The infection rate for pupils last week was 2,509 out of 100,000!!

[SoscaredforJan]

The Times today had reported that the infection rate for secondary pupils last week was 2,509 out of 100,000!! With the rate for primary school pupils close behind.

That’s absolutely shocking.

Rates of 300+ per 100,000 in the South East led to the emergency Tier 4 announcement at the weekend.

Rates among secondary school children are approx nine times this and primaries not far behind.

There can no longer be any conversation about schools remaining open. They need to close to all but key workers and the vulnerable and not reopen until the government has provided the money and means to make them truly ‘Covid secure’ or until enough people have been vaccinated.

How many deaths will we have in a months time when those infections have transferred to the elderly and vulnerable? How many more mutations will we have if the virus is allowed to carry on running through children? I for one do not want to find out that they vaccine no longer works.

It’s time to do what needs to be done. It’s tough and awful for everyone but it has to be done. The schools need to close.

Yeah, those posters going ‘well I can’t see any evidence that teachers are dying in massive numbers so schools are fine’ should get their heads out of their arses, look at the huge numbers of cases and death rate and consider whether letting covid run rampant through a section of the population that doesn’t exist in a vacuum is such a super idea after all.

I really struggled to home school last time and my DC benefit hugely from being in school but we need to what we need to do to keep all communities safe. My two school aged DCs got covid 2 weeks ago and one is still getting night sweats at night. None of them had the three symptoms that would qualify for a test so I would have missed it if it wasn't for their dad testing positive. Goodness knows how long they had it beforehand.

[quote AldiAisleofCrap]**@Bibidy* But equally I can see why as kids need to be educated and every month they are closed puts them further behind.*
I keep seeing this behind trotted out, behind what exactly? The arbitrary line the DofE and Ofsted have created. It doesn’t not matter if children do not learn X Y and Z in year 4 or 7 or even 11. Do people believe every child in the world learns the identical curriculum, and without that very specific knowledge they will have no life chances.[/quote]
Well...no. But the reality is that in order to get a job etc most of them need to pass exams which cover the subjects they are meant to be learning at school.

Ideologically, of course it would be nice if there wasn't a prescribed curriculum which is essentially plucked out of the air, but there is. And so it does matter if children lose time and don't cover the topics they need to know.

No one has to be 'behind', surely we recalculate a new normal given interruption to schooling.
I'm hoping we find new positives in learning, more I interest, more resilience and independence.

@Bibidy Well...no. But the reality is that in order to get a job etc most of them need to pass exams which cover the subjects they are meant to be learning at school The answer to that is to change the exam content.

AldiAisleofCrap

Absolutely! I find this recent veneration of education staggering in its hypocrisy.

People demanding schools stay open should just be honest ..... this has nothing to do with some sudden love of education and everything to do with not having 6 hours free child care a day. Thousands of children miss a year or more of formal education due to ill health /family circumstances and no one decides they are doomed forever. We have a curriculum that is essentially in place for one thing .... to teach kids stuff so that we can test that stuff and then make entirely arbitrary and often incorrect decisions about how clever they are and/or how good the school is based on these test, most of which have very little to do with skills required for jobs. Life skills (reading, writing and number) can be taught and caught up after years of missing school.
But parents need /want free child care and so they are willing to sacrifice this to a higher death rate. Stopping a pandemic require breaking chains of transmission and limiting exponential growth. If you don’t, then the virus finds its way to the vulnerable and kills them. Keeping schools open means this will happen as schools are small space/lots of people for prolonged periods which are the high transmissions factors for this virus and so the pandemic will go on longer and more people will die.

My youngest is six, I couldn't do a thing with him.

I'm sorry to hear that. There'll be a minimum of three hours a day for you to do with him, though, Ofsted have said. Let's see how many parents of six year olds manage. And before you blame the teachers, our school kept children in lower primary on track with the main bits on about an hour a day.

"any of you close the school brigade happy."

And there it is! Gives you away each time.

Just who on here is a member of this so-called "brigade?"

Those numbers are wilding wrong anyway! My DD tested positive with a runny nose and stomach ache! I tested her on a whim. Half the class apparently had those symtoms in the last week yet she was the only positive test in school. I tested her because I was paranoid as I have heart disease. No one else would’ve bothered testing in a million years, my other DD 7 has since has the same thing with only those two symptoms, the countries crawling in it.

close the school brigade

There is no ‘close the school’ brigade among teachers on here, sorry to disappoint you though.

