Govt attempting to force schools to remain open with court order, against advice of PHE

[Bluegreen70]

Just that.

I've never hated any politicians so much

Yes, there would be problems with implementing sheltered protection (as per the Great Barrington Declaration), however what’s the alternative
Isn't there a vaccine coming soon by all accounts?

Secondaries have struggled with bubbles bursting and year groups being sent home, My school tweaked so it was those in the immediate vicinity sent home. More than the usual number off everyday ill/isolating/playing xbox.

Staff cover has been stressful.

@Crownofthorns

Finally some sense from our useless government. Children need to be in school.

Yes, they need to be in school! At all costs!

Oh but wait.

My children aren’t in school this week because they’re self isolating. Maybe if the fucking government did their job (ie ensuring children receive a safe education) they would be in school.

I have never been so angry with a government. They’re ready to spend £££ to force councils to keep schools open for a few measly days but they cba to spend money to ensure schools were open to all during a pandemic. GTFOH!!!

No @Crownofthorns , you can say that guidance does not work if schools adhere to it and yet still have repeated cases. That's what the guidance is supposed to stop. What you can't say is the opposite, which is what you're saying - "my school has no cases, therefore the measures work." That's back to front.

The guidance is unfortunately just window dressing; it has been known for a long time that crowded indoor environments spread the virus, but there is sadly no appetite for change in schools amongst most until it comes to inconvenience them personally.

But they do work in many schools - you can’t say they don’t work just because your school or a number of schools have lots of cases.

No, they don't work well in ANY schools BUT if a school has been lucky enough not to have Covid brought into the school (or that case has been a symptomatic non-superspreader, rapidly tested and isolated) then there is an illusion that they are working.

It's luck.

The school local to me didn't have good measures for 6 weeks and then terrible measures for one weekend, leading to 500 isolations. It had the same useless measures as everyone else BUT nobody had brought infection into the school - or rather, as it turned out, there had been several asymptomatic spreaders, not detected until there was a sudden mushrooming of symptomatic cases and tests. If your school has had few, or no cases, rapidly isolated, you are just lucky.

I am not for or against early school closures (yet).

I am very interested in the PHE advice. Does anybody have a link please?

But they do work in many schools

Your DD is in primary. Primary has been far less affected than secondary. So your school is doing lots of other things that secondaries can't do, like being much smaller in general with more consistent teachers, smaller bubbles, sending home full classes when there are cases and generally routines in place around sanitiser and handwashing, more control of activities out of school.

But even then, other primaries will tell you they did all that too and it didn't stop an outbreak.

All we know about the PHE advice is what was in the letter published by Greenwich to parents yesterday, I think.

I can't for the life of me understand why this week is so essential for students to be in. Would this week and the week after Xmas really be so awful to go on line and make a 4 week break a nd ask people not to have play dates etc?

Primary dc is doing Xmas stuff. Why couldn't we have been given the chance to keep them off this week if we could, thin out students in class...

I can't understand it.

Gosh, are PHE saying that mixing with people might be dangerous? How perceptive of them. I bet no one else thought of that!.

The government should have just closed all schools for 2 years. That would have been the safest option.

Of course none of the kids would have passed any exams and their parents would be screaming at the evil government who don't care about their welfare.A lot of them already have been for interrupting their studies.

Most of you would be unable to work and if no one works there will be funds for benefits so no food or rent money.

But that's ok because no one working means nothing to spend it on. No water coming out of the taps, no electricity, no food, no ambulances, no doctors.

Some days I wish I could wave a wand and grant wishes because some people deserve to actually get what they are demanding.

My children's school is remaining open until Thursday and I hope they are watching Christmas films and doing fun Christmas craft bits this week as quite frankly, this year has been shit and they deserve some Christmas cheer.

When we returned in September, the last thing we wanted at my school was to have a Covid case. It was almost as if having a positive case made the school look bad, so we’ve been assiduously following the guidelines to no avail.

