Secondary schools are stuffed, GOVERNMENT ADMITS

[noblegiraffe]

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

Mass testing for secondary school pupils in worst affected areas.

lumping the preschoolers and nursery children with primary makes the data look better than it is

That’s Jonathan Van Tam’s tactic, he has used age 0-15 for his heat maps to say that kids are fine

Agree we need much better data in general. Those equivalent graphs for secondary also show tested cases increasing from Y7 up.

Our Y7 have way fewer contacts than Y9 as they spend most of their time being taught in the same group whereas when options kick in there’s much more mixing.

@noblegiraffe

Easier to keep them indoors?

I think the main source of infection for secondary kids is school whereas for primary kids it isn’t.

Primaries are far more on top of covid restrictions than secondary. They are usually sending home the whole class when there’s a case which actually way better represents that kid’s close contacts than secondary. Bubbles are much smaller. Hygiene standards are higher (kids are actually forced to wash hands and use hand sanitiser regularly).

Really? I have 32 in my year 6 class packed in a small room. No social distancing no masks. Toilets shared between 4 classes (130 children). Narrow corridors. Staff are frequently nagging management about poor cleaning. Children spend 4.5 hours in the same room breathing the same air. I find your comments and lack of understanding quite derogatory. This isn't a competition. We need to be supporting one another.

Only Susanwouldntlikeit could read a post about a child’s real experience with long covid and label it scaremongering. Sorry if it scares you because it doesn’t fit your narrative, maybe toughen up a bit? My now-11 year old is going through it and still isn’t scared of covid. Pretty embarrassing to be less resilient and less able to cope with reality than an 11 year old.

And if your reaction to a child having long term illness due to a relatively new and unknown virus is “scaremongering” and contemptible, then I really feel for the kids you teach. Oh, sorry, have you worked out where you teach yet? Hope you remember soon, must be awful not to know.

Really? I have 32 in my year 6 class packed in a small room. No social distancing no masks.

Yes, only that Y6 class. In secondary kids are in exactly that same position, but with a much wider variety of kids. They have massively more contacts than primary kids. Sure, for a shorter amount of time, but I’m not sure how much difference is made by adding extra hours of shared air breathing to the original one.

It’s not intended to be derogatory or a competition, it is trying to explore why infection is more rampant in secondary kids than primary.

susan' post was deleted tax. You'd think she would get the message at some point about her corona denying, anti masking agenda.

@NuttyinNotts

I'd be really interested to know whether infections in primary are less likely to spread once they are in the class. Because anecdotally in my area, there's been a lot of primaries that have just had staff cases identified and it hasn't spread between staff, but then there have been others where pupils have tested positive and that bubble has been in and out like a yoyo.

My hunch is that bubble size plays a large role, as does the fact that primary pupils travel less to get to school and are more closely supervised out of school. I'm not entirely convinced that once it is within the pupils in a bubble that it spreads significantly less than in other settings, but that at least the fact that most schools do bubble closure instead of close contacts does mitigate this further.

I agree about whole bubble closure helping. It stopped the cases in my class spreading further.

They are announcing changes to inset because " staff haven't had a break since the pandemic started " knowing full well it is far too late notice

If that was their real motivation then they would order all schools to close for the day so staff get a day off.

1/2 of the staff at a local primary have had it and they had to close the wraparound care and two year groups.

@noblegiraffe

lumping the preschoolers and nursery children with primary makes the data look better than it is

That’s Jonathan Van Tam’s tactic, he has used age 0-15 for his heat maps to say that kids are fine

Agree we need much better data in general. Those equivalent graphs for secondary also show tested cases increasing from Y7 up.

Our Y7 have way fewer contacts than Y9 as they spend most of their time being taught in the same group whereas when options kick in there’s much more mixing.

I agree it probably has something to do with number of contacts. Year 12 and 13 should be mixing with smaller numbers due to less subjects and are now lower than year 10 and 11s.

@Piggywaspushed

ange that post ahs been removed so best not to quote it!

Sorry. Will ask for mine to be removed.

Interestingly year 12 and 13 are now similar or lower in positivity rates to year 6.

@lonelyplanet, "I find your comments and lack of understanding quite derogatory. This isn't a competition. We need to be supporting one another."

I read it as @noblegiraffe just stating the position. I am a primary teacher and I agree with her view. It IS easier (although not perfect, by any means) to manage younger children's hygiene and bubbles than for teenagers. Doesn't mean we're not also at risk, but I've always sympathised hugely with the much worse conditions our secondary colleagues are facing. There is much solidarity and support on staffroom threads.

I would expect y12 and 13 to start going up again now as they’re all going back to their jobs after lockdown - that’s what I hear when they’re chatting to each other. In Tier 3 a lot will still be furloughed from bars and cafes but in tier 2 they’ll have started back already.

What’s not entirely clear is that they have presented the data by secondary school year group but not said that those children actually attend a secondary school.

A lot of those Y12/13s will actually attend college, not sixth form. Colleges have been using blended learning since September.

