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?

@EndoplasmicReticulum

The Government are STILL saying schools are safe. They're saying it here too - note their statement on another thread.

Yup, this is what my local MP says: www.expressandstar.com/news/education/2020/11/26/schools-are-safe-places-say-leaders/

IRL my school closed as we didn’t have enough staff to safely open. We area still operating on an informal rota system asking certain year groups to stay home depending on staffing.

It’s awful.

They can say it all they want but many parents will have had kids home isolating and won't believe it.

I will repeat, round Christmas, there is a private/ state school divide. The better of can isolate and see elderly family, the rest of us can't and may risk their lives if we do. Unacceptable divide in rights which seems utterly ignored by government.

What did dfE say on mums net? I missed that.

Really hope I get to the end of term with my class. They've tried so hard to adapt to the stupid guidance and deserve to do their little nativity (filmed for parents), Christmas lunch, fun crafts etc. I'll be gutted if I have to isolate.

Ok, here's another potential email to be sending your MP. I've sent a slightly different one because I'm the most risky one in my family as a secondary teacher. I've bolded some bits you might need to amend.

Dear X

I am writing to you urgently because of the government's nonsensical policy around Christmas.

I have children in in a secondary/primary school which has had several cases of covid recently, including in their classes, therefore given the lack of mitigation measures in schools, I consider them to be at high risk of catching it. We know from the ONS data that secondary school pupils are the most infected subset of the population and that transmission in schools is rising.

We are not planning on seeing elderly relatives over the 5 day Christmas relaxation period because of this risk. Christmas falls one week after schools close and this would not be enough time from having been in school for the risk to be low enough to avoid spreading it to them.

We had been planning on waiting two weeks from the end of term and visiting them then, however, with the tiers of restrictions, it looks like this will not be allowed.

We are faced with the choice of seeing elderly relatives for Christmas at a time when we are more at risk of giving them covid, or not seeing them at all.

It seems absolutely baffling that the government would enact a policy that would encourage families with children to get together at a time when there is more risk of spread from children to old people, by banning this contact when there is less risk.

The obvious solution would be to allow schools to close a week early, or move online a week early, giving a clear two weeks 'quarantine' before Christmas day and therefore much less risk of the infection rates in schools spreading to elderly relatives, however the DfE have already stopped schools from doing this. We know that closing schools reduces the infection rate in school children from looking at the ONS random sampling data where there is a clear dip over half term.

Why is the government ignoring the obvious risks associated with their Christmas policy and blocking attempts to mitigate them? Please can you ask your colleagues at the DfE whether they accept the responsibility for the additional deaths this will cause?

I look forward to your response.

www.writetothem.com/ use this to write to your MP as they track whether you get a response.

This is the response to a recent petition

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/550846?reveal_response=yes

Great lines here

For the vast majority of young people, the benefits of being in the classroom far outweigh the low risk from COVID-19.

But not for kids who will lose their parents / beloved teachers due to the government's bonkers treatment of schools

Time out of school or college is detrimental for children’s and young people’s cognitive and academic development, particularly for disadvantaged children and young people.

So why not resource schools so they can stay open more safely and more consistently?

We have taken a national decision to prioritise education all hot air & no funding

Schools and colleges have implemented a range of [inadequate and unfunded] protective measures to minimise risk of transmission.

extra adjectives mine

Schools and colleges must ensure they understand the NHS Test and Trace process. and then must follow the ridiculous advice from your phone line that ignores scientific good sense

Children and young people who live with someone who is clinically extremely vulnerable, but who are not clinically extremely vulnerable themselves, should still attend education Are you going to hold yourselves legally responsible for paying compensation to families for this?

There is an Education Committee. Can anyone advise me on this? I was told by an MP to whom I wrote previously that MPs can't get involved in correspondence from someone who isn't a consitiuent. But can we write to the Education Committee directly, specifically about Education? As they just aren't dealing with the issues that concern us? (e.g. risks to kids are generally low, we know that, but it is transmission and risks to everyone else, that will affect us and also, very much them, even if indirectly, through the consequences). They seem to be missing that bit and maybe we need to point it out to them en masse?

Robert Halfon is Chair of the Education Select Committee (Cons MP for Harlow).

Sorry, posted too soon. I think you could write to him in that capacity, or copy him in on correspondence with your own MP.

When my MP replied they asked if I had any specific concerns that they could raise with the DfE which is why that bit is in my email.

@Bluewavescrashing

DfE statement below .

We are aware of some media reports last week regarding the transmission of Covid in schools and understand this has the potential to raise some concern."

"Last week, SAGE (the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies) published papers relating to the latest evidence of incidence and transmission of coronavirus in schools."

"The science is clear that children and young people are typically at very low risk from Covid-19 The disease is much less severe for children, even if they do catch coronavirus. And staff are not at higher risk than those working in other sectors."

"Furthermore, the papers say there is no clear or conclusive evidence that schools are playing a causal role in transmission and the spread of Covid-19."

