Secondary schools are stuffed, GOVERNMENT ADMITS

[noblegiraffe]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55265098

Mass testing for secondary school pupils in worst affected areas.

I'm totally fu€#ed off. Another teacher here.

I've done nothing but work to avoid this frigging virus.

Was contact traced through work, a week ago,

Developed a cough today. Test tomorrow. Bang goes my Christmas.

But yeah, they sailed us down the river, but we knew that already.

@tartiflette

I've just noticed the Guardian are asking teachers to get in touch about what this term has been like.

[[https://www.theguardian.com/education/2020/dec/07/teachers-in-the-uk-coronavirus-what-has-this-term-been-like?CMP=Share]]iOSAppp_Other

Please everyone do!

Or maybe just link to some of these threads?

[quote Chestnutacorns123]@noblegiraffe please post the dataset then.

@CallmeAngelina why the head thud. I am interpreting the graphs a previous poster linked in from the Ons. I have 2 degrees, all in science and I am more than capable of interpreting a few graphs. What are your credentials? Or do you just like to disagree without using facts?[/quote]
Here you go www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc1086/age/datadownload.xlsx

Headline: "In the most recent week, the percentage of people testing positive has decreased in all age groups. Rates remain highest among secondary school-aged children " (that is Y7-11)

@RubyViolet

If kids refuse to test they should not be allowed back in school. The bigger picture of the school’s population is at risk here.

We tried to send a child with a hacking cough and temperature home on Monday. Parent wouldn't collect until 3.30. Told the head they don't believe in Covid so won't test. We asked them to keep him home. He's been in every day, and every day we keep him away from everyone else because the parents refuse to collect him or test him. We can't lock the doors to keep him out.

"@CallmeAngelina why the head thud."

Because we've been over this countless times in the last few months. It becomes very tiring, on top of everything else, having people constantly querying the experiences teachers are LIVING EVERY DAY in crowded classrooms up and down the UK.

@itsgettingweird was that not other educational settings (universities?), then healthcare and then teaching and education? If so, then without an exact definition of each category you can't reach that conclusion. I'm not saying that schools aren't a source of transmission far from it, they probably are. Any large organisation is likely to be a source of transmission as infection rate is likely related to be related to the number of social Interactions. Schools have many. My argument is that people are showing graphs but not thinking what the data means and if it can be explained differently.

Tbf Ange if you haven't been paying attention, the difference between the graph showing number of cases identified by testing people who apply for a test due to having symptoms being a totally fucking useless way of assessing the actual infection rate in kids who are often asymptomatic or don't present with the three main symptoms required to trigger a test may have passed you by.

The random sampling done by the ONS which picks up asymptomatic cases is a much better way of seeing what's going on in schools.

Universities pretty much eradicated cases within a month. By testing everyone and the asymptomatic isolating. V little f2f and what there is is socially distanced. Schools ? Nah, just Chuck 2,000 people into small spaces with minimal ventilation. What could possibly go wrong ?

Mrs Hamlet “We tried to send a child with a hacking cough and temperature home on Monday. Parent wouldn't collect until 3.30. Told the head they don't believe in Covid so won't test. We asked them to keep him home. He's been in every day, and every day we keep him away from everyone else because the parents refuse to collect him or test him. We can't lock the doors to keep him out. “

This is nuts. The DFE don’t even equip the schools to send home the kids that are most likely spreading. How is this safe for kids ? How is this even legal in the workplace???? Unions .... ????
It’s a huge scandal.

My argument is that people are showing graphs but not thinking what the data means and if it can be explained differently.

How about this one of infection rates making obvious the big dip in secondary school infection rates related to school closures at half term that doesn't affect other age groups?

(Whispers) You don't think this announcement was deliberately released just after the 'free day off for lazy teachers' announcement to try an hide it do you? Surely not.

@CallmeAngelina pretty certain I didn't say anything about it not being difficult for teachers at the moment. A front line job in a pandemic is definitely not great. I just disagree with the way the data is being interpreted.

@noblegiraffe As schools have remained open, in some ways it is not entirely surprising that the rate of infection hasn't changed in school age children. Children have continued to interact with no real social distancing. Most other sections of society have had their social interactions significantly reduced. In fact, surely this was the whole point of lockdown.

Can everything within the M25 be governed by the current lot and we have a new government for the rest of the country please?

@LolaSmiles

(Whispers) You don't think this announcement was deliberately released just after the 'free day off for lazy teachers' announcement to try an hide it do you? Surely not.

I think it was released today because anyone getting tested from tomorrow will cause families to have to isolate on Christmas day.

