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

I don't understand why these are being done in school? Lateral flow tests are designed to be done at home easily - why cause all this extra hassle??

Why can't they just send them to the home address and get parents to do them?

It should be done at home, not at school.

Don't hold your breath, thinks what our LA have asked schools to send to parents today.

"You may have seen in the media the announcement that mass COVID19 testing will be available for secondary schools and colleges from January. It is important to share with our school/college community that we were only informed of this development on Tuesday. There is a significant amount of preparation required before this approach can be implemented and we have not yet received any of the equipment or training necessary for this testing to take place. Therefore the current approach to contact tracing, self-isolation for close contacts and remote learning will continue until such time that a testing approach is implemented. Until we receive the equipment and guidance I cannot yet confirm a timescale for any changes. We will write to you with further information about the approach including the approach to consent, once we have more details, in the new year."

I think school closures are a horrid idea but like @Waxonwaxoff0 I'm quite happy for a later start or a staggered start. Our schools do a staggered start in september anyway, overheard course of 2 weeks so all they need to do there is repeat the same method again.

Would be good to have term start a solid 2 weeks after the 5 days of mixing ends, no?

As for testing, makes sense to test all the secondary kids and teachers going back. Would be better if tests were sent to each child at home first but I would imagine logistically it's easier to send big boxes full of tests to one school address.

As for primary schools, I read an article this morning that I think it was Iceland have done research globally and found under age 10 kids are almost 50% less likely to get infected and if infected 50% less likely to spread it. Their suspicions are that children dont have the same ACE2 receptors the virus sticks to and that their lungs are much smaller so dont expel the same aerosol level when they cough etc. They studied around 40,000 cases.

On a personal level our primary schools has always kept us updated on case numbers, not one child and only 3 teachers all term and we have over 600 students in our primary.

@noelgiraffe

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.

This post has been flagged for lack of positivity.

Statement from the Leader of the Council, Cllr Danny Thorpe:

“On Sunday I asked all schools in the Royal Borough of Greenwich to change the way they did things in the final few days of term: to provide online lessons for some pupils and ensure that their doors remained completely open for our most vulnerable children, and those of key workers.

I made this request in response to our borough seeing its highest rates of COVID-19 since March, with numbers doubling every four days. Infection rates are particularly high amongst young people. And whilst many children do not show symptoms, they can still put more vulnerable members of their household at risk.

I wanted to keep children at home for a few days and make testing available for all residents whether they show symptoms or not, to ensure everyone could return to school on 4 January as planned.

But rather than let a local authority make the right decision for its own residents, the Government threatened us with legal action and forced us to order all schools to keep their premises open for all students.

Now the Government has finally decided that action needs to be taken. If community testing had been made available weeks ago, as I and other council leaders had asked, schools might have been able to go back as normal on 4 January.

This is another example of the Government centralising all decisions and acting too slowly, instead of letting local leaders do what’s right for their own residents. We were threatened with legal action by one department on Monday, and by Thursday a different department is asking schools to delay their reopening.

It leaves us with one-size-fits-all solutions that don’t actually work for anyone."

It's a crap idea. Every idea they have doesn't work and is a crap idea.

These tests have an almost 50% false negative accuracy.
www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4848?cf_chl_jschl_tk=43bb0641a653aa37dd28a1d5c44f3d709f1b619b-1608161301-0-AUZHryNpWI6vJAcFVJT-xnXEhCkNyJ8NJqG7Oeg7wfaKKQR9J9lJDt2kK3IimsypHTv-g0dFGcg-gd5dUFLedxzoPHpppzvF32w_fgi5CW4F9o7cnC2-InYG8QYopyNAt-y2zi39B0RfxP7aNtNpRlpNyiBsHhThCrAwwLK7T9GekMq5VO0xv9tm5PN9Rbe-1HT-Vm-Wf4z_gpFq9xw5FoOVKhiExXfzPHA13yM-ERCmUzwnIlka6qzc1T3QAmbeVuCo2hVFMSfPSniWjcJwzDkyHJOVZsv0_VfcMAaNSHdHJ-2IiTVrXnhX8E7M1cfPGRf6MIoT11UU32VQHH1XAC0

Just to add - I'm too exhausted by all their bullshit to go into why it's such a crap idea.

