Govt plan to one-off test all secondary kids on return to school, too late to Christmas safer

[noelgiraffe]

The DfE have just woken up and realised that schools might be in even deeper shit come January than they are even now, due to Boris's Insane Christmas Covid Bonanza.

So they are going to offer a round of tests to all secondary and college students and staff on return to school in January to try to mitigate the effects.

It will be optional and consent will be required. This will be two lateral flow tests 3 days apart and is separate to the daily testing for close contacts.

This is good news, but it's a shame they didn't think of this before Christmas and allow secondary kids and staff to be able to visit elderly relatives more safely and minimise the Covid Bonanza in the first place. Reactive rather than proactive as ever.

www.gov.uk/government/news/staggered-rollout-of-coronavirus-testing-for-secondary-schools-and-colleges

That does sound like good news. And a weeks delay to start to term for secondary sounds sensible too.
The tests are pretty easy to do and I’m sure the vast majority of year 7’s and above will have no problem with them.

It's a great idea. I really wish that everyone could access regular testing - I'm sure a lot would like to get tested before Christmas to minimise risk to their families, but it's still restricted to those showing symptoms (even when we know that 40% of those those infected don't show symptoms). Cheap, widely-available testing would REALLY help us to get on top of this thing.

I am quite relieved they are doing this. My DC have had so much disruption recently and I really hope it makes things much safer in schools. However I still think the Christmas bubbles things is insanity.

Secondary only

I get that rates aren't as high in primary, but the kids don't show symptoms and so seem to spread it silently.

Christ - last minute. AGAIN.

Good plan and staggered return for secondary pupils also sounds sensible.

Good plan. Secondary schools seem rhe worst effected.

Good idea.

Hope I can consent to this separately to the testing-for-close-contacts which I would not consent to.

And why so late? Always so late in the day.

Are these swab tests?

Who will administer them?

Brilliant. Could make such a massive difference.

Children of high school age can do them their self supervised when I took my ds12 for 1 at a walk In site he sat an done it himself while a fella supervised and explained how todo it.

I am a bit baffled by this
So they go back on a Monday or whatever and treat negative, what’s to stop them catching it on Wednesday? I suppose it weeds out dc who are positive at the point of testing but that’s all

It says they will get 2 rapid tests 3 days apart with any positive test confirmed by a swab test.

Staggered start???? It’s staggered over a week. Which means more than one year group to return a day. What is the actual point????

It’s officially out: www.gov.uk/government/news/staggered-rollout-of-coronavirus-testing-for-secondary-schools-and-colleges?fbclid=IwAR04JyqglrFbCLPvVAa7Jc1nNYh7Mxf-sSeXs2TzEXLizgznin6xofYmQDA

No information about how/when schools will actually prepare for this given that they’ll be TEACHING Years 7-10 and 12 as normal and will therefore have no free time.

No information beyond a barmy NHS guide to how to administer the tests (no offence at all to the NHS, it’s okay that they have no idea how schools work, the DFE could at least have proof-read it and noticed problems in the requirement for up to 7 additional staff, a free room with numerous requirements and also space to keep 100s of students out of class until they get their negative result)

Predication: they’ve given schools an impossible task then when it fails, they’ll blame them. As parents, please be kind to your schools; this will be the tipping point for many into early retirement / long term absence for stress / potentially even worse.

@Lumene

Are these swab tests?

Who will administer them?

I imagine they’ll be test kits that the child can he given and can do themselves. We have them here at work. I’ve been testing myself weekly with the swab tests since May and it’s nothing a year 7 couldn’t do themselves once shown. I’m heartedly sick of doing it now. Imo it takes about 2 months before the novelty well and truly wears off

In that official guidance, I notice it mentions that there will be facility to test "more of their students and staff" rather than "all of their students and staff." I can't help but think this is relevant.

Could the government not send the start-of-term tests to home addresses rather than do them on school premises?

Lateral flow tests are super easy once you've got the steps on your head. Not difficult at all. My autistic 10yr old could do it easily so I would imagine it will be a at home, self administer thing for the secondary kids.

Well yes, there does seem to be the slight snag that the tests would seem to be expected to be administered at currently non-existent school on-side covid testing centres.

And it's now the Christmas holidays. And they expect the testing to start the first week back.

So when are the testing centres being put together and staffed?

Also, given that it is going to be brand new, I suspect that attempting to test the whole school population as your first gig might lead to a teensy amount of teething problems.

@Waxonwaxoff0

Good plan and staggered return for secondary pupils also sounds sensible.

You previously couldn't possibly support any sort of school closure so what's different about this one?

It is a great idea, they are never pro active with these things and while it sounds brilliant as soon as it actually comes to putting these things into action, the government fail and make errors that anyone with an ounce of common sense can see as wrong BUT I truly hope I am wrong and they deliver successfully on this.

noelgiraffe it's not a closure? It's just a week. I wouldn't support ongoing blended learning.

Anybody else in a KS2 and KS3 school? Technically, we're in a position of having to refuse onsite access for week 1 to just year 7 and 8 and ask just year 7 and 8 to test. Which seems really pointless when we'll have the whole of KS2 running around untested from the first day.

Do schools have to follow this or will it be optional? We broke up on the 11th so no idea what our SLT's plan is. They have their holiday meetings on Thursdays but in the morning so I don't know if the news was out.

Ugh, this is probably a great plan for some schools but one size doesn't fit all.