London School of Hygiene & Medicine states that all schools need to be closed

[SoscaredforJan]

Pre-print of the new B.1.1.7 lineage published 23rd Dec 2020.

“Our estimates suggest that control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number Rt to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed.

We project that large resurgences of the virus are likely to occur following easing of control measures.

It may be necessary to greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden.”

cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html

So, what would you suggest happens in this scenario:

2 parents, one a frontline emergency worker, the other an NHS support services worker whose job can be done at home. 2 primary school children who would need supervising. Don't qualify as requiring keyworker care as one of them can and does work from home. Neither can be furloughed as both public sector keyworkers. How on earth are they supposed to work and supervise their DC satisfactorily?

I get that schools cannot carry on as they are but people suggesting 1 parent is furloughed- that person's work doesn't disappear and still needs doing (unless you are an industry that has been shut down) so how do you suggest businesses function in that way?

Any other options?
Is it black or white? Plan B was meant to be 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off?
How the hell are other countries managing it? I am worried about the BHS being overwhelmed. That is the most dystopian thing about this. We can't have people dying in agony in their homes or in hospital corridors, we cant write off some children dying if it is avoidable.

[quote Gobbolino7825]@CleverCatty I guess I just want to know how this would work in practice. Lots of people can't be furloughed as the jobs they do are too important to the businesses they work in. There is literally no one else who can do the job I do at my work, but I also cannot adequately supervise home learning if it is not very heavily teacher led, online, live etc. A few worksheets / videos uploaded to Google classroom or whatever is not adequate teaching when it comes to remote learning. I fear that is what is in store for us if the schools close in our area as the provision was absolutely shocking during the first lockdown.[/quote]
I actually agree with you here - worksheets and videos aren't adequate teaching when it comes to remote learning!

My DP's when I see them both do online language lessons and it's more than just worksheets and videos.

But then again - it's down to the schools and teachers and education system to arrange adequate remote learning.

Unfortunately I do think schools will have to be closed for a period but with adequate provision for home learning in place.

I also agree that some people cannot be furloughed.

@happystone

The problem is Boris has put his head in the sand

Yep - totally.

Really the education structure for teaching children at home hasn't been thought out at all - it's more of a sticking plaster effect - let's let the teachers handle it but it's ok for them to just do the bare minimum for home learning. What on earth Gareth Williamson and his department is doing is beyond me....

[quote mumsneedwine]@Benhew how have they missed 2 terms !??? We have been open (as much as we could) last term, and taught on line for summer term. I'm confused as to why any child can have missed 2 terms.[/quote]
Summer term we had no provision (the curriculum was suspended so our school provided nothing from mid-March) and we then had a late Sept re-start. The school closed for a bit due to cases in October and they have spent more time re-capping and catching children up and bubbles bursting. My son has not moved forward with his education at all, i have home-tutored him in maths and it is obvious to see the effects but he is lucky I am able to provide that, many of his peers' parents aren't. Another term of disruption concerns me greatly, not for my child so much but for others.

I can only think of some combination of:

• strengthen existing furlough scheme and legal protections around it
• increase keyworker provision (no 'oh well if you can WFH you can do it while home educating three children under 10 and looking after a 2-year-old')
• public accepts that a lot of services are just not going to be able to run through another lockdown, even more so than last time round. Including all the invisible things that you don't see until they don't happen. Public services have already been cut to the bone by years of austerity measures and we just can't do even half our normal jobs, and deal with the extra work required by the pandemic, and do it all with our children at home.

@Benhew that is not good by the school and I'm sorry for that. We taught all the way through and have been teaching in person and remotely (for those isolating) all term. However some clssses have missed out as we can't be in 2 places at once and teachers have been too unwell to teach - one did try from a ward but nurses told her off.

A lot of older primary school children can work without too much supervision if there is good support from the school. The issue that hasn’t really been addressed is the hugely variable provision across the country. Personally I think some live interaction helps enormously and a daily check in should be the standard. Nothing replaces having your teacher checking that you’ve done the work, the parent relationship is not the same. The interaction with people outside the home when you are in isolation is also vital. There needs to be a defined minimum standard.

Thanks to those who responded - I'm afraid I just caught up and have forgotten much of what I read because it then moved onto people just moaning about schools provision in the first lockdown.

I totally get people don't want to be inconvenienced but we can't continue with things as they are in secondary schools. It's just not feasible to let covid run rampant through society because working parents don't want their children at home between 9 and 3.

From one of the people who did the study:

Can we avoid closing schools? Model would say yes, provided transmission can be reduced in other sectors to compensate.

It's also possible that contact patterns will drop more in Tier 4 than they did during the November lockdown, which could help keep more schools open. Early data from mobility indices (like Google's Community Mobility) will help scientists to assess this.

I suspect UK scientists will be asked soon to look at different policy options in much greater detail than we were able to do here. This will give others and ourselves a chance to check our preliminary findings against new data coming in.

mobile.twitter.com/_nickdavies/status/1342067566479601664

How many threads are you going to start Op?

"Inconvenienced " more minimising.

Increased keyworker provision requires more people who are able to provide this ie teachers who are not either unwell or socially isolating.

Most schools managed to maintain keyworker provision in the spring/summer even during the Easter and half-term holidays.

Given the rates of infection currently among school populations including staff and that this new variant appears to spread more quickly around children, it's not a given that there will be enough teaching staff able to be on site to provide enhanced keyworker provision.

