 9. Thanks for fighting the good fight, noblegiraffe. It is appreciated by many of us.

I have just received a response to the email I sent to my MP in July. It was rubbish so I will try again.

I scored 11 on your quiz noble. Medium sized secondary in a tier 1 area (I'm not convinced it'll still be tier 1 when this lockdown ends).

My MP was pretty crap when I wrote to him. I may have explained to several students who were moaning about covid measures in school being ineffective that their MP would be the person to write to. I think some of the more articulate/passionate ones actually did.

It's taken this long to drum into students and dp that they must isolate.

It's game over if this new isolation thing goes out esp before the testing is in place.

Game over

Noble, I support your posts even more as DS 14 has tested positive today and he can only have contracted it at school in my opinion. The school is full of this - he was going into his 4th period of SI since Sept due to weekly cases in Y10 alone.

My MP also useless when I raised my concerns. I got an email back saying something like "I received your emailing calling for closure of schools" which was categorically NOT what I said in my email. Then told me Anne Longfield had said that in-school transmission was rare and that schools should stay open because 71% of children were pleased to be back at school and wanted them open.

Totally missed my point that we ALL want them open, but safely for all concerned. I did reply making that explicitly clear again asking what he would do to ensure safety in schools and got no further reply.

I saw that on BBC this morning red. How on earth is anyone meant to get to a test centre every day??

@MrsHerculePoirot

My MP also useless when I raised my concerns. I got an email back saying something like "I received your emailing calling for closure of schools" which was categorically NOT what I said in my email. Then told me Anne Longfield had said that in-school transmission was rare and that schools should stay open because 71% of children were pleased to be back at school and wanted them open.

Totally missed my point that we ALL want them open, but safely for all concerned. I did reply making that explicitly clear again asking what he would do to ensure safety in schools and got no further reply.

The level of gaslighting from MPs over this matter is appalling. The fact that so many of you have written saying they want schools open and what can be done to achieve that, only to receive replies that infer the blanket closing of schools is being called for. This is incompetency at best and a very worrying agenda at worst.

@RedToothBrush

Teachers are gonna bloody love the story gracing the front page of the Telegraph

Hopefully this makes it readable.

The gist is isolation to be reduced, but contacts of positive tests will be asked to test daily but allowed to go about daily business in the meantime.

Now, put that in the context of Joe in yr8 who tests positive and has 30 contacts at school. How the fuck does that work?

Or Mrs Jones the Maths teacher who tests positive and Ms Brown, Mr Pink, Dr Mustard and Prof Plum are all close contacts at the same school as well as the whole of Yr8. Miss Grey is clinically vulnerable and pretty distressed by this.

Or kid in Yr9 has a parent who tests positive but said kid and younger brother both turn up at school as normal as long as they are booked in for test at 4.30pm....

This one will be interesting to see how they decide this pans out.

Do they have the testing capacity for this? There have been days when my school has had close to 1,000 students off isolating. If all of these needed testing instead, is that even doable? And if we can do it for one school, can we really multiply that up all around the country?

Or are they going to say that Covid behaves differently in schools again?

I'm quite scared by this. I can see the possibilities, but I just don't trust this fuck up government to do this properly.

@noblegiraffe
Why would a nurse on a covid ward think that having concerns about unmitigated covid spread in secondary schools is a sign of insanity rather than sanity?
Either because they aren’t really a nurse on a COVID ward at all, or they’ve been brainwashed to believe what the Government are spouting about schools being safe.

not whining about wanting the furloughed

I don't think any teacher on here has said they want to be furloughed, much less "whined".

deploying our efforts into giving the best encouragement to children who are need us to be calm adults, not panicking whingers who are promulgating and feeding an anxiety

Again, no panicking whingers here as far as I can see. Just trying to get people to see the reality of what schools are like whilst simultaneously doing our jobs.

Not our experience in the slightest. Can't remember everything on the list but dd's year has been closed once as there wasn't enough teaching staff due to them isolating and phe has just closed her whole year due to there being 8 cases in it (secondary)

@RedToothBrush
I’m speechless by that report, absolutely and utterly speechless🤬

Ds' school is closed from today for a fortnight due to a small number of cases amongst staff and pupils. They're introducing a 2 week circuit break to prevent a further spread.

This is a portion of the letter:

"We regret that this is the case and we appreciate that this news will be concerning and will cause logistical difficulties for some families. However, we can assure you that this action is being taken to safeguard the wellbeing of students, staff, other users of the school and their families. Some members of our school community are particularly vulnerable due to medical conditions and we feel compelled to take what action we can, to try to minimise the risk to them."

Luckily we're both working from home and dp has taken leave he was owed so will be home teaching them. Although for working/ parents with other commitments this is will be a nightmare.

@Chailatte20

Ds' school is closed from today for a fortnight due to a small number of cases amongst staff and pupils. They're introducing a 2 week circuit break to prevent a further spread.

This is a portion of the letter:

"We regret that this is the case and we appreciate that this news will be concerning and will cause logistical difficulties for some families. However, we can assure you that this action is being taken to safeguard the wellbeing of students, staff, other users of the school and their families. Some members of our school community are particularly vulnerable due to medical conditions and we feel compelled to take what action we can, to try to minimise the risk to them."

Luckily we're both working from home and dp has taken leave he was owed so will be home teaching them. Although for working/ parents with other commitments this is will be a nightmare.

Must be hard for many working parents but the school clearly are putting the health and safety of the community first and taking decisive action.

I agree with them particularly since nobody is wearing PPE in school it would have spread like wild fire. I know it's a bit of an inconvenience but the consequences of not taking any action would have been worse.

susan you really have to stop this say they are teachers malarkey.

What/who do you think posters really are then?

The furloughed conversation came up because other (non teacher) posters keep suggesting teachers can/should be furloughed. A few teachers ahve said 'bring it on of you really want us to do no work'. It ahs never been suggested in the first place by teachers.

Tbh, I am horrified by your attitude to the one staff member in your school (that you know of) who ahs tested positive : you write as if they deserve it because they promote mask wearing.

Every time you post it is so sneering and deeply unpleasant that it makes me wonder what you are like as both a colleague and a teacher, with your refusal to accept covid is a real issue, and your nastiness about Mental health. I think most posters see right through you.

You are also the poster who once famously said you would refuse to wear a mask in school!