Why are some schools being hit worse than others?

[DumplingsAndStew]

I am NOT looking for a fight, or to apportion blame to anyone, just looking for discussion.

Our high school of 1000+ has had 3 pupils and 1 member of staff (unconnected) positive in total. This was all around a similar time, a good few weeks ago.

I'd imagine the issues that schools have implementing safety procedures should be fairly similar across the UK. The number of kids socialising outside of school would - I think - be comparable from one school to another.

Why are some schools seeing more positive cases, and more transmission between pupils than others?

I'm hoping individual school's risk assessments will be studied in detail so they can figure out what actually did make a difference.

They had to be agreed by PHE. RA less influential than building age etc and luck.

Luck & timing.

Lower population density than many surrounding areas which have been hit a lot harder even though its a city.

Things were getting a bit dodgy at end October.
Was hearing of actual people positive and quite a few schools impacted and then lockdown came.

That has reduced our community level of the virus down quite a bit and the other surrounding areas have also improved which helps us as a lot.

Our school have done very well too and measures like parents wearing masks were introduced at start of term.

It's hardly a surprise if staff pick up an airborne virus from eachother is it? You can stay 2m apart, it's not a magic distance you can still catch it. You cannot simply not be breathing the same air as others you work with.

I also wonder if lots of people had it much earlier

One thing my brother did say was he was the only one to not have a flu jab. Probably unrelated though.

A local secondary has had LOADS of positive kids,my neighbours DD is ok her 4th self isolation.
The school has hardly any windows in the classrooms (they face into an atrium,could this be partly why?

My DD's school has only had a handful. Fresh air through the open windows all day.

Dc’s School has had several cases. All of them HAVE NOT had the classic symptoms. The school medical centre is being really vigilant and asking parents to get kids tested for things like sore throats and headaches, and upset stomachs. Most of these kids then turn out to be positive for covid. I’m sure if they expanded the list of symptoms for testing of children, they would find a lot more postive cases in schools across the uk.

Luck and/ or being hit hard in March slowing down chains for a while

Not being able to open windows v open windows could have small impact, hard to know but would be interesting to compare

In our LA even though there are deadlines for updating risk assessments they are only randomly checked. This means a less rigourous RA goes unchallenged.

My daughters school of 1800 only had about 5 cases from September - last week where they sent a handful of people
Home for each . They shut one year though last week though as they had a few cases.

Until now there attendance was higher than in usual times!

I know they have strict zones - my daughter is in one of the annex buildings and I think has been in the main school only once since September. They also have 2 locations they can get hot food so I guess that helps as well as they are not all going through canteen.

Primary had its first pupil case last week - they previously had one in a staff member.

It does seem to have hit this area last week though - the other 2 secondaries nearest my daughters have also sent whole years home in the last week.

My dd’s school was quite low for ages. The cases definitely started to increase a few weeks ago and I think are slowing now possibly due to the effects of lockdown. Thus far, there has been one week and then another two days of whole year groups isolating due to staff shortages, one whole year group isolating due to the volume of cases in that year group plus smaller isolating groups during the term. Dd’s school is a large school of over 1500. The much smaller rural local school dd’s friend attends has been hit in much the same way percentage wise. Most of the spread has been in years 9 and 10. Possibly a superspreader there somewhere. But all in all, contagion in school seems to have matched levels in the local area.

Secondary teacher here. My
Schools hasn’t been fully open since Sept. this week we have one year group in. We have KS3 class bubbles, zones, no outside time (not enough space). I’ve lost count of our positive cases.

I debated this on a thread a couple of months back. Reasonings my colleagues and I thought of:

• my school is 92% BAME
• we can’t stagger starts and end of day as the majority of pupils who travel to us by train/bus/coach
• our KS5 is shared with another school

The area where I live had numbers per 100,000 in the 800s a few weeks ago. My head asked the dfe if we could move to remote learning, they said no. It did make me wryly smile when Greenwich council with numbers in the 200s have moved to online - if only we had these ‘low’ numbers!

I don't get it either. There have been only 2 cases in DS's primary and they were both before October half term, there have been no cases for weeks. The head has chosen not to do the inset day this week because there have been so few cases. We are not sparsely populated either, we are a tier 3 town in the midlands of about 40,000 people. I guess it's just luck. I have friends in Devon which is tier 2 and more rural and their kids school has had more cases than mine.

I might be naive but am shocked to hear of so many schools where the windows don't open - is that through fault or design?

We are lucky enough (?!) that most of our windows are open. We've split into juniors and seniors and have staggered break and lunchtimes and are outside unless really bad weather. One way system (that in theory was in place anyway), no assemblies, but only send home close contacts when there's a positive case (two of the three positive pupils were close contacts, one tested positive after developing symptoms when already home as a close contact). There doesn't seem to be much social distancing between pupils, and between staff its hit or miss.

There's not a huge number of pupils travel by bus though - just a handful of rural pupils and another handful of SEN kids who come in minibus (stupidly shared with other schools though)

Lots of older schools the windows were painted shut. Not sure if it was unintentional or just how they did it then

With modern schools many dont open fully so that children can't jump out 🙄

Dumplings no, I don't think they are more likely to send their children to school. I just think they are more likely to catch it. Parents that cannot work at home (especially in the care sector) would be more likely to catch it.

I have asked myself this question to try to make sense of the perma self isolations, the ten weeks of confinement my one child is experiencing.

My child has had six periods of self isolations since September and he also caught Covid at school. We are tier 3. He is GCSE years. West Midlands.

It became obvious in September there was an issue with his year 10 group especially. Cases are rife. 20%.of the year has had it.

Yet, there has been nothing in year 8, for example.

My other child in GCSE years has just had a month's back to back isolations.

At both schools, heads have written to plead with parents about sending in children who have tested positive or whose family members are positive. It's a real issue.

I also work with schools in the region with mass cases and staff hospitalised.

Luck, good management, space available, local infection rates.

Luck and some luck with school design, I think. We are a high rate area but have so far only had a couple of cases. My school, however, is a mish-mash of buildings and we have been able to use that to our advantage in keeping bubbles well and truly separate. I also think the less deprived catchments (which we are) may fair marginally better because parents are more able to keep their kids off and work from home than those dependent on zero hour, minimum wage contracts.

But more than anything it’s luck.

I have 2 dc’s in different schools in different counties, dd1’s school is in a tiny town and most children who go there live in small villages, they have had no cases, no bubbles sent home and only a few people isolating due to relatives having it. Dd2’s school is in a big town, most the kids there live in the town, there have been many cases, bubbles sent home and school closed a few weeks ago for a deep clean.

I think it’s down to location, kids mixing with others (happens more in bigger towns?) but most of its just down to luck.

more sunshine, fairer weather in the south of the country?

@middleager

Six periods of isolation? Thats awful - how many close contacts can one person have? For so many to test positive is terrible.

I hope the quality of remote learning is shit hot, at least.

@Skipsurvey

more sunshine, fairer weather in the south of the country?

Am not in the South of the country, but interesting if that is a factor for others.