Yet working parents are already much more burnt out than they were in the spring having lived through months of this, and it looks like demand for keyworker places will be higher as people who just about managed to wfh and have their young children there have run out of emotional reserves to do it again and are worried about the effects on their children of being out of school again. Although many children have missed huge chunks of the autumn term due to multiple isolation periods.

I don't know what the answer is, but I agree that there needs to be some modelling based on part-time schooling, with the emphasis on primary, vulnerable and SEN children being on site as much as possible and the emphasis for most secondary aged children to be shifted to online for the first bit of 2021.

No-one thinks this is ideal, desirable or an alternative to face-to-face teaching but 'as good as we can do' is all we can hope for at the moment.

@Remmy123

If course closing wouid reduce numbers, dont need scientists to tell us that!! The issue is our kids need and are entitled to an education.

If kids are at home how do parents work?!

Sick and tired of people staying the bloody obvious!!

This. I bet the authors are either childfree or have significant support from partners to be even able to get time to write such a report.

There are probably more creative ways to solve some people's childcare problems. Like two families having childcare bubbles - perhaps those who are furloughed / part-time helping their child plus one or two others at a time (either online which would be zero risk or in person across a small bubble).

That has to be better in terms of infection than hundreds mixing in schools (and on the way to and from).

We're not very creative as a country though seemingly so it'll be up to individuals to figure it out.

If we do end up online again I'll probably try and see if there's another family we can bubble up with from my DD's school for tutoring purposes.... One taking the morning shift, the other the afternoon. Something like that.

My setting went on line and did it themselves, they didn't wait for anyone to tell them and so did many other schools, just not my dc

The safeguarding procedures of handing over kids to random furloughed workers is insane though. You can't assume every worker has a handy furloughed mate willing to step in to home educate their child.

I don't understand why we need to close schools. We seem to be obsessed with infection rate, while the reality is that most people who got the virus recover quickly and it is no more dangerous than a flu. On the other hand, I can see how school closure has allowed privately educated children to speed ahead while state school kids languish and working parents suffer massive stress (which is a lot worse than Covid).

The increased need for childcare places is not only because parents are burnt out emotionally or don’t want their children at home 9-3. The situation for employers has changed, many can no longer allow the luxury of working from home as they need all hands on deck. A lot more keyworkers and others are now required to be in the workplace. It was a small minority of those eligible who took places last time. It does need to be factored in when considering further steps. In that respect a total may help as employers could be encouraged to work around it e.g by altering part time work patterns, altering shifts, allowing weekend or evening work. If there was some type of small financial compensation then I’m sure it would be more attractive.

Lots of people, mainly women, did adjust their hours, work in the evenings, at the weekends etc during the spring/summer school closures. Lots of people work that way anyway.

But if people need to be in their workplace, that doesn't resolve childcare issues, unless parents can 'tag team' on shifts which is another thing lots of working families do anyway.

I do agree with you that there should be a mandatory requirement for some type of daily 'check in' at least with all pupils.

Schools should also be able to use their usual procedures to escalate concerns about pupils eg persistent absence, which they weren't able to do in the spring as there was no obligation for parents to 'check in' with the school.

Can we avoid closing schools? Model would say yes, provided transmission can be reduced in other sectors to compensate.

@CoffeeandCroissant that is an important proviso, isn't it?

We should have kept pubs, restaurants and non-essential shops closed, so we can keep schools open ...

People need to understand that in order to keep schools open, we ALL have to keep faithfully to greater restrictions in all other areas of our private & public lives.

Is this a sacrifice we are all prepared to make?

The problem with this disease is that it's most easily transmitted in closed, indoor spaces, where there's little distance between people, and people are talking. That's a definition of school classrooms, but ALSO of all our homes.

But there are limits to how much the government can regulate our behaviour in private.

Yes they did but I think you’ll find a lot of employers can no longer be so flexible because there is increased demand/ they are now in financial difficulties/ they thought it was temporary/ they have now spent the money to make their workplaces covid secure/ they saw reduced productivity.

On not sure what level of childcare we are talking about, obviously babies, toddler needs constant watching.

But older dc are surely easier to handle? To occupy even if it's screen then ask them to jump around, do Jo wicks, get some paints out? Moments away from a computer to give them different activities?

Is it ideal? No but it's a pandemic!

working parents don't want their children at home between 9 and 3.

It's not that I don't want. It's that I can't be a "working parent" with my DS at home. He's too little to amuse himself and needs proper supervision. So it's an either/or situation. EITHER he's at home OR I work.

You might say that's my problem as a parent to deal with and I suppose it is. My options are (i) take unpaid leave; (ii) quit; or (iii) hire a temporary nanny, if that continues to be allowed. What is not an option is to try to simultaneously work and look after a 3 year old. We're lucky in that these are all feasible options for our family. We could get by without me earning for a bit and, while a nanny would stretch us financially (especially if we were still paying nursery fees/a nursery retainer), we could cover that for a little bit. Most families are not in this situation and any of (i)-(iii) would leave them in a financially difficult situation.

But there's also an additional issue - the work which is then not being done by these parents. Some jobs, like mine, aren't "key" - or at least I'm not key - I love my work but my employer could probably find a childless replacement for me so my adult students wouldn't suffer too much.

But what about key workers working from home like NHS workers (including admin), civil servants, transport, Covid response planners and others who need to work to keep society functioning? Are we expecting them to be up with their young children from 7am-7pm, do the chores, and then login at 7pm for an 8 hour shift? I tried working these sorts of hours in the last lockdown - it's completely unsustainable and I came close to a complete breakdown. Or should they lock their young children in the next room and throw a sandwich in there every now and again?