The year 13s round here often use their cars (semi rural) to get to school particularly now sixth formers have to be out of school in ‘frees’.
However in our school in the Yr 11,12 and 13 who have had it most

@SexTrainGlue

I think the working theory on why young children are less infected is connected to ACE-2 and the way SARS-COV2 uses that to get into the body, and that ACE2 lowers with age

"Varying ACE2 expression might affect disease susceptibility and progression. ACE2 expression is highest in children and young people and women, decreases with age, and is lowest in people with diabetes and hypertension. Therefore, lower levels of expression of the viral receptor ACE2 are found in those at the highest risk for progres­sion of COVID­19 to a severe disease phenotype"

I think this is a fair post. And having seen a few nurseries recently I’m very relieved it is as such.

I understood that the boroughs where they are introducing mass testing to schools are not in London? Though they should be, infection rates are through the roof in the boroughs in the east. Some are in Kent but none of the London Boroughs like Redbridge that have some of the highest infection rates in the country. My suspicion is that this is not a result of London centric policy but just the usual case of reacting too late and too little that has characterised the governments response. I really worry that they have their fingers in their ears and won’t even put London into tier 3 next week.

It should be a no brainer to break up early and give the teachers and children a chance to be out of the Covid soup for two weeks before they meet up with granny, or in the case of responsible people, allow them to self isolate so they can meet granny....

@noblegiraffe

Easier to keep them indoors?

I think the main source of infection for secondary kids is school whereas for primary kids it isn’t.

Primaries are far more on top of covid restrictions than secondary. They are usually sending home the whole class when there’s a case which actually way better represents that kid’s close contacts than secondary. Bubbles are much smaller. Hygiene standards are higher (kids are actually forced to wash hands and use hand sanitiser regularly).

@noblegiraffe - you’re betraying your lack of knowledge of primary schools there. Do you really think it is possible from 2m distance to get a class of 30 young children to wash their hands properly for 20 seconds every time they arrive in school, go to the toilet, come in from elsewhere, before lunch, after lunch, after they have wiped the snot off their noses, to implement rotas for use of very limited available toilets so bubbles don’t mix even for the young children with weak bladders, to have enough staff to clean up the lunch they have spilt all over the classroom and clean the toilets and other frequently used spaces, while simultaneously supervising them outside, to sanitise every surface a child has touched if they come into school ill, etc, and maintain bubbles? All on less income per child than that afforded at secondary level? As soon as a few people are off sick, staff start moving about the school to help in bubbles that are short staffed. Primary children are expected to have lower adult:child supervision ratios than secondaries, so incredibly rapidly run into trouble when there are not enough staff to supervise isolated bubbles at all times, especially if senior management are insistent on protecting teacher PPA time until the bitter end, and teacher lunch breaks, as that requires a wider variety of adults to be mixing with the children and moving from one bubble to another to enable it. Quite quickly it becomes impossible to keep these things going.

I understood that the boroughs where they are introducing mass testing to schools are not in London?

I agree that it's been as clear as mud (because they didn't publish the list at the same time as making the announcement.

The boroughs where it is to roll out are Waltham Forest, Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Hackney & City of London, Redbridge, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

But goodness only knows when it'll be ready to start, and how it'll actually be carried out

Well at least they are doing it. The list I saw this morning didn’t include any London boroughs, at least now they have joined up that thinking.

Still it is probably all the year 12 and 13’s going up west shopping without socially distancing or wearing masks that are now the main vector

you’re betraying your lack of knowledge of primary schools there.

I’m not saying that primary schools are great, or massively covid secure, I’m saying that they are more covid secure than secondary schools. Both are obviously inadequate.

I’m sure if you work in a primary school you think this can’t possibly be the case given how grim and bodily-fluid ridden young children are.

But secondary kids are also disgustingly unhygienic (don’t mention the toilets) and there are far more of them mixing, with no routines for hand washing or sanitising.

@SquirmOfEels

I understood that the boroughs where they are introducing mass testing to schools are not in London?

I agree that it's been as clear as mud (because they didn't publish the list at the same time as making the announcement.

The boroughs where it is to roll out are Waltham Forest, Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Hackney & City of London, Redbridge, Newham and Tower Hamlets.

But goodness only knows when it'll be ready to start, and how it'll actually be carried out

A HT on R4 talked about mobile unit on Monday. Seemed pretty sure. Also said students would be strongly convinced to go ahead.

Of course we’ve heard mobile unit before! But I’d it happens that’s when and how. It’s what this particular school has had as communication I assume.

@noblegiraffe - I’ve worked in both. I’m certainly not saying primary schools are worse. I think primary schools are generally safer - but need more support when it becomes obvious things are going the wrong way.

I think primary schools are generally safer

Then we agree!

Of course we’ve heard mobile unit before!

It wouldn’t be at all like the government to announce a solution to a problem and then not follow through on it would it?

See also: bubbles in secondary, laptops and dongles, GREAT SUMMER CATCH-UP among others I’m sure.