Government denial over schools issues will cause deaths this Christmas

[noblegiraffe]

I just can't get my head around how utterly crazy the government Christmas policy is.

Secondary school kids are the most infected subset of the population with it now estimated that more than 1 in 50 of them are positive. As they are children, most of them will never be tested as they either are asymptomatic, or will display different symptoms to the main three that are required to trigger a test (councils are overruling this in some parts of England and asking parents to use a more sensible list of symptoms).

Schools mostly break up on 18th December, 5 days before the Christmas relaxation period begins and people start taking advantage of this to mix with other households indoors, in poorly ventilated small rooms, which as scientists warn, is a terrible idea. twitter.com/devisridhar/status/1331931594400149506?s=21

Closing schools a week earlier (or moving online) would give 2 weeks out of school before Christmas day, which would reduce the infection rate in school children significantly (we saw a dip in the infection rate just in one week over half term) and make it safer for them to mix with other households, particularly if people took advantage of those two weeks to significantly reduce their contacts and other risks.

Some schools took it upon themselves to protect their own communities by changing the term dates to close a week earlier. The DfE has overruled this and forced them to stay open.
schoolsweek.co.uk/overruled-dfes-sweeping-coronavirus-powers-force-trust-into-early-christmas-holiday-u-turn/

Because of the tier system, if families don't get together at Christmas during the relaxation period, when their children pose a much higher risk, they will not be able to see their families properly for Christmas at all. Essentially Christmas is being funnelled into a time period which is insanely risky due to it coming shortly after children mixing freely in unsafe schools with significant numbers of undiscovered infections.

I know the DfE have been reading this board. I understand why you want schools open, but lying to people about the risks as you have is dangerous and immoral. Transparency is needed so that people can make their own informed risk assessments, not propaganda about 'safe schools' and 'saving Christmas'.

Our kids schools did brilliantly over lockdown.

Continued with new learning also.

As a parent it was tough helping them with it, but educationally they probably didn't suffer as much as many children in other schools.

The isolation and lack of social interaction was the bigger problem

[quote monkeytennis97]@PrivateD00r I don't even know what Twinkl is tbh but I did recorded and live lessons during lockdown 1 (am a secondary school teacher).[/quote]
I think its more of a primary school thing, my secondary school dc didn't get that. Instead, they got chapters of textbooks with no explanation or context. Your provision sounds fabulous!

But you are a teacher giraffe

My child wouldn’t have suffered educationally over lockdown either, but I don’t deny many, many did.

I’m secondary. Our provision wasn’t brilliant, to be honest, and I wasn’t in favour of online learning (mostly because I am fat and old and am reminded of this when I go on Teams ) but I do think we could have done more.

It is done now, though.

@Welcometonowhere

But you are a teacher giraffe

My child wouldn’t have suffered educationally over lockdown either, but I don’t deny many, many did.

It wasn’t me doing it for the first bit of lockdown and my non-teacher DH also found it fine.

Whatever schools offered, some parents complained and some parents thought it was ok. There was no winning on that one.

@MarshaBradyo

Private also here idea going down like a lead balloon.

Not really enough posts to describe it as a lead balloon, Marsha? Hardly a hot thread.

I think some did complain for the sake of complaining, but there were legitimate complaints too.

I wouldn’t have been thrilled if my child had got what our school provided, tbh.

No that bad posted this afternoon

Two of the same I believe saying same thing. No one in support.

In fact every time someone posts a close the schools petition it’s pages of no go away.

@MarshaBradyo

No that bad posted this afternoon

Two of the same I believe saying same thing. No one in support.

Oh I judge threads by my standards

For me, what the school provided was very good.

But with a then 5 year old and 8 year old it was a really hard juggling act.

They needed lots of our support and it was difficult when we were both working.

I used to get annoyed with everyone on Furlough bragging about how much fun they were having and we were stuck inside constantly either working or doing schoolwork.

We even had to start it on weekends if it was up so we could do all of it whilst working.

I suspect we did a lot more than many of the families who were having a great time though.......

Thank you for this thread. Due to the ridiculous government rules Christmas will be a disaster this year. I only hope that they have huge volumes of tests available because everyone is going to be wanting them.

