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.

New idea: Us4Them withdraw their kids from school and home educate (as they often suggest ECV families should do) and the rest of us can get on with sensible mitigation measures.

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?! Not everyone can wfh. For many it's 6 hours of childcare where we can go out and earn money.

The daft testing replacing isolating idea needs to be binned.

Agree with all of your post noel but this bit in particular. The highest our rates got in November was about 170 per 100k. Since 'lockdown' ended we're at double that. It's gone up fast and it's doubling every 7 days - a bit like Greenwich and the rest of the SE. Despite people still WFH, all the covid measures in shops etc. Clearly something is different - the new variant.

Schoolchildren go home to adults every day - they might be fine (and we don't really know with this new variant whether that's still true yet) but they spread it to the community and I can't see a way that schools can stay open as they are without hospitals being overwhelmed.

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?!

This virus is moving so fast, your kids will be home anyway, isolating. Do you want it controlled and something you can plan for or uncontrolled and multiple 10 day periods with no notice and not being able to get out for a walk?

@Yerroblemom1923

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?! Not everyone can wfh. For many it's 6 hours of childcare where we can go out and earn money.

Hopefully you’ve been campaigning for improved mitigation measures in schools then, to keep them open for longer by making them safer?

I suggest writing to your MP if you haven’t already.

How do you know people who think schools should be open didn't also campaign for safer schools? Have you asked all of them? I know this is the internet, but most people are capable of holding two complementary ideas in their heads at once.

@Yerroblemom1923 so what's your solution? Because just wanting schools open is not going to make this stop. If nothing changes the virus will keep spreading more. Suggestions v welcome as to how to keep schools open if not enough well staff left,

Teacher here. Vulnerable category. Also a parent. I don’t want schools to close. Surely this is the time to look at part-time rotas? Some school would be better than no school?

@Yerroblemom1923

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?! Not everyone can wfh. For many it's 6 hours of childcare where we can go out and earn money.

Here is the issue. People turned a blind eye because schools ‘NEED’ to be open, rather than thinking if they ‘SHOULD’ as is.

We are now in this situation and the virus has possibly mutated to infect children who are freely crammed into buildings all day, every day.

If people took just some time to lobby their MP for safer schools, heeded the warnings. We may not be in this situation.

we have been telling everyone this would happen for months

This is true. The teachers on these threads, going back to September, have predicted everything that would happen.

Maybe listening to experts who really know what's going on in schools would be a good idea at some point DfE?

@Hellandcoldwater

How do you know people who think schools should be open didn't also campaign for safer schools? Have you asked all of them? I know this is the internet, but most people are capable of holding two complementary ideas in their heads at once.

Some of them definitely haven’t.

Us4Them have been actively and vocally campaigning for schools to be even less safe than they currently are.

@Yerroblemom1923

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?! Not everyone can wfh. For many it's 6 hours of childcare where we can go out and earn money.

My school hasn’t been open to all years since last week in Sept. We have full closed to all years twice. The second time we closed fully my Head messaged all parents and staff at 9pm because this is when they learned they couldn’t open safely.

Just because you want to happen doesn’t mean it will - it’s not happening in my area.

@IloveJKRowling 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
That's at the DfE listening. To anyone who knows anything about education. My feelings towards the DfE are not printable. Bunch of wazzocks.

Us4them are a disgrace

But they might not get to be for a bit in January while everyone figures out the lay of the land with this new strain and post-Christmas infection rates

Ours won’t be, it’s not a might here, and I very much doubt they’ll be open on the 18th either. My school may be in a “privileged” position (ironic given the very high levels of deprivation in the area), but it will close with all the others. I will lose a business I’ve spent years building and a third of our household income along with it. My daughter will fall even further behind despite private tutoring, the return to school will cause her more anxiety and distress. I’m not unsympathetic to teachers, I think the handling of this has been an utter shit show (and we don’t have the DfE to deal with).

I get that my situation seems pretty privileged, and I wouldn’t be any where near as happy to send my kids to some of the environments you describe. I guess we all see the world from where we stand, I’m not alone in that. I can understand why there needs to be some kind of change given the wider situation but it’s a very difficult pill to swallow which has real, long term impact on my family. I’m not uncaring - and am certainly less ignorant than I was (thank you) - and I’d not be ok working in such circumstances.

Right, but not all of them eh? If I did a snap survey at the school gate (which obviously I wouldn't be doing in the current circumstances) I think about 1 person would know who Us4Them were.

@Yerroblemom1923

How are parents supposed to work if the kids are at home all the time?! Not everyone can wfh. For many it's 6 hours of childcare where we can go out and earn money.

What do you suggest?

Wanting them open as you want the childcare so let the new strain of the virus really spread, let children get ill, take it home to their families etc? What about school staff? Don’t they deserve the measures other workplaces have?

Anyway, they wanted herd immunity, what they got was covid super-strain. Well fucking done them. Self-obsessed scientific illiterates

Yup.

Seems it is the spike proteins that have changed to be better able to enter the cells as this was more tricky with the young. Then we gave it free reign in schools where unsurprisingly mutations (random) that were better for infecting the available hosts took hold.

What I'm not seeing yet because it's early days is any discussion of what this means for kids viral load which in turn makes it more likely to transmit and makes it more likely that serious illness develops.

Sickened by you trying to turn this into a political party broadcast clav. This is about lives not what colour tie the current incumbent wears and for the record I agree that starmer is also to blame with upping the anti on the schools must stay open no matter what bullshit. Only you are making this party political and envisioning some kind of scoreboard that you seem to be trying to score points on.

Labour’s messaging on covid and schools is ill-informed bullshit.

Their education policies tend to be crap too.

No starry eyes for Labour here.

It’s about science and sense, not party politics.

It doesn't matter whether people at the schol gate know who Us4Them is : Boris Johnson does and they ahve had junkets on main TV channels and columns in MSM.

@noelgiraffe

Labour’s messaging on covid and schools is ill-informed bullshit.

Their education policies tend to be crap too.

No starry eyes for Labour here.

It’s about science and sense, not party politics.

This. Labor have been ill informed throughout this too.

school, beg pardon.

My MP reported that she gets some letters from parents, mainly asking for an end to self isolation for children.. I don't trust my MP, but I do tend to believe this is true.

Are Us4Them to blame for the totally batshit test instead of isolate plan then?

Surely that has to go, with the new extra-spready virus it would be even more irresponsible than it was to start with.

Are Us4Them to blame for the totally batshit test instead of isolate plan then?

I have a suspicion that Us4Them are also anti-sticking things up kids noses.

They wanted to go the French way of not sending home any close contacts at all.

I think the testing plan is because the attendance figures are making Gav look bad but even Gav can’t justify not doing anything when there are positive cases.

And he probably knows some lateral flow test manufacturers looking to offload some dodgy stock.

Good point. Are they anti-vax too?