If only it was as simple as keeping windows open and wiping down tables and keeping the children apart. No matter how hard we work to follow the rules, we are dealing with hundreds of households.

God help us in January.

Gosh, are PHE saying that mixing with people might be dangerous? How perceptive of them. I bet no one else thought of that!.

Might help if you actually read the link. Or were you posting (inaccurate) invention on purpose?

Yeah @LastTrainEast that's not a proportional or accurate response to this thread, or the situation in east London, really.

Those of us who have been following the media reports about school issues will enjoy the photo on this BBC story.

Science lesson with 4 students, all masked.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55311573

quite frankly, this year has been shit and they deserve some Christmas cheer

Yep, it's been shit for school staff too. What they really want is to babysit exhausted and over excited children.

@noblegiraffe

But it’s not just for three days, is it? This is going to go on and on and on

Well maybe the government could pull its finger out of its arse and put some funding into schools to stop it getting to this point again.

Kids crammed into poorly ventilated spaces with no masks for hours a day has one inevitable outcome in a pandemic.

This has been going on for months, millions of kids off school.

How does more money help you improve ventilation in schools with windows which won’t open? Buy some hammers to smash the glass? It would take months for them to arrange to replace windows! Half the countries parents would be up in arms about their children wearing masks in class (not me). I don’t really see how you can make them safer. It would probably still spread even if classes were only half full.

Let us make it clear AGAIN - no school wants to be closed. they want to be open SAFELY.

However, where schools have got to the point where they cannot open safely, it is better to close, and re-open under new conditions (hopefully with all the mitigations that teachers on MN have been talking about for months, including regular testing for teachers and full testing of all contacts of any detected case) in January.... preferably after students and teachers have been tested after any over-Christmas mixing, just as is planned for universities

@Augustbreeze

All we know about the PHE advice is what was in the letter published by Greenwich to parents yesterday, I think.

Thank you. This one?

www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/downloads/file/5023/letter_for_headteachers

If so, and I'm seriously not being goady, it does not say that PHE advised the schools to close. Exponential growth in covid, yes, requires immediate action, yes. It does not say what PHE think that advice should be.

I would be really interested to know what immediate action PHE wanted.

How does more money help you improve ventilation in schools with windows which won’t open? Buy some hammers to smash the glass?

Because you can buy ventilation systems like they did in Germany.

Half the countries parents would be up in arms about their children wearing masks in class (not me)

If it’s secondary then tough. Valid exemptions apply obviously. And they can always remove their child to home educate as has been often recommended to ECV families unhappy with inadequate mitigation measures.

I don’t really see how you can make them safer.

And therefore it must be impossible?
Testing and more effective isolation would be an excellent start.

So you have 3 Labour councils going against what the DFE says? How is that Ok? Regardless of health issues. To be clear, our state primary won’t do anything Covid related without approval from the DFE. DFE trumps PHE. It was very clear recently when they were clarifying the new isolation periods going down from 14 days to 10 days- they would only inform parents of new dates after approval from DFE. I don’t understand why some head teachers followed what their Council said - are they all maintained schools in Greenwich etc. Surely some are academies. Not OK for schools to be in a political crossfire.

The academies were planning to remain open

So you have 3 Labour councils going against what the DFE says? How is that Ok?

Moral duty to try not to let people die unnecessarily?

The government hasn’t got a good record on either moral duty or not letting people die unnecessarily so it would be interesting to see them try to defend it in court.

So you have 3 Labour councils going against what the DFE says? How is that Ok?

I'll tell you how. Those Labour councils are less well funded than the Tory ones. Those Labour councils are struggling more as a result and so are their schools. Those schools in those Labour constituencies have a greater degree of Covid running through them. That's why it's Ok for those Labour councils to go against what the DfE says. Because the DfE is connected to this shitarse Tory government and doesn't give two hoots about Labour constituents and their families.

The boroughs will comply. I suspect their "advice" from PHE is not explicit about closing schools and what LAs have the resources to fight costly legal battles?