No longer a national priority to keep schools open

[noelgiraffe]

The government has surreptitiously dropped its priority to keep schools open.

It has replaced it with a priority to “keep education open”.

Remote learning is now a viable alternative to keeping schools open (as opposed to last Monday when it was a matter for the high court).

In the DfE media blog, tweeted earlier today regarding the delayed start to term in January they say:

“ Is this an extension of the Christmas holiday?

No, this isn’t an extension of the holiday and we haven’t asked that the start of term is delayed.

All students will return to education from the first day of term. Secondary school and college students should learn remotely for one week except those in exam years, vulnerable young people and the children of critical workers. It remains our national priority to keep education open and we are not closing education for any period other than during the set holiday periods.”

Interesting development.

My (totally unscientific) take is that this new strain is more transmissible. Outbreaks in schools have been up till now bad, but contained by luck due to requiring superspreader events to really kick off. The schools that said 'we had a couple of cases but no further spread' were lucky due to the fact their cases weren't superspreaders, not because they had the right mitigation measures or sent the right kids home.

More transmissible = no need for a superspreader (or possibly more superspreaders) to cause outbreaks. Schools never had any real mitigation measures bar crossed fingers, and so now this new strain is around, the lack of mitigation measures is really showing up in the figures.

Of course SAGE's reaction would be VACCINES and pie-in-the-sky stuff, rather than sensibly looking at how to improve mitigation measures in schools - a conversation that should have happened in the summer.

I remember reading a great article from Katharine Birbalsingh in my education computing magazine ‘Hello World’ during the first lockdown and I posted extracts about her thoughts on live video lessons on Mumsnet then @noelgiraffe.

She also made interesting comments that those students disadvantaged by lockdowns, were disadvantaged before lockdown and would still be disadvantaged after lockdown, unless any government actually changed the policies, support and funding for those children/young people.

She said the lockdown issue of Zoom lessons (and other video protocol platforms) and other methods of remote learning, was a red herring in their cases. It is an interesting viewpoint.

I saw some figures that the kids in disadvantaged areas spent longer on average isolating as close contacts than kids in more affluent areas since September too. So ‘schools open with few mitigation measures’ disproportionately negatively impacted their education compared to better off students too.

@noelgiraffe

My (totally unscientific) take is that this new strain is more transmissible. Outbreaks in schools have been up till now bad, but contained by luck due to requiring superspreader events to really kick off. The schools that said 'we had a couple of cases but no further spread' were lucky due to the fact their cases weren't superspreaders, not because they had the right mitigation measures or sent the right kids home.

More transmissible = no need for a superspreader (or possibly more superspreaders) to cause outbreaks. Schools never had any real mitigation measures bar crossed fingers, and so now this new strain is around, the lack of mitigation measures is really showing up in the figures.

Of course SAGE's reaction would be VACCINES and pie-in-the-sky stuff, rather than sensibly looking at how to improve mitigation measures in schools - a conversation that should have happened in the summer.

A conversation we were all having in the Summer...

re:vaccinating students.
With what? Pfizer is non-existent in those quantities. AZ is not approved and even if it was it's only 70% efficacy. Moderna is nowhere near approval.

Yes I think people have narrow view of what constitutes disadvantaged. It's not as simple as, 'haven't got a laptop and giving a laptop fixes it'. Not do people understand how related behaviour issues, lack of engagement and disruption of others learning can tie in with disadvantage and it's not really considered acceptable to talk about it.

Nor do people really think about who and what children are and the fact that sitting staring at a screen for 4 or 5 hours a day might satisfy some parents because they can see time is being used and students are busy but doesn't really equate to meaningful learning and ignores the developmental reality of who young people are.

When it comes to 'remote education' I'm concerned we're being driven more by what parents want than what kids need.

I think I said earlier on this thread that in recording lessons for January I'm conscious of how it needs to be 'seen' to be enough work, enough busy-ness and contained into a solid hour even though that isn't actually imo the best way to do this.

People also don't seem to fully grasp that an hours lesson in school is not an hours learning and therefore doesn't need to be an hour in remote learning either. I honestly think I could do a 10 minute talk and introduction and they could do a 10-15 minute task and that would be enough given full independent engagement. 5 lessons a day and that would mean 5 x 20-25 minute slots of learning for kids at home. So about 2 hours a day of engaged genuine learning would be sufficient in a full remote learning scenario but parents would lose their shit and say it's not enough when in reality it's more and better quality learning than they do in a full day of school.

In school I see my ks3 groups 3x a fortnight. If on a rota system I saw them once for a full lesson in school each fortnight and they had 2 of those 20-25 minute quality remote learning slots that would be plenty. They wouldn't be missing anything and I could likely see improvements in their progress.

Anyway I'm waffling on a bit but disadvantage is in engagement and values and the quality of conversation and stimulation you grew up around and the willingness of adults to talk to you and those adults level of interest in the wider world and keenness to engage with it and engage you in it etc etc. Not just 'do they have a laptop'.

@onedayinthefuture

But I'm not expecting any teacher to work in the winter. I don't think it's fair to teachers and kids. Education will pick up and be entirely made up during the spring and summer.

One problem with this is private schools, which have a different 'pay at the point of access' funding structure.

If they say 'ok everyone down tools & chill, see you in a couple of months' then inevitably parents will respond 'ah - so you won't be needing our cheques for a couple of months either, right?'.

