A safe space for parents and teachers who want schools fully open.

[Billie18]

What it says. Children have already been impacted by prolonged school closures, individual isolation, inadequate teaching, isolation from peers and this will have impacted on their education, psychological and social development and mental and physical health. It is concerning for the majority of parents that there is a push for schools to close.

Please no derailment. This is an important issue that will affect a whole generation. There are numerous threads here about enforcing restrictions and limiting access to schools so please discuss concerns about these issues elsewhere.

I'm glad schools are open.
This thread makes me feel very threatened that many people want schools to shut again & stay shut.

Who has said they want schools to be shut ?

They want schools to be able to operate safely.

At the moment schools are not able to do that but schools are limping on. If they close completely for the odd moment period of time it is because there are too many staff members either ill or self-isolating to be able to stay open.

It’s a constant juggling act and many teachers / headteachers will suffer the emotional after effects when this is over.

FFS. Why do only healthy children matter? What about vulnerable children? What about the adults? Can you answer me this, OP. Given that we know that type 1 diabetics are particularly vulnerable to this virus, and you want both sick staff and students to remain in school, where does my type 1 child stand in all that? What about the psychological impact of that on him? What about his education? Or does he not matter?

You want your safe space by making ours more deadly. You are selfish, entitled, dangerous and wrong.

I think the main problem is so many people who dont work in schools think their opinion is more valid than all the people that do. Schools are not safe atm. The only reason it is not more of a tragedy is children as affected. And luckily there has been a decade of forcing out expensive, older teachers too.

In what way tboo?

I really don't know why the OP has started this thread as if she feels she is somewhat outnumbered. Schools are open. As the DfE keeps repeating : 99% of schools are open.

The word 'open' is certainly open to interpretation but I don't know where this OP senses this threat from!

I work in a school and want a need them open.
I would like a safe space where

Half of my colleagues have already been infected. Almost all report fatigue and brain fog to done extent making our lessons worse and unable to keep up with marking etc.
Some kids have had to isolate over 4 times already. One lost his mum after taking covid home.

All I would like to see

Mass testing in schools at least in tier 3 areas and for outbreaks of a certain level e.g 10 in a fortnight.

Some honesty and acknowledgement of the scale of the problem e.g publishing figures of how many children and staff are being infected.

Maybe school staff are added to jab priority list since they are a national priority apparently.

@Billie18 but..... We are in a global pandemic.

Schools are open. Some groups (including a few year groups due to the number of cases) are isolating as they are legally required to. We currently have multiple cases in multiple year groups, years 7 to 13. One spent the weekend in hospital (now our third student in hospital). We have cases appearing whilst they are quarantined, so sending close contacts is the correct, and legal, thing to do. We also have multiple staff out, some now long term sick due to complications and hospitalisation.

What are we supposed to do? I have lost a family member to this. I have a close family member with significant complications. I have colleagues, students and their parents hospitalised and we have a counsellor and bereavement counsellor (we have students who have lost close family members, including parents) coming to school to help students with their mental health, caused by so much uncertainty.

Please, in your infinity wisdom, tell us what we are supposed to do.

I hope you don't see this as a derailment OP (bit of course despite your homily in the opening post, you must know you cannot control how a thread turns out)

But I think it is important to point out that MN is not (and never has been) a "safe space". It is a large, open site where anyone in the world can post. I've seen the 'safe' language used a few tImes recently and I think it is important that people realise that it is a concept that just doesn't exist on MN.

There are plenty of other sites which are considerably 'safer' if that is the sort of place that you seek

Schools are open. Those with Covid and those who are likely to have caught Covid are sent home.
I don’t know what you want OP?
Ill people back in school? Those who could potentially make others ill back in school?
Weird thread.
Sounds like you want unsafe not safe.

Why would would anyone want schools to close?

I'm a strong supporters of schools remainignopen full time, but surely the best way to do that is to put in measures that keep staff and pupils safe?

I don't believe this government has done enough in high schools and there is a considerably amount of cases of Covid in secondary schools.

Lots of pupils are missing lots of schools, but a simple rule of wearing masks in the high school classroom would reduce the amount of airborne droplets.

It seems an absolute no brainer..........

I just don't get it, I really don't. I can't fathom those who shout they want to keep schools open, but then moan about the simplest of measures to do that.

Yes london, that is what she wants. Was more obvious on her previous thread.

Sadly, I think she may be instep with the DfE who I predict will considerably 'relax' self isolation rules in schools after Christmas, despite teenager cases still being on the rise. Ofsted and SAGE have told them bubbles are too big. I doubt the answer will be making smaller and safer bubbles.

@Billie18 I will ask my colleagues in hospital to get off their ICU beds and come straight in. Lazy bastards. Also the 3 who are on oxygen at home - I mean why can't they be in school. And as for the teachers isolating because they've had close contact, well I think I'll not pay them unless they come in and stand in front of 180 kids today. I mean, what could possibly go wrong.
Schools are trying to stay open. But staff are sick. You haven't given me a solution yet as to what happens then.

We have definitely noticed a drop in isolations in my school since sending home whole classes rather than the 2m rule. This, combined with masks in public areas, seems to be keeping cases limited and avoiding endemic spread in the school, which is what we seemed to have before.

I don't want to count my chickens, but it definitely seems from my school that sending home more initially means sending home less in total.

I'm very worried about any attempts to reverse this progress.

Schools are open-what are you talking about, OP?!

It always amazes me on Mumsnet how many people have 3000 teachers in hospital on ventilators, yet in the real world, this isn’t happening and you’re flogging a dead horse. I’m a teacher and I feel totally safe and totally happy to be at school.

redbrickwall within 3 miles of me, 2 members of school staff teams have died (different schools, one of which was forced to close to manage staff sickness) and 2 teachers (same school) are in intensive care. So whilst you may feel safe, it isn’t necessarily the same for everyone.

We all want schools open- many of us have children in school. We just want the most basic safety measures used.

And it doesn’t need to be ventilators - we have lots of people off with covid - teachers and pupils - and they might be okay and recover, but spread it to vulnerable people who don’t.

It’s about schools being the main drivers of infection for the community at large.

Pmsl at the hyperbole of 'safe space' for a thread on the Internet while op denies the unsafe spaces that are classrooms!

I want schools open, I just want them to be safe. I don't think we are implementing all the measures that we can to do that though.

Schools are open? I dont see anyone asking for them to close. Just to make them safer so they stay open to more pupils.
There are plenty of children with SEND on permanent part time time tables or without a school place at all for years on end due to the lack of specialist schools or funding. Maybe put some time into supporting vulnerable children access education.

I don't understand. I am just a parent, and want the school to be open. That's why the school has rules about sd, mask wearing, SI,etc, and it will help the school to keep opening. If you scrap all that and there's no rules, students may be ok even they get it but most are asymptomatic, but you may have no teachers left to teach. School will definitely close with no teachers to teach. I don't understand why some parent don't get this.

@tboo

I'm glad schools are open. This thread makes me feel very threatened that many people want schools to shut again & stay shut.

Yes me too. I suspect that the majority of parents and teachers want this too. There are a few very aggressive and vocal posters that are determined to spam and talk about children being denied access to school.

@Billie18, you are making no sense.
You want schools open. Numerous posters (teachers included) respond on your thread to say that yes, we do too. And yet you say you feel threatened that "the majority" of parents and teachers want them shut and to remain so.
Can you point us to even one poster who has said this?