But the simple part is lateral flow tests are not accurate at all.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/13/covid-test-for-mass-uk-screening-could-miss-up-to-half-of-cases-say-scientists

Department For Education leaving it until the last minute again. They really are in total chaos.

There will he huge gdpr/data protection implications too, seeing as currently our government don't even allow us to ask for the results of a Covid test. So how will that works then? Students take test, school not allowed to ask for result??

Would be good to have term start a solid 2 weeks after the 5 days of mixing ends, no?

Or what would actually be even better would be not to allow mixing of households indoors over the Christmas period in tier 3 areas, no?

Obtaining consent from parents, now schools are closed until 4th Jan will be interesting too...

Christmas holidays is the only time my school close, and we always close for two full week. To be frank, the way the site staff work, they need far more time off than that IMO, they work themselves into the ground at the best of times, but they way they have stepped up this term is nothing short of sainthood They're amazing.

I suspect Mr Blobby could do a better job than this government.

We have paid billions for private testing companies and track and trace but you want every secondary child in the country to be tested at school without providing any money or staff or any time to set it up?

Absolute idiots.

It will be interesting to see how many schools actually take up this offer of testing their students. I don't blame any school for not taking up the offer especially as this has been offered at such short notice and without a sensible plan for who will be overseeing this testing.

I wasn't under the impression this was optional, Char2015

Just think of it logically - the same staff are meant to be running keyworker and vulnerable provision full time, teaching exam years full time in school and providing other year groups full time remote learning whilst simultaneously setting up a testing centre and testing every child in school on the 4th January without any prep time.

What kind of stupid does it take to call this a plan?

@W00t

I wasn't under the impression this was optional, Char2015

DfE have released their guidance:

Schools choosing not to take up this offer of asymptomatic testing should provide on-site provision for vulnerable children, the children of critical workers and pupils in years 11 and 13 in the week commencing 4 January and provide remote education for all other pupils. Full on-site provision should recommence on 11 January.

Oh c'mon @TheHoneyBadger, it's just as much notice schools had for closedown in march, for changing A Level grades in August, for changing CAGs for GCSE, the return to school in September announced on the bank holiday weekend...erm pretty much everything else they've announced this year.

True W00t. Who knows what mammoth task we'll have dumped on us next - perhaps coming up with a Brexit agreement by the weekend?

Ah, I see.

So then Gav can say "you wanted testing, we offered testing!"

Even if the testing offered was a) stupidly short notice b) logistically very difficult c) not backed up with sufficient funding and d) ONLY 50% ACCURATE AT DETECTING POSITIVE CASES.

Sorry for shouting that last one but it bears repeating.

It's OK because Ofsted will be popping round to give us feedback on how mass testing policies are impacting quality of education.

school staff will be expected to administer these tests

Fuck me theres been a 1001 threads begging for mass testing in secondary schools and now they get it no fucker wants to do it ! When you were all pleading for this and writing to your MPs who the hell did you think would do it? The unlimited HCPs and army we have?
Previous threads have already ruled volunteer parents and god forbid the children themselves as too incapable.
Got what you asked for and still not happy!

Fuck me theres been a 1001 threads begging for mass testing in secondary schools and now they get it no fucker wants to do it

Do you have a full time job? Ok, you’re now expected to set up and staff (for free) a full time covid testing centre on top of it despite another company being paid 22 billion pounds to do this.

You happy?

@noelgiraffe

Fuck me theres been a 1001 threads begging for mass testing in secondary schools and now they get it no fucker wants to do it

Do you have a full time job? Ok, you’re now expected to set up and staff (for free) a full time covid testing centre on top of it despite another company being paid 22 billion pounds to do this.

You happy?

Seriously though in all honesty who did you really think would end up having to administer them? FWIW I totally get where you are coming from all school staffed are severely overworked at the best of times even without a pandemic thrown in but really surely you could have seen this coming a mile off