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

hopefulhalf, you have to see it in the context of the number of pupils currently out of school, - about 700-800,000 children every day. As the figure is a snapshot, obviously over a week there will be more children in total out who would be in the 'need a daily test to stay in school' group.

This would obviously grow rapidly as more positives are found - or should be found - by this method, so the 7 days would keep being re-set and more children brought into the 7 days of testing.

- it says PPE will be provided. I'm not holding my breath but Its in the 15th dec guidance about the testing.

Maybe that’s the one that says money will also be available when the head of the dfe says it won’t be today. Who knows

How can they be daily for 7 days? What about weekends? Where will they done on sat/sun?

Keeping track of this is going to be an administration nightmare, a logistical nightmare and a health nightmare.

The only way realistically it could work (maybe) would be if you had the hall set up with chairs 2m apart, self administered test, wait til the results. Then a kind of "you go to lessons, you go to medical room/holding bay/quarantine" type thing, but obviously not divulging publicly the results of the swab because of gdpr/data protection....

If you test in a 'booth' would you also need some sort of 'holding pen' with 2 m space between each student or else you would be putting infected children into the bubble that this whole shitstorm is designed to protect

It is laughable that they think people are queuing up to 'volunteer' in schools, never mind to put themselves in the firing line of a pandemic

@MillieEpple

cantkeepawayforever - it says PPE will be provided. I'm not holding my breath but Its in the 15th dec guidance about the testing.

It's only in 1 version of 1 part of the guidance. It's completely absent from everything else. I don't think this is an accident.

@starrynight19

Theres no way they have enough tests ready or enough army who are apparently supporting it. The army will only be involved in the training part. It’s solely down to schools to deliver this.

I genuinely thought our army was so stretched that there wouldnt be enough of them to support schools with training. Maybe there is more army than i thought. I know they arent going to deliver it.

@hopefulhalf

They test themselves at the begining I did it this morning it takes about 30s, then do the form time (your school has form groups of 240 ?). Read the tests at the end. Honestly most NT 13yo s could do this.

Wouldn't that be interesting.

Imagine just five testing positive. What then? Imagine the positives aren't sitting in a corner together 2m away from the others, and none wearing masks. What then? send home the entire class as close contacts?

Barmy idea.

This ridiculousness is based on the premise that "schools are covid safe" and sprinkled with magic anti covid dust. The reason they are testing at the start of term is because its a sop to those demanding testing in schools whilst maintaining the position that covid isn't transmitted in schools, and that the only positive cases in schools are isolated cases caught elsewhere. These Tory twats are slimy fuckers who won't admit there is any problem in schools, because they won't properly finance effective measures.

I genuinely thought our army was so stretched that there wouldnt be enough of them to support schools with training.
Yes I suspect the same. But thankfully the DFE have done a handout for the schools who won’t get the in person training.

@Witchend see you have met my child then.

I predicted sword fighting with the swabs and several children poling each other with them. pulling faces so the kid laughs and jabs themselves in the nose... and kids who tickle the first 0.1mm of the nose and proclaims they are done.

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

@3littlewords of course we didn't see this coming. Only a fucking idiot would put this plan forward.

I expect Santa will deliver the test kits, gazebos and non-porous flooring over the holiday and they’ll be there under the school Christmas tree for the beginning of term. How else will they deliver them to all secondary schools over the break? I’m sure the Covid elves are packing them right now. Better hope your Head was nice, not naughty.

Everything about this is a fucking joke. My kids won't be participating in this waste of time shit show.

@SaltyAF

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

@3littlewords of course we didn't see this coming. Only a fucking idiot would put this plan forward.

Its fucking idiots so called running this country what did you expect?

@itsgettingweird

So if school starts at 8.30am I'm assuming it's expected pupils are tested from 7.30am and the teachers school day is made even longer as they will have to start prepping at 6.30/7am for the day before the testing. And then what. Work out which students have now been sent home and need to access the lessons online and sort that out too sending them links etc?

And some of our students routinely struggle to get into school for 8.35 for a whole host of reasons. What do we do with kids who arrive too late to be tested?

Realistically it's a non starter. The fact the dfe even imagine this possible makes clear just how out of touch they are with actual school facilities, space and staffing levels which makes clear the dfe is beyond even special measures.

Watching the accounts committee interviewing Susan as she squirmed and did a goldfish impression was embarrassing yet vindicating. They don't have a clue.

Well, DD’s school already provides food and financial support to families in need, look after students mental health, provide Covid secure environment and of course deliver broad curriculum on site and online. And now they are going to do testing.
Could we make them responsible for collection and distribution taxes as well? I’m sure they will cope much better than the current government.

Mass testing is a great idea but this plan has a lot of flaws for my liking. The test itself is not reliable and I can’t see the additional capacity at schools to organise/ deliver this. I also can’t see where the testing can be done at our school. It’s oversubscribed.

My y10 has an exam on 11th Jan. hmmm

@hopefulhalf

Supervised by the tutor in mask, gloves, googles - yes. Then get the kids to wipe down the surfaces or would that be too much to expect of NT teens ? Then eveybody washing their hands bins the PPE , washes their hands again andcgets on with their day.

Washes their hands before and after? Where? In the classroom, that doesn't have any sinks? And has carpet on the floor? And you keep going on about NT children, as if a) mainstream schools only had NT children (DD is one of five with autism in her form) b) special schools aren't included in this programme, which they are. What about the child with one hand. How will they manage to take their swab, pop it into the tube, snap off the end, and seal it up? He's NT...

There's a dead simple example available, HPV vaccine. I used to teach in an all girls grammar. Nice kids, largely obedient and compliant. Very few did the pre-event panicking, post-event "I'm so traumatised I'm going to faint and can't go back to lessons", maybe 5 per class (I've seen worse), irrelevant whether it's real or not it all takes time to deal with.
Small year groups of 210. Took minimum 3 lessons, usually halfway into lesson 4. That was with 3 nurses stations, only requiring one person each, but an experienced person. And it could be done in school hall with no special floor.

For each child you will have to match them to their permission slip. Even if they literally have it in hand they will need to verbally confirm name and date of birth. If they're crying/panicking you will have to double-check they consent. Doing it without checking opens you up to an assault charge. I've seen nurses refuse to vaccinate crying children because they won't answer that question. You'll have to check the seal on the swab to make sure it's unused, and assuredly there's some procedure for linking it to the appropriate child (label?). A 30 second procedure doesn't take 30 seconds. Even basic stuff like getting them in and out of the booth. "Sarah are you done, over here then please", "Ellie you're next. Ellie. ELLIE. Stop chatting. You're up. Booth 2, no, booth 2." "Rebecca, what's wrong?" "She says she's going to be sick, miss." And that's compliant kids.

Also we could go straight back to class. But these kids will need to hang around, socially distanced, for the 30 mins required to get the results.

Not just the time taken for HPV, but it also ties up the hall or the gym for the entire day. We have mocks for Y13 and Y11 scheduled when we go back. Those rooms are already needed to emulate exam conditions.

@W00t

Not just the time taken for HPV, but it also ties up the hall or the gym for the entire day. We have mocks for Y13 and Y11 scheduled when we go back. Those rooms are already needed to emulate exam conditions.

Yes exactly. That's before you factor in everything else it will impact.

I for 1 and I don't care if people judge me as wreckers won't be consenting for my year 10.

If its by non trained school staff who are already stretched and no definite extra funding given to schools then if majority of parents say no it be total waste of time.
Cleanly one of their tory donors has companies with lateral flow so let's off load them on school.

If my child has symptoms I will get tested at proper test centre and keep home.
If contact with postive I rather child self isolate and do remote learning.

This undermines testing and I think many teachers and parents will say no enough enough.

This undermines testing and I think many teachers and parents will say no enough enough

Sadly @3asAbird I think most parents don't have the tiniest inkling of the reality of "mass testing for schools" means.

Looking on the bright side, I think I can cover the full Functional Maths specification using this scenario alone. I do enjoy relating what I teach to current affairs, and Covid is the gift that keeps giving.

Yes, I used some of heir lovely 'teachers are safe' data to teach research validity and generalisability the other day !

Could also work well for a probabilities. If you have covid but have 2 tests that only pick up 50% of cases, what is the chance of them both being negative...