Some just because they don't want to pay for a service they aren't getting, some because their earning potential has gone tits up, especially as they are now having to stop work/pay for childcare.

So these schools will inevitably position themselves as 'We are business as usual! Ok, it's online, but we are offering 5 periods of live zoom every day!'.

They will also actively be recruiting new students from the state sector, whose parents can afford private education, previously didn't as they had a great state school, but are now worried their kids will be disadvantaged against the ones attending Posh School (& of course, they're right...).

It makes a mockery of any pretence at a level playing field. It's basically what happened in lockdown, & if you do it again now, a current y11 at private school will be walking into her exams having had 6 months more teaching than her mate at Bash St Academy down the road.

I work in a private international school & we are pretty shit hot at going from f2f to distance learning overnight, but as PPs have said it's not a panacea.

No easy 'why don't we just...' answers to this one, sadly.

They need to give the vaccine ourside priority group 1 They haven't got priority group 1 done yet.

My sore point is that since the spring term these are known. And nothing has been done on a systematic level. The Dfe more than failed the country's kids imo.

I wouldn't be against a shift around of the school year, but I agree, it needs to be planned now and would probably require exams to be cancelled in the summer. You'd have to get unis on board with it, too.

If they've lost her support, they've really fucked up. I thought that. When she came on Newsnight last week, Wednesday or Thursday I think, I thought she was on to defend government policy, I think she is normally supportive, Katharine Birbalsingh in case I'm confusing anyone. I was surprised at how scathing she was then, even more so now.

I'm not sure if this is just me as a very non tech elderly person but zoom lessons seem to have some big issues to me. Like if you have 2 kids and one computer and they are both having live zoom lessons how does that work? Watching govt ministers being interviewed on TV and the problems they have with presumably great equipment/back up etc how is the average family going to cope.

I've got a headache. It is all a nightmare. My 15 year old GS has arrived here, step father got violent with him so my very isolated Christmas with ECV husband now includes a teenager. He says he won't go home so I guess he's staying here so I am scared to death of what will happen when schools restart. He is due back on 4th, exam year, so I wish they'd get their act together.

Unis couldn't get on board because of their international students - it just keeps kicking it down the road with changes to school year.

On a personal selfish level I would love for us to have 6 weeks off in winter as standard because I love being in England in the summer but love being overseas somewhere where the sun is shining in winter.

My mood and energy is way better in summer and the days are long so being at work wouldn't bother me at all whereas in winter it's hard going and feels like you have no life.

Our school year is still designed around people needing the kids out helping in the fields in the summer which is not at all relevant to us now.

The live lessons seems to assume that it is a discoursive method - teachers are interacting with students - in reality you can't have a conversation with 30 people at once. I prefer recording lessons where I can explain really thoroughly and they have it to watch back and repeat the bits they're unclear of and also to be available by email for any technical problems or people who need to ask questions.

This live zoom business is all about parent pleasing as I said - I don't think it offers educational value unless you're doing it in very small groups of similar ability kids.

Our school year is still designed around people needing the kids out helping in the fields in the summer which is not at all relevant to us now.

Sorry honey but that's an urban myth..

There have been no cases at my dd school, she's a boarder.
They take the kids temperatures at least twice a day, just doing it on entry to state schools would make a huge difference.
Anyone with a temperature doesn't get through the gate, whoever they are, whatever their business at the school.

If schools closed for a month or two now then what would happen to key worker children? Staff would need to be paid to support them in school as well as teaching full year groups in the summer.

@TragedyHands

There have been no cases at my dd school, she's a boarder. They take the kids temperatures at least twice a day, just doing it on entry to state schools would make a huge difference. Anyone with a temperature doesn't get through the gate, whoever they are, whatever their business at the school.

None of the many pupils cases at the school I teach in, has had a high temperature/fever as a symptom...

Yeah, sore throats and headaches seem to be way more common in positive cases in my school than fevers.

Is it piggy? Seemed logical to me that it was around the agricultural year. It's never made sense to me how counterintuitive it is to have time off when you've actually got energy and light and be working through the darkest coldest bit of the year when I'd happily either fly away to the sun or curl up in my bed with a book. Presumably it's also from a time when people didn't go overseas and relied on good weather to be able to have a holiday in the old factory fortnight? I have no clue it seems.

I think it's just a way of them trying their best, and luck.

It would also help with flu season and norovirus and all the other bugs if kids weren't at school in winter and staff and kids weren't getting sick in term time. Heating bills would be hard for people though I guess.

Yes it is! I live in a combine 'arvester area. The harvest is in term time...

It's stuck around as a myth for quite some time.

All cases at my school had stomach upsets.

Yes obvious really - going back at the start of September totally doesn't fit with harvests.

Several of our cases were just plain old non symptomatic picked up by kids being tested for studies and then parents testing kids who were close contacts of confirmed cases and therefore more asymptomatic ones getting picked up.

I really hope it has just become more contagious rather than any more harmful - it's grotesque really that we've shoved young people back into schools with next to no mitigations at all and just hoped for the best on the back of people saying children don't transmit or it's mild in kids. It's obviously pretty shitty for us staff too but we have been able to have at least some ability to distance some of the time compared to them.

Wonder if it’s different variants causing different symptoms, piggy

It’s really confusing that one illness can vary so much in presentation and severity. Normally diagnosis is done by symptoms!