Those wanting school open - are you not worried about your DC?

[Hicksville21]

Just that really. Do you not think it’s time to keep our kids home safe until this wave passes?

As it happens I can teach my mildly SEN child more effectively from home than the teachers can in school - that was proven over the first lockdown. The problem is that doing that means I can't work, either to earn money or just to keep up an employment record. The toll this is taking on women particularly will as usual never be recognised nor rewarded. I am also not happy about the proposals that education staff will have to test my children regularly - probably TAs, as they get landed with everything. They're not paid or trained to do it and training in schools ime is derisory anyway. I don't want unqualified staff shoving swabs down my children's throats in a resentful hurry.

You are a key worker, and like other key workers, you find yourself in a situation where there is some risk in you doing your duties. You can of course decide your role as a key worker is not for you and get another job

It is way more than some risk. There are medical professionals working frontline saying they wouldn’t be in our shoes. There are no mitigation measures whatsoever in the majority of schools. Why do you consider that acceptable?

As for ‘get another job’, teachers were leaving in droves before that. Plenty more have gone and for me, the suggestion that I should be doing the job of a medical professional on top of my teaching duties is one too far. If my head insists, I will resign without notice. It’s really not worth it.

@cantkeepawayforever

I feel some posters are trying to gaslight you into thinking you've said the wrong thing. This in essence takes away from the valid points you were raising.

I honestly didn't read it like you were dismissing anything. You were explaining that children's mental health and staff's mental health both need consideration.

Thank you.

I think it is one of those cases where we can't consider the needs of a single group in isolation, but need to consider the community as a whole, both in terms of physical health - of children, their families and households, school staff and the wider community the whole group comes into contact with - and mental health.

@cantkeepawayforever

I honestly didn't read it like you were dismissing anything. You were explaining that children's mental health and staff's mental health both need consideration.

Thank you.

I think it is one of those cases where we can't consider the needs of a single group in isolation, but need to consider the community as a whole, both in terms of physical health - of children, their families and households, school staff and the wider community the whole group comes into contact with - and mental health.

Absolutely right.

As teachers and parents we want our schools to be open as we know the damage it can cause to mental health. However the risks are high and increasing. We need support to keep schools open safely.

People posting about their child’s mental health was dismissed as nothing by you

Why does my vulnerable to covid child’s mental health not matter to you? He is massively impacted by what he is experiencing in school, yet desperately wants to be with his friends and values education. Why does he not matter?

@Elephant4

There is so much variation in response to OP's question.

It should be down to parental choice, I think.

The issue with this is that if a child is still on roll at the school but the parent is keeping them home then where is the education coming from? Teachers don't have time to be planning, resourcing and marking lessons for school and home.

If the government would just give schools some money and some help to make them safer, it would be better all round and I could actually just do my normal day job.

Am I worried about my pre pubescent children having Covid? No. No more than I worried about them having chicken pox, which was not a lot. I am not particularly concerned about catching it myself either. We’re low risk, we go nowhere else/see no one else to potentially infect others and just looking at our family cost benefit calculation I would like them to be at school.

But there comes a point, which I think in some areas at least we’ve now reached, where school being open causes too much distress/potential illness to the staff, who have the right to feel differently about catching covid than I do. I do think though that any closures should be very time limited and on the basis of an overhaul of the vaccination programme priorities. And that schools should be the first things reopened, instead of what happened last summer, where they were pretty much last.

are there any teachers on this thread?

I will resign without notice. It’s really not worth it.

I will be resigning next week if there is nothing better put in place than we currently have, I’m not in the position to be able to take the risk.

[quote herecomesthsun]@hamstersarse

I’m sorry you have anxiety about the situation,

That is a really offensive way to dismiss the teacher's concerns.

Teaching and education is a vital irreplaceable part of our culture,development, long term wealth and health. We cannot afford to throw this away.

So why not fund education properly to open safely. As without proper precautions funded by government the schools cannot stay open.

People posting about their child’s mental health
We have MORE people in hospital with covid than in April and 40k cases per day (a fraction of the real total, let's see the next ONS survey).

I do not think being in the centre of a pandemic, watching their teachers and possibly their parents get ill, will be very good for children's mental health either. Especially if they are almost inevitably going to be infected by the damn virus and some of them are going to, at the very lest, feel very poorly with it.

You can of course decide your role as a key worker is not for you and get another job.
Just fuck off with that. Why can we not make the schools safer? Or offer options like work from home if pupils and parents can manage to support that?

We don't have enough teachers (when will you right wing apologists get that into your heads). Please don't piss them off, for the rest of our children's sakes.

#not a teacher, just a parent[/quote]
You dismiss children’s mental health again there, kind of proving the point.

And I happen to believe that if you aren’t suited to the job and all it entails, then leave! There are plenty of newly unemployed people who will jump at the chance to train.

Also, what does ‘safely’ even mean? If you mean absolutely no risk (which I think you do) then you mean closing schools, and I don’t think that is a good thing. For children, ergo all of us.

I remember a time when Whitty said most of us will get this virus...and most of us will be completely fine...when did people decide that that wasn’t true and the strategy was total safety?

May you live, I found that also, I really unlocked dd and got her moving and learning. Covid has probably saved her education, along with some amazing people we know.

It was extremely frustrating for me to be working with students on line, sometimes extremely intensely, and yet no one would do the same for my child, so on my breaks I had to educate her.

If you look at the office of national statistics death rate was higher in 2018 then this year and almost on par with 2019, did we shut down the country then??? School isn't glorified childcare. My daughter wouldn't really suffer homeschooling as she learns differently but my son really requires being in a classroom with a teacher, he really struggled last lockdown. Everyone should make a decision based on their own circumstances. I don't see how me losing my job and my children being homeless will benefit them in anyway, and actually I am high risk with Kidney Disease and autoimmune conditions and still believe my children should be in school. We take a risk waking up each morning - could fall down the stairs and die etc. The ones who are fearful and worried keep your kids at home but the rest of us who have to also provide, want their children to have an education from somebody who is qualified and trained to provide it don't really have a choice. Teachers who are high risk would be vaccinated pretty soon anyway. Teachers are really doing there job just like a lot of other people are, if it's at a point where you can't fathom taking that risk then maybe look for a different occupation whilst the pandemic is ongoing. I have had people leave my place of work due to being terrified being on the front line, they did what they thought was best for them based on their own circumstances and made their own decision. It should be left up to individuals

Lots, LoveNote

@GoldenLabbie

Many parents in this country see schools as a free child minding service. So to answer your question, no they don’t care.

What a disgusting thing to say

Also, