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

Most of the students I actively talk to about this say their mental health is much worse since September than during lockdown. They're worried about isolating (some have had to do it much more than others and they all know it's unfair), they're worried about taking the virus out of school to their families or into school to their teachers, they're worried about their exams and the risible govt response last year, they hate the changes on school which mean it's NOT normal...

If they don't need it why do they go to school? Oh, perhaps it's the socialization aspect. Which I also cannot provide at home. Fab.

With the current situation I really don't see how schools can remain open. Boris needs to do a full lockdown not this tier rubbish but as usual he leaves everything to late.

Kids who don't do well in a classroom always have the option of homeschooling. Kids who struggle at home have no plan b if schools are closed again do they?

Well yes there is the vulnerable and key worker care. We should increase this. Schools are aware who these pupils are.

I've been baffled when seeing some people on here moaning that their child didn't have full time online education during the lockdown and 'just' had some worksheets or only had enough work for an hour etc and it transpires their child is 4 or 5!

Do people really have no clue about the reality of the developmental stage their own children are at? Did they think a 4 or 5 year old needs, or is capable of, 5 hours of structured lessons?

In some countries (with excellent educational outcomes) children don't even start school till they're 7 and spend much shorter hours in school.

GoldenOmber, I read the report. It wasn't modelling what would happen if children were as susceptible as adults. It modelled a variety of effects, one being that children became more contagious, one being that the virus as a whole became more contagious. If I remember right, the virus as a whole being more contagious was the better fit to the data.

I would rather shut down for a month and use this time to get as many ppl vaccinated as possible.This is the only way out of this mess.Hopefully we will have the oxford vaccine rolled out as well.

@Jinglingmod spot on!

My DD missed 4 weeks due to isolation and was so upset. DS missed nearly 8 weeks. It was a shambles with so much uncertainty. Teachers were off last minute, no one knew what was coming next.

BJ always does things too late and too half arsed. He does not learn and we’re seeing this now.

Do people really have no clue about the reality of the developmental stage their own children are at? Did they think a 4 or 5 year old needs, or is capable of, 5 hours of structured lessons?

No, we know they don't do this at school, but we also know a couple of worksheets at home is nowhere near what school offers.

I'm sick of hearing small kids dont matter. Their education doesn't matter. Their friendships and development don't matter. Because they are only 4 or 5.

@TheHoneyBadger

Ok a reception teacher may be along to correct me but....

A 4yo doesn't need full time remote education. An hour or so a day in small bursts (which doesn't have to be between 9 and 3) of counting buttons, sounding out words, reading together, some drawing, some using scissors etc is surely fine? The vast majority of people surely don't need full time input for this from professionals?

I'm not belittling the work of reception teachers but no one is asking you to teach your children rocket science just to keep up reading, sounding out words, playing games like I spy with my little eye something beginning with puh... Some colouring in to help with the development of fine motor skills etc. Just the normal parenting you surely do with young children anyway? Some baking at the weekend using scales and introducing the concept of measuring and some units. Did people really want full time education remotely for 4yo???

I am a ks1 teacher but was in reception for 3 years. There is a reason why one of the prime areas of the EY curriculum is social and emotional development. The other more academic areas just dont happen well without developing social skills, listening skills etc. Children can probably learn to read and count at home but EY is play based to support children socially as well as academically as it is just important. Is it the end of the world if a 4 year old delays learning to count? No. I am more worried about lack of interaction with other children. I do actually think secondary do need to go online for a while until we know more about the new strains. I really do not support full closures for primary because of the implications on working parents as well, which is often minimised? I wonder if a temporary rota system would be better for primary so they can still interact with peers

@TrustTheGeneGenie

To be fair at 4 years old it really won’t matter if he misses education for a couple of months. It’s much more worrying for the older kids but if schools need to close then that’s what has to happen

Ah ok. My child doesn't matter. I see. I'll just watch all his reading and counting skills slowly fade away over the next 6 month's and well start again a year late. Seems like a brilliant idea.

Take your own advice and do a bit of homeschooling with a 4 year old. There plenty of kids out there who were due to start nursery, but couldn’t because of lockdown 1 and even now they are still waiting for a place at nursery due to the backlog. I’ve got a 4 year old little boy and an 11 year old DS about to sit SATs. The education of both is important, however if schools close i don’t think my 4 year old will suffer as much as my 11 year old. Similarly a child in secondary school especially year 10/11 would suffer the most compared to other years.

No point going back for my dd to be then sent home constantly for isolation or because of staff shortages that in my opinion is more disruptive. And I'm in the southeast where cases are very high.

Take your own advice and do a bit of homeschooling with a 4 year old

Yes I'll invite over 23 other small children in an attempt to replicate what he would get from school shall I?

Do you honestly think I don't read / count/ play with him? That's not all school is, is it? And if it is why the hell do we bother?

@trustthegenegenie I don't think anyone is saying your 4yr old doesnt matter. But a few months are not going to affect too badly. I'm sure you can keep up the counting and reading. Socialising is another matter. This is where I worry more with reception , with my own children too who are older but if this is what we have to do then we just have to support them the best we can.

