Schools could be closed until Feb half term!

[DfEisashambles]

Reported in the DM. I’m surprised at this and don’t think it’ll go ahead.

If that Politico report is true, there will be a huge battle going on in Government right now. Hence Gove smarming all over the airwaves this morning. (It doesn’t matter what he says because the public expectation is that whatever is said, the opposite will happen pretty soon.)

Daily Mail. Nuff said.

If this does happen, I just hope more schools have got on board with proper online learning. I know mine hasn't.

You are both assuming that the schools are aware of the abuse. That's a dangerous assumption to make.

I know someone whose child was at a school that was trialing testing of all it's pupils at A level. The results were shocking: constantly lots of completely asymptomatic students. They eventually sent everyone home to do online learning.

orichette lots of people heading off to jobs that could be done from home because their 'bosses want them in'. The Range is open, Matalan is open, Next, Argos ,etc open for click and collect. Boots is opne, and not just the pharmacy bit. Playgrounds all open. People shopping in supermarkets in large family groups. Supermarkets not managing numbers in shops. It feels very very different from April.

I'm a bit confused by this. People are saying this is the same plan that was announced earlier in December. I thought the original plan was for secondary schools in some areas, but not all, to stay closed for a week? Gove seems to be now saying this applies to all secondary schools. I may be misremembering though! To be fair, I think the message will change again soon.

I don't understand the logic. This morning BBC news, sky news etc all headlines with how the NHS is starting to struggle and how cases are rising followed by but schools are going back!
It's ridiculous and we are ending up in an endless cycle of open closed.
Close the schools until feb half term. Tell people now so arrangements can be made and proper online teaching can be put into place

@Oh12lookanothernamechange1234

We know the DM speaks rubbish most of the time.... so let’s hope it is just that... rubbish!!

Sadly on the Covid front when reporting possible actions, they've pretty much been spot on.

Indecent feminist I'm trying to move my older dd to a school who I think is more than worthy to teach her, so ironically, I need her in school! To learn for the 13 + but I do not know what to do.
If she goes back it's highly Likely she will become ill or have to self isolate, she may even miss the test due to this.

I'm so worried but I have t try and get her out of this ridiculous excuse for a school that seemed to dig its heels in to as little as possible.

If she was on line for January, I could relax knowing she's safe, no risk of isolation or sickness and.. She's being taught, so ready for the test!

I think even if schools stay open we should prepare ourselves for ad-hoc last minute closures. I teach in a primary in Tier 4. We had two positives in the last week of term - must be the new variant as we now have 35 positives that have come in over the holidays over three year groups. Our bubbles are tight and staff do not mix, however there are sibling links. We might struggle to open if it was a normal school week as I can imagine it would have spread further.

The government does not care about individual situations of school staff or working parents who will struggle to keep their jobs. I have a CEV toddler at home, it makes no difference - DH and I are both teachers and expected at work in person if schools are open. We are considering sending him to live with grandparents if the situation doesn’t improve, they are lovely but it can’t be good for him. Likewise the government will not care about individual parents who will lose their jobs if schools close.

It’s got to be about community rates and NHS capacity, and which option does the least harm. I don’t think there are any ‘good’ decisions the government could make at the moment.

It seems to be that there needs to be a parent/carer campaign with the type of profile that U4T achieved to support teaching and other schools staff in their campaign for safer schools, and to pressurise the govt into legislating policy that would protect as much as possible parents in the workplace, especially working women, especially lone parents.

Both are long overdue. Schools have been systematically under-funded, under resourced, over-crowded and devalued for years. The sex-based pay gap and other sex-based disadvantages esp for mothers with young children are well researched and documented.

I'm not sure what the latter would look like. Extending the furlough scheme so that one parent can provide childcare doesn't address the work that still needs doing, nor does it provide protection in industries where there have been widespread redundancies.

Some sort of universal basic income, in line with living costs, so that people weren't in the position of losing their homes etc through redundancy and/or having no access to childcare or schooling while working would help.

It's of no benefit to the individual or society that people find themselves in the the position OverTheRubicorn describes upthread. Sure, in a global pandemic, some roles will be redundant, but the same people being disadvantaged repeatedly ie women with children esp lone parents needs to be addressed as a matter of public policy.

The Range is open, Matalan is open, Next, Argos ,etc open for click and collect. Boots is opne, and not just the pharmacy bit

They should all be closed. It's so wrong that people should be able to go shopping to those places and then send their children into school to spread it. Maybe if schools must be open then school children should be banned from all shops unless they are in a single parent family with no other local parent who is able to look after them while the other parent shops. Unless they have SEN then all children of high school age should be banned from shops completely.

What's more important, children being in school or being in shops?

So what are fee paying schools doing? Are they beholden to the same governmental rules?

Not sure what the ‘training’ required for teams/meets/hangouts is? We use it at work and have never been trained. It’s reasonably intuitive, no?

We had a couple of training sessions on Teams before we locked down in March, but there will still members of staff who hadn't worked out/couldn't remember how to stop students from taking over the presentation of the lesson or popping up in and disrupting lessons they weren't even a part of. We also have one colleague who still invites the whole staff to all their lessons. In an office situation, there's an assumption that everyone is working together to make the meeting work. In a school situation, that isn't necessarily the case!
I agree though that there is no excuse for not having done this training by now.

If you read between the lines it looks like the decision is now between schools and everything else.

I don’t think parents can ask the rest of the country to close and stay at home so all kids can go to school. How much would that cost the economy? How many lives? How much damage to the prospects of people in their 20s and the safety of people over 60.

It’s a completely unbalanced approach.

Hostsa I think that sort of stuff is par for the course and surely not a reason to not do it?

On the new years eve thread, someone is proudly declaring that they will be mixing families for it.

There needs to be some sort of circuit breaker closure, even for primaries, something has to be done to reduce the spread. I’m a Primary teacher and I’ve just spend 24 days out of the last 30 days isolating due to positive cases in my class.☹️

There isn't enough social workers to carry this load. They work in partnership with schools etc to identify abuse. Which is pretty much impossible if it's hidden behind closed doors with no one flagging it up in the first place.

So if teachers are instrumental in social care, why aren't we being vaccinated?

@GawdrestyeJerryMentlemen DD is at a fee paying secondary and we have had no notification of online learning for the first week back so I don’t know what’s happening. She isn’t due back until 7th anyway. My understanding is that fee paying still need to follow DofE instructions but o may be wrong. It would be interesting to know what other private schools are doing. She had a full timetable taught live within usual school times last time.

I work in a school and have children in two separate schools. I really don’t think we can equate some people shopping in a controlled environment to school attendance where social distancing is in all reality non existent, even the bubbles aren’t enough when the virus is present. It’s all awful and for us would be beyond a nightmare again but I think the only way is schools and non essential shops to close for January, get the numbers down to a manageable level and then rely on the vaccine to do the same.
I feel as though the government are treating us all like morons with their care for children’s well being rubbish, we know that’s not the case. A proactive rather than reactive decision would make a refreshing change.

"I don’t think parents can ask the rest of the country to close and stay at home so all kids can go to school."

Exactly, particularly when so many of them piss the privilege down the drain and use it as an excuse to break loads of other restrictions as well.

So Sky news is saying there’ll be no change?

On the new years eve thread, someone is proudly declaring that they will be mixing families for it.

New year will be like Halloween/ bonfire night was in October. A week later and Boom. Second peak.

So if teachers are instrumental in social care, why aren't we being vaccinated?

You can ask Boris that. But a lot of social work takes place in hospitals, in vulnerable people's homes, in care homes, with older people. So that will be one good reason for you.