I'm now part of the close schools brigade - though as far as I know, I'm in a brigade of one out of the teachers on here.

I listened to the Commons science and technology committee hearing earlier and I don't think with the increase in infectivity and the rate at which this strain gaining dominance, that there is any way we will be able to keep schools open. My only hope is that the virus has got milder (a hope for which there is no evidence).

I do not think better ventilation, masks, or lateral flow testing will help. I think possibly a combination of proper mass PCR testing, masks, and rotas might work, but I think the chances of us getting all of that are somewhere between Bob Hope and Soap on a Rope Hope.

So yeah. I do think schools should close, to the vast majority of students at least. I hope I'm wrong. I'll be going in and teaching anyway, regardless of my concerns. I won't pass them on to the kids I teach. Parents of my students will probably say "Thank God the teachers at my school don't think like the ones on Mumsnet."

So I work in schools (supply teacher) and I'm a trainee social worker. Blanket closure of primary schools is one of the worst things I think the govt can do looking at the long term thinking of child welfare. Staggered secondary returns yes, part time bubbles, probably shielding vulnerable school staff definitely, but the amount of child protection issues raised in the first lockdown was the worst I have ever seen. Also, in my experience, the vulnerable children asked to come in when schools close don't and there are lots of children on the edge who don't really show up when not at school. I would happily work in schools, even when numbers are high if I was given some form of protection and it was made safe.

I'm in the close the schools brigade. Not a teacher though.

The situation now is very different to how it was in March.

We have 1 vaccine approved and being rolled out. We have oxford vaccine (hopefully!) About to be approved.

If we lockdown and close schools for 2 months then numbers will reduce and the majority of vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

It won't be like last time. We have an end in sight now.

Let's just get there without killing a shit load more people

I would happily work in schools, even when numbers are high if I was given some form of protection and it was made safe.

But meanwhile, in the absence of any protection and no means to make it safe, what happens?

I feel so angry about this.
For months many school staff have been saying that their schools are rife with Covid. There was a complete media blackout on the situation. Whenever anybody questioned members of the government, the reply was that school children are not spreading it, along with a robotic mantra of ‘schools must stay open no matter what’.
Now they’ve finally admitted that secondary aged children are spreading covid and its mutated in a worrying way.
A complete shit show.

To be honest, all the school's I've worked in (all primary) are fairly safe. Not many staff have caught it and those who have generally probably not got it off pupils (had other contacts test positive). I'd keep going in especially with testing. My sister is a secondary school teacher and I do think it is different. I don't think people realise the roles schools play in checking children are being fed and looked after properly nor realise how vulnerable and precarious their families are. I'm talking children actually coming to real harm. I can honestly say first hand I know of more kids actually having long term negative effects from not being in school than from catching covid. I do know there is a bigger picture though and I think there is a role for maybe partial closures or hybrid learning especially in secondar.

No they don’t! Keep schools open

I think part of the problem was that they were closed so long the first time round.

The virus is seasonal. They should have gone back in May when the weather was better and kids could have been outside more.

They missed so much education. All the reports coming out now are showing the huge impact missing those months have had. A month or so would have had less impact. Instead we sent them all back in one go in September just when the hospitals start to come under more pressure and we enter peak virus season.

We should have had them there from May then closed again in December maybe.

Unfortunately since they’ve missed so much now there’s less appetite to close them just when it would have far more impact than June/July.

Press conference is alluding schools will stay open IMO.

I would really prefer that testing was a much more accessible option.

My dd’s teacher and apparently only one pupil had covid (they were positive within days so I think they either infected one or the other or there were silent spreaders with no symptoms). I don’t believe that for a second.

Testing is too difficult to get done - it needs to be better, quicker. What happened to that mass testing exercise in Liverpool??? That showed a high rate of people with covid but no symptoms.

I despair at this government.

It's so hard to hear them saying on the one hand, like Dr jenny harries, wear masks in crowds and around people you don't know, then in the next breath saying, there is joy evidence that teachers are at risk?!

No evidence teachers are at risk and tra la la... Off you go!!