Is anyone delaying the return to school in January?

[BlackLambAndGreyFalcoln]

I've seen a lot of posts about people saying that they are taking dc out of school a week early to isolate for 2 weeks before seeing family at Christmas. On the flip side is anyone planning to delay the return to school in January because of the Christmas indoor household mixing?

Personally, we are not mixing households indoors at Christmas. The virus isn't going to take Christmas off and it seems to spreads more in indoor settings where people know each other well and are lax about social distancing. However as this has been legally allowed I recognise that other households may choose to mix indoors at Christmas.

However it seems absolute madness to me that this Christmas bubble period ends on 27 December and one week later on 4 January we are expected to send our DC back to school where there is no social distancing and poor ventilation with classmates who may have mixed households indoors just a week ago and therefore may have been more exposed to Covid. Am I missing something here?

DH is technically ECV and it seems that the safest thing to do would be to keep DD out of school for the extra week in January. However, she absolutely loves school and definitely struggled in lockdown. She had 3 years 100% attendance prior to lockdown so this definitely isn't something I'd consider lightly, but it just seems safer to me.

Anyone else thinking likewise?

I'm glad I'm not the only one considering this! I'm fortunate that DH and I work from home so we can accommodate DD to home school that week (we would use oak national academy and other resources rather than expecting teachers to set work as it would be our choice to keep her at home). Even if the bubble burst in that week at least we wouldn't have been exposed and we wouldn't have to isolate DD even if she then couldn't go to school for a further 2 weeks.

@NuttyinNotts how difficult was it to persuade the school?

Our local secondary school has given the parents the option of online live lessons for the last week of term. My DS will be working from home. I’m hoping they will do this in January.

They agreed straight away. But they know our situation pretty well and I'd written quite a long letter explaining why I felt that week was just a risk too far for us.

No way. I need to work so it wouldn't even be possible.

I would prefer to do this but I don't think OH will let me

Thanks @NuttyinNotts. I'm torn between doing the right thing and them refusing or just lying.

No.

No. We aren’t mixing over Xmas & I fully expect another lockdown in jan. I’d like to keep my kids in school as much as poss.

Ds's dr has just been on the phone saying they don't think he should go back until the end of January.

We aren’t vulnerable and aren’t mixing over Christmas but I really can’t afford to be ill and take time off so it has crossed my mind to delay the return to school. However I don’t really want the kids to miss school so I probably won’t. We are tier 3 but half of DS primary class are still having sleepovers and play dates so the risk probably won’t be much greater after the holidays to be honest.