When will schools get back to normal?

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My DC have had multiple episodes of self isolating between them because of cases in their classes. I'm not complaining as I understand the need for this and schools have been amazing with home learning. But wondering when self isolating at schools will be a thing of the past?

www.lbc.co.uk/news/covid-vaccinations-begin-in-moscow-for-nurses-and-teachers/

Some places are treating teachers as a priority group (I think the US too).

The easy answer is never if staff continue to get ill at the current rate. As by next spring there won't be enough healthy teachers left. Long term issues are real and mean many staff won't come back full time. I don't think anyone will believe me. Until Easter when schools are running part time due to retirement and lack of staff.

I thought they were vaccinating everyone eventually?

@TrustTheGeneGenie don't know if it's unusual. We have 27 positive staff so I suppose statistics say we will have some seriously ill. There are 4 more in hospital. No one has been anywhere but school. We have all kept 2m apart. From each other, but impossible from students as rooms not big enough and corridors and stairs packed as usual. But an outbreak in 6th form seems to have been the start of this. It is so so sad.

Given that exams are back on next year I think much sooner that lots of you think.

Why not? If we achieve a good degree of herd immunity through vaccination then cases should be rare(r) and isolating would prevent outbreaks taking hold.

I think spring / Easter 2022 too.
Things will get better slowly.

@TrustTheGeneGenie across the schools I still have contact with from DP and I being teachers of nearly 20 years each, we know several who have been in ICU and 2 deaths in teachers. I have current colleagues now with complications including one still on oxygen months after their hospital stay. We both have colleagues on long term sick now and none of these are especially vulnerable.

@Aworldofmyown exams are on in England (not all of them in other parts of the UK) but with a large range of mitigations apparently coming into play to account for the fact that the students have missed so much.

August/September 2021 at the earliest I imagine.

@Aragog

Interestingly a lot of the women teachers who got it at my school were aged late 30s to their 50s. We've caught it more readily than the younger staff. And several of us in this bracket are struggling afterwards with fatigue, etc. Finding it very hard to bounce back from.

Do you know that the younger teachers didn’t catch it? Were they tested?

Or is there the possibility they caught it too and were just more likely to be asymptomatic?

We haven't had any SI, only once in the other year group. So school here is pretty much normal except for mask wearing and sd. I really hope it stays this way until everyone is vaccinated.

@pastandpresent ours was like that 3 weeks ago 😞

@mumsneedwine, I know. It could change so suddenly, especially the winter is here. There were no cases in my town for while, now cases are increasing.

I don't understand why teachers aren't higher on the priority list. I had thought though that once the over 50s and the CV had been vaccinated we would be able to start getting back to normal.

@TrustTheGeneGenie
I’m not a teacher but know that in our main large secondary school there were 40 positive cases amongst teachers of which many were in hospital for a day or 2, but 3 were in the ICU (all 3 were under 40 years old.) Thankfully no deaths, however only a handful of the teachers who were positive are back at work and rest are off long term still not fit to return.
We are in Yorkshire and Humber though and cases are very high here.

Putting teachers on the vaccine list would be an admittance that they are at more risk of covid and they have released fiddled figures to avoid admitting this so are clearly committed to that lie.

Oh and we were sent a letter explaining this and told there would be a partial closure for 3 weeks for years 7-9 due to staffing issues.

Kind of hope things will be close to normal for autumn term next year.

@noblegiraffe

Putting teachers on the vaccine list would be an admittance that they are at more risk of covid and they have released fiddled figures to avoid admitting this so are clearly committed to that lie.

In my opinion as a parent with 3 kids in different school I think teachers, especially secondary school teachers should be vaccinated as priority.

We've got a range of ages who've had covid amongst staff. The age seems to have no correlation with the severity in my tiny sample size of approx 15.

We've had mid 30s men in hospital and late 50s woman with other health issues barely touched by it. The mid 30s staff with young kids at home have had the worst recoveries.

[quote mumsneedwine]@Waxonwaxoff0 phew. I'm very reassured. I'll make sure I pass that on to my 3 colleagues in ICU. [/quote]

I really don't think people understand schools are not Covid secure in the same way other places are.

Schools need teachers.

Even if teachers aren’t dying (which we don’t know because that data isn’t being published), we should want to avoid them getting infected and having to take time off work, in many cases several weeks, and in some cases, months. The DfE has stopped publishing teacher absence data during this second lockdown, presumably to cover up that impact.

It is sad to see that this is happening. So many parents want their children in school, for children's sake, as well as to be able to go to work. That means teacher should be one of the priority to be vaccinated. I hope the gov see sense.

There are some things about school that I don't want to go back to normal. Love not having parents in the building, loved parents evening via Teams or phones, love not having to do a performance (bah humbug!).

I am just astounded by some of the posts on here that don’t seem to think teachers matter.
I’m the oldest in my school to have caught it and I’m suffering the most / longest up to now.
I really hope they at least continue to
give teachers this tiny morsel of measures to keep them safer as they give nothing else.
A primary school close to me had a teaching assistant die in her 50’s would she just be damage collateral