“This is probably because education settings are rigorously enforcing all the mitigations – handwashing, mask wearing, bubbles, isolation of staff and pupils with symptoms etc.”

"The latest weekly figures show that 99% of schools are open and that only 0.2% of pupils are isolating at home with a confirmed Covid-19 case."

"As a department, we have ensured that all schools continue to operate with strict safety measures in place to minimise the risk of infection."

"You can read more about transmission in schools here."

When anyone with half a brain could look at the random sampling graphs and see the drop in transmission over the half term period - ergo in school = higher Covid transmission rates for secondary school cohorts.

I'm going to write to my MP again this weekend using that 1984 style Govt statement.

I told her previously I was concerned about schools. Now that my son and two of his classmates currently have Covid (10%) in the latest of a long line at school, I'd like to ask her how this happened if the number of cases are so small and transmission rates are so low.

And as Sweden found, it's hard to prove what you are determined not to find....

www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/how-sweden-wasted-rare-opportunity-study-coronavirus-schools
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/COVID-19-schools-transmission-August%25202020.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjOuZvshabtAhWFUhUIHQ_-BfgQFjAGegQIFxAB&usg=AOvVaw0-Hy5JAE_zGOO_upscjCqI&cshid=1606594242979" rel="nofollow" target="blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/COVID-19-schools-transmission-August%25202020.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjOuZvshabtAhWFUhUIHQ-BfgQFjAGegQIFxAB&usg=AOvVaw0-Hy5JAE_zGOO_upscjCqI&cshid=1606594242979
And yet they still managed to show that secondary teachers had a massively increased rate of infection when face to face teaching:
www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.13.20211359v2

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/independent-sage-coronavirus-infection-schools-b1762906.html

Good article in the Independent - at least the photo shows kids sitting right next to each other - but why did they pick a school that wears facemasks in the classroom? Given DfE guidance, this certainly isn't the norm in England (is it now the norm in Scotland? Did I miss that? It says the photo is of a Scottish school).

Still - good article. From the article:

Professor Stephen Reicher of the University of St Andrews, of Independent Sage, said: “In the summer, the government effectively abandoned schools, requiring them to be safe but without providing the support or the resources to make this possible.

“As a result, far too many of our children are left in crowded, badly ventilated classrooms; infections have increased 50-fold since September; one in five students are off school; and all this is now putting the whole community at risk.

Ah look. This committee has put out a call for evidence

committees.parliament.uk/work/202/the-impact-of-covid19-on-education-and-childrens-services/

The impact of COVID-19 on education and children’s services
Inquiry
The inquiry will look at how the outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting all aspects of the education sector and children’s social care system and will scrutinise how the Department for Education is dealing with the situation.

It will examine both short term impacts, such as the effects of school closures and exam cancellations, as well as longer-term implications particularly for the most vulnerable children.

This inquiry is currently accepting evidence

The committee wants to hear your views. We welcome submissions from anyone with answers to the questions in the call for evidence. You can submit evidence until Sunday 20 December 2020.

You can read the call for evidence before replying.

This could be one for @noblegiraffenoble maybe?

Interesting that they are calling for evidence now , after spending three months making educational evidence and theory up...and allowing CMOs to state opinion as scientific fact.

Ah. I was looking up the select committees myself just now. I think the call for evidence is ahem not all that well publicised and this may well have been on that website for quite some time.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/institute-of-global-health-innovation/imperialreact11r7interim.pdf

In the most recent round 7a data compared with round 6b, there was suggestion of an increase in weighted prevalence in participants aged 5 to 12 years and those aged 13 to 17 years, i.e. among school-aged children, but a decline in all adult age groups (Table 3b, Figure 8). Differences in prevalence between ages at the national level are supported by multivariable logistic regression (Table 5, Figure 9).

What a difference 2 weeks makes.

I thought it was worth bumping this evidence thread and ask the question - why now?

Why NOW have the government finally admitted that Covid is spreading in schools - especially when they have worked so hard to deny that, and fudged data to prove it didn't?
Why now?

It's all so frustrating, a smooth on line and blended learning situation could be in place.

The problem with enquiries and reports is they take too long!!

[quote FriedPeach]@WhyNotMe40

The government have not said that COVID is spreading in schools- they have said that there is increasing incidence in secondary DC.

That does not show that any of them caught the virus in school nor that they are transmitting it to others.[/quote]
This graph suggests that it's awfully risky to be in a school setting right now.

[quote FriedPeach]@WhyNotMe40

The government have not said that COVID is spreading in schools- they have said that there is increasing incidence in secondary DC.

That does not show that any of them caught the virus in school nor that they are transmitting it to others.[/quote]
Yes you are correct - there is no outright admission - but in politician weasel words they have admitted it. They are finally acknowledging the rise in secondary school pupils more than any other age group.
Of course yes, they could be catching it in the fresh air on their walk to school, or when masked up in Tesco's, and not when they are sat shoulder to shoulder in over crowded poorly ventilated classrooms for hours at a time with no masks.....