@Remmy123

By the way only a few cases on my son's secondary and 1 in my other child's primary. Not all schools need closing.

It's not just what happens inside schools it's outside schools too!

Where I am (outer London suburb) - almost all the teenage schoolkids I've seen haven't bothered to wear masks - or not properly anyway, don't bother about social distancing and hang around in groups outside chicken shops and other shops etc.

If that's what they do outside school then they probably don't bother to do much in the way of usual mask wearing etc (apart from bare minimum) etc etc...

@Ilovegreentomatoes

That’s just common sense and I agree.

Funnily enough the ‘hysteria’ is coming from the keep schools open. The ones who see the need to protect life and close are the sensible measured ones, who also are very upset about the ramifications but understand it’s necessary.

Roll out the vaccine as a national united effort in Jan.

It seems the virus as a whole has become more infectious (my understanding, though we await the peer reviewed studies etc, is that children were harder to infect due to lower numbers of receptors as I recall, so by being left running rife through schools the virus has been able to adapt to the harder to infect ergo becoming more contagious and creating higher viral loads in the hosts it infects). I'm just thinking logic here and very basic understanding of mutations and adaptations.

What concerns me as well is that if part of the reason that children were less likely to sick with covid was that the virus found it difficult to enter their cells and therefore even when infected they had lower viral loads then now that it has adapted to that will we see more children becoming more ill as they are able to accumulate higher viral loads?

Leaving our children widely exposed in schools has allowed the virus to mutate and adapt to more effectively attack our children. Is anyone really ok with carrying on with this experiment?

@Noellodee

GoldenOmber, I read the report. It wasn't modelling what would happen if children were as susceptible as adults. It modelled a variety of effects, one being that children became more contagious, one being that the virus as a whole became more contagious. If I remember right, the virus as a whole being more contagious was the better fit to the data.

Getting that from this bit:

“Third, we modelled increased susceptibility among children (aged 0-19) by assuming they could be as susceptible as adults (aged 20+) to infection by VOC 202012/01 given exposure. Evidence suggests children are typically less susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults (15, 16) , possibly due to immune cross-protection resulting from infection by other human coronaviruses (17). Our baseline model assumes that 0–19-year-olds are approximately half as susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection as 20+-year-olds (15) ; if this were to change for the new variant, it could have implications for the effectiveness of school closures as a control measure. This model was the least parsimonious model we evaluated (DIC = 11718, ∆DIC = 2323, Fig 2C), and underestimated the observed relative growth rate of COV 202012/01.”

@DfEisashambles

So very sick of the ‘well I don’t care who dies my child is entitled to an education’

No one absolutely no one denies in normal circumstances a child needs an education.

Wake up to what we’re in and stop being so bloody selfish and single minded, life is before everything and people shouldn’t die because you think education comes before their lives.

Amen to this. Well said.

A 4 year old doesnt need much in the way of formal education but a 7 year old or a 9 year old needs more. And they all need input in the way of care and entertainment. Which is bloody hard to do if you are working from home full time and impossible if you need to leave home to work. So, like it or not, there is a whole childcare angle to primary schooling as well as an educational one.

For secondary schools I think blended learning should be considered - far better than full time schooling that isnt full time because of hotpotch isolation. And ffs bringing mask wearing in class!

bring in mask wearing

[quote Kitcat122]@trustthegenegenie I don't think anyone is saying your 4yr old doesnt matter. But a few months are not going to affect too badly. I'm sure you can keep up the counting and reading. Socialising is another matter. This is where I worry more with reception , with my own children too who are older but if this is what we have to do then we just have to support them the best we can.[/quote]
I can't support him with socialising if it is illegal again, can I? He's an only child. There is no provision for him to see another child. It was months last time and it had a huge effect on him. It was late summer by the time he stopped flinching at strangers in the street, and believe me thinking our influence, we didn't isolate him. It will happen a second time and it'll regress and 2nd time and nobody will care as long as we're saving the elderly generation and the nhs. I mean in 10 years when him and has friends all have various mh issues there'll be another drive to save the nhs because it won't cope.

Lots of people working class people will need to make sacrifices lose any chance of their children advancing through education for the greater good of our country middle class people being able to freely holiday abroad again.

Fixed this for you.

For The Greater Good... 🧟‍♂️

@TrustTheGeneGenie

If they don't need it why do they go to school? Oh, perhaps it's the socialization aspect. Which I also cannot provide at home. Fab.

No one is saying they don't "need" it. Just that at the moment there are more vital things, and you can keep the basics ticking over at home.

Leaving our children widely exposed in schools has allowed the virus to mutate and adapt to more effectively attack our children. Is anyone really ok with carrying on with this experiment?

The virus doesn't want to attack our children ffs. It wants to use them as carriers. That's why they get milder as they mutate because there's much more chance of it being passed on. Why are you using the word "attack"? To promote an emotional response?