Haha well two sides going on not budging will do that

@MarshaBradyo

In fact every time someone posts a close the schools petition it’s pages of no go away.

And that goes for the teachers posting on them as well.

What bothers teachers is not the narrative that 'schools must stay open' it is the piss poor guidance, lack of understanding and any funding that would make it possible in a meaningful way.

The current DfE guidance is to utilise all staff and put them in front of classes including NQTs. (no rotas, etc.) and they even want schools to keep more children in classes (no SI)

This is not a solution for excellent or even good teaching.

Although there is talk of a Covid fund for supply staff but if this takes that same length of time that the laptops did (are taking) it will arrive after the vaccine.

And lets not go into the shit pit that is the GCSEs and A levels.

@Covidnomore

No because the most cases are now in education

Link to data please?

And all were caught in school.

We are not yet out of lockdown so we have yet to see full impact of lockdown but cases are coming down nicely.

So whilst I don't disagree that there are a considerable amount of cases in education, inhabe not yet seen the data that most cases are in education.

Other than the ONS graphs linked above numerous times showing the affected age groups clearly?

And any cases caught now will be in work or school or household.

There is literally no where else to catch it that's as high risk as those places.

"So you genuinely weren't allowed to plan your home learning beyond the twinkl work sheets? Seriously?"

Ultimately, it came down to individual Head Teachers (poor devils).
Individual teachers had no say in it. So, I could have gone to my HT and did to suggest doing a, b and c and be told, "no, that's not appropriate for our cohort." And you can't have some year groups with tech-savvy staff sending out whizzy stuff and others your Twinkl sheets. And the Heads have to consider the needs of every family, not just the wealthy ones with an educated SAHP to supervise and support Home Learning with a device each for all the kids.

My school was offering live lessons online for all classes who have been sent home to self isolate. It lasted 2 days before they have pulled it because they need the staff members who were delivering it to cover classes in school because we have so many staff off ill.

If they closed to students the week before Xmas you would lose a maximum of 3 days learning. The last 2 days are always colouring and crap anyway! Staff could still be in school delivering the lessons live to students at home. ICT access should not be an issue, the government had months to provide funding to get that sorted.

Similar here angelina although it was department based, and I work in a department where everyone has a nervous breakdown if you use the wrong colour pen to annotate a kids work

"ICT access should not be an issue, the government had months to provide funding to get that sorted."

Hahahahahahaha!

cases are coming down nicely.

Not in secondary schools they aren’t. The only place where the infection rate is increasing.

Also increasing (a separate dataset) is the number of schools hit by covid (73% of secondaries last week) and the number of pupils sent home to isolate (0.9 million).

I wonder if the two increases are linked in any way?

If the school absences and closures continue at the same rate, schools won’t make it to Christmas anyway.

It’s too general to put it like that, though, giraffe

Some won’t make it to Christmas.

Some will. We shouldn’t close all on the basis that some won’t.

Yes I think many people don't realise that it was down to the Headteachers what provision was given in lockdown 1. I know of some schools where the Heads wouldn't allow live or pre recorded lessons as it did not fit in with safeguarding or other pre Covid written policies so ultimately it was remote work set by email only. I know there are some Heads still not allowing live or prerecorded lessons even now for isolating classes.

Some will. We shouldn’t close all on the basis that some won’t.

That’s not the argument being made. The argument for closing schools early is to mitigate the impact of the government’s terrible Christmas policy.

The ever increasing fuckedness of secondary schools is down to another terrible government policy of denying there’s an issue in schools.

If schools weren’t fucked, then there’d be no need to shut them early.

I'm pulling my son out of school at the end of next week.

I'm a secondary teacher and I was a bit embarrassed by the work we were told to set. We had absolutely no say - we were not allowed to cover new content, and it could not be paper based due to lack of resources in some homes, AND it had to be doable on a phone. So decisions were made at SLT then departmental level.
However for every class I emailed out "supporting" YouTube links, oak Academy lessons, knowledge organisers, BBC Bitesize links etc, and was checking my email every hour every weekday (even though I only work 2 days a week) in school hours. And this was around home schooling my 8yo and 6yo and trying to contain my loose cannon whirlwind 3yo. - there is no way I could have done live lessons, but I did my best.