Looking back on the Autumn term

[Mummabeary]

I have always tried to read lots of articles and opinions throughout this pandemic to try before forming any opinions. I remember over the summer reading a lot on here and other places about how we were walking into disaster by reopening schools full time etc and I was unsure. Just looking earlier at the attached graph of excess deaths, I was thinking that whilst there have been problems with education as it has stood this term (absences etc), if you look back at the excess death figures especially compared with March it actually hasn't been terrible when weighed up against the fact that 11 million youngsters in the UK have had a term of education and socialisation. When I am saying "not terrible", I mean from a population level of deaths during a pandemic, not that any of those deaths of individuals weren't in any way awful to loved ones.

I suppose the point I'm trying to make is, had we gone for part time schooling or closed schools, I'm sure a lot of people would have said "imagine how the spread would have been with schools open!" and envisaging something bigger than the March peak. And that did not happen.

Just thinking about this with January in mind. It's all very well to close schools and then say "imagine what would have happened with them open" but really we can never know. But we can know for sure the downsides of 11 million children not receiving an education.

OK government person.

Is this where we're at? Not as many people have died as could have?

How about some proper funding for schools.

I think you misunderstand me. I'm not saying there shouldn't be better funding and solutions. I guess I'm saying that, based on much speculation I read on here in the summer which I listened to, if you'd asked me to draw how I would have predicted the red line to look by now, I would have predicted worse. And I'm glad the Government took the stance they did to prioritise education as if they'd taken a different stance we would maybe have predicted the "might have been" as much worse without knowing the actual situation. I just thinking it's worth bearing in mind when taking the decision for January.

I agree op.

Most on here won't. This is an echo chamber for school closures.

Of course there should be more funding for schools, but the government have been absolutely right to keep them open.

The unions didn't even want them opened back in bloody June when cases were at 600 per day. Says it all really.

I suppose it's the constant prioritising of the "might" over the "known."
If schools stay open the NHS MIGHT be overrun.
If schools are closed, we KNOW it will mean some children are open to much more abuse, deprivation and educational inequality increases. But people seem to want to prioritise the MIGHT because that's scary for their families and could affect them. Whereas the known things can be dismissed for many in society as "things which affect other people."

In that time we’ve also had millions of kids at home isolating away from the classroom, a 4 week lockdown, businesses go bust, tiers of restrictions, a new strain of covid that proliferated in secondary schools, the number of daily cases now all time high and hospitals are running out of oxygen.

So I guess it depends on your measure of success really.

L

@noblegiraffe

The thing is all those things you mentioned would likely still have happened with schools closed or part time. There would obviously still have been many missed school hours, businesses would still have gone bust and there would have been restrictions - for one thing, businesses wouldn't have been able to operate with all the staff absences to cover the childcare. The mutant strain was outside of anyone's control. So I would not say in any way it's been a "success" but perhaps it's been the lesser of two evils. If schools had been shut then that graph would likely have looked similar or only marginally lower - but with a massive loss of education this term and all the joy, routine and normality that school brings to millions of youngsters.

If schools had been shut then that graph would likely have looked similar or only marginally lower

Well that’s pure speculation, scientists certainly think that closing schools would have had more than a marginal impact. School kids are the most infected subset of the population and transmission in schools is basically unmitigated. There’s some suspicion that schools were a breeding ground for this new strain.

I want schools open, have always wanted them open, but to suggest that closing them would have only had minimal impact on virus spread is bizarre.

I'm not saying minimal impact on viral spread but I'm talking about impact on excess deaths. Given we're in a pandemic & given the impacts on health (particularly the elderly) of lockdown, surely the best to be hoped for on that graph would be somewhere within the upper end of the blue region from week 42 onwards where it diverges. So even if all excess deaths were caused solely by schools being opened, it's not huge huge numbers, not in the regions of deaths which were being feared.

It's a heartless way to look at it, but you wouldn't obviously stop all UK children's education to save one life. But equally you might to save 100,000 lives. So there's got to be a tipping point in between those two numbers where it becomes worth closing schools. And that graph does not convince me that a huge catastrophe was caused by keeping schools open. But had we closed them, I'm sure everyone would have imagined we had averted huge numbers of deaths because we would never have known the reality above.

I just feel that needs bearing in mind for any January decisions.

@Mummabeary do you use this username specifically for the coronavirus board or do you only use MN for this board?

If we are looking at January, what you also need to bear in mind is where the case numbers and deaths were at the start of September, and where they are now.

You also need to consider exponential growth.

You cannot use the effect of schools being open since September on excess deaths now to argue that it would have a similar effect keeping them open in January with incredibly high case rates and a new and more transmissible strain.

I'm glad the schools were open for the Autumn term.

I don't think they should be open in January.

@OppsUpsSide Why are you asking?

@noblegiraffe @Foilball I'm not sure. You both may be right about Jan and sadly none of us has a crystal ball. I just felt reminded today with all the 'close schools' threads of August and felt that maybe it was worth revisiting that decision against data.

I also know this is about more than just deaths & there is long covid etc. It just strikes me that this argument is well made & it's possible to read many disturbing stories of youngish people whose lives have been very badly affected by this. And I get this is very tough - we only get one life and if people are now faced with years of potential disability from the disease that's awful and tragic. But nowhere can the 5 year old who also only gets one chance at life tell the story of how they missed multiple terms of schooling when they were just learning to read and had no input at home. They were never able to catch up the gap & their whole life chances changed. This will be many children. It's all very well saying its just a few months etc but children have a limited window where their brains are malleable and absorb things like reading and writing readily. Sometimes this side of the story doesn't seem to get told.

But there are huge gaps in education due to the amount of isolating students, even using a combination of face to face and online teaching it hasn't really worked. All that has happened is that the students lucky enough not to have had to isolate have had more face to face teaching that those who have - thus increasing the gap. Some students have had several isolation periods where others have had none. Clearly very unfair.

If all students were required to learn online like the first lockdown then they will be at more of a similar place to where they would be had lockdown not happened. They all miss the same amount.

And the joy, normality and routine are non-existent in schools except for the pretence staff use to make students feel safe.

It's been hard.

@Mummabeary because I am interested

@ScubaSteven

I disagree. Maybe you are thinking of a different age group whereas I am more specially thinking of infant year groups where the fundamentals of reading, writing and numeracy are taught. If little Jack only gets 8 weeks of school due to isolating versus little Harry down the road who gets12, the key thing is that Jack has still had 8 weeks of learning how to read/write etc at the age where it's crucial. Both of them having 12 weeks of online provision is pointless if there's no one at home to support Jack to learn & he is too young to engage with online learning/ has no equipment.

Infants don't actually need to learn to read and write you know. Some countries don't even start school till age 6/7. Kids will catch up. Their grandparents won't become un-dead. It's as blunt as that I'm afraid.

@Agoodbriskwalk precisely, you've hit the nail on the head. As much as education is important, lives will always be more important.

OP, I'm a secondary teacher and a parent of a 5 year old. I'd be ashamed to say that my five year old being able to write is more important than someone's life. Of course secondary is easier to move online, the added issue is that they don't have the years left to catch up. Primary children have years left to catch up, of course the long term effects of missed education may always be an issue for some but there isn't a magic point where children/adults aren't able to learn the basics.

The preferred option is that this didn't happen in the first place, but preserving life should be the priority.