So no one will take up the testing. And then it will be the holidays and they can forget about schools until after the holidays.

They put the onus on heads to piss off parents with moving the INSET to the last day of term if they don't want to have to test and trace over Christmas. Now they're putting the onus on families to risk quarantine as their only measure. If they were serious about sorting the problem and saving lives, they'd switch to remote learning like Wales.

*No, not at all.

Private schools will have broken up before next week. They'll be off happily spreading it around in their second homes by tomorrow evening. Only the plebs' offspring in North/East London are going to have their Christmases ruined*
@MitziK
Gove's daughter attends a London state school, for one.

As schools have remained open, in some ways it is not entirely surprising that the rate of infection hasn't changed in school age children

I think you'll find risen is the word you are looking for. Risen to be the most infected subset of the population.

And you might not find it surprising, but it's certainly surprising to the government who didn't think that any mitigation measures were needed in schools bar the kids facing forward and sending home a handful when one tested positive.

[quote RubyViolet]Meanwhile, a tearful Angela Merkel has just closed schools and put Germany into a hard lockdown as measures are not enough.
www.ft.com/content/b9965e2a-2564-48ff-9e90-81e146d3365c[/quote]
That's where we will be in about the third week in January

I!3 also been thinking about the situation across the pond. USA has barely begun to the the outcome of Thanksgiving mixing and their rates are horrible already

@noblegiraffe hm, of course it will drop at half term, the children aren't seeing each other. I am not saying schools aren't a source of transmission my argument is that this doesn't justify shutting them. Healthcare has a higher source of transmission than schools but we would not dream of shutting them. Education is just as important but yeah being a teacher right now is definitely not good.

We tried to send a child with a hacking cough and temperature home on Monday. Parent wouldn't collect until 3.30. Told the head they don't believe in Covid so won't test. We asked them to keep him home. He's been in every day, and every day we keep him away from everyone else because the parents refuse to collect him or test him. We can't lock the doors to keep him out
@MrsHamlet
You do have powers to deal with that- the head can exclude them for breaking public health procedures, this is now a valid reason for exclusion.

They need to recognise that there is no such thing as a discrete "bubble". A better model of a school population is a Venn diagram with many overlapping circles. Any children who have siblings. take part in out of school activities or travel on a school bus with other year groups, are in the parts of the circles that overlap. The majority of children are in one of these categories. What this means is that once you get a single case in a school, you need to test the whole population or send everbody home. Otherwise Covid will spread like wildfire throughout the whole a school, which is what has been happening. However with so many asymptyomatic cases it has been impossible to track this.

noblegiraffe
I see your point.

It just seems convenient that they choose to do this now. It seems like release the lazy teacher inset story, then bury testing behind it knowing people won't take the risk of isolating over Christmas, then claim schools don't spread cases.

Then in January they'll probably do the lockdown they have been talking about for weeks and blame Christmas because the any spike in cases over christmas couldn't have be exacerbated by secondary schools being a covid breeding ground.

[quote Chestnutacorns123]@noblegiraffe hm, of course it will drop at half term, the children aren't seeing each other. I am not saying schools aren't a source of transmission my argument is that this doesn't justify shutting them. Healthcare has a higher source of transmission than schools but we would not dream of shutting them. Education is just as important but yeah being a teacher right now is definitely not good.[/quote]
Who is arguing to close schools?

Moving to online learning for secondary for the last week of term will actually save lives and looks like a pretty fucking sensible idea right now (and Wales have done it), but that isn't closing schools.

I've said right from the return to school that students need regular testing to break chains of transmission. Is it a coincidence that cases soared when schools went back? No.
If testing was carried out regularly, then we may have avoided all the businesses having to close and going into lockdown 2 (and probably 3) in January.

@Chestnutacorns123, but don't you think that it would be nice if people would at least acknowledge the state of affairs in schools, rather than attempting to gaslight teachers into thinking that they must be imagining/inventing/dramatising things?

[quote Chestnutacorns123]@itsgettingweird was that not other educational settings (universities?), then healthcare and then teaching and education? If so, then without an exact definition of each category you can't reach that conclusion. I'm not saying that schools aren't a source of transmission far from it, they probably are. Any large organisation is likely to be a source of transmission as infection rate is likely related to be related to the number of social Interactions. Schools have many. My argument is that people are showing graphs but not thinking what the data means and if it can be explained differently.[/quote]
Yep, need to look at confidence intervals and the ONS sample size and geographical sampling bias (ie predominantly high infection areas). There has been mass testing in a few schools and it’s welcome that this is being rolled out now. Hopefully it will expand to cover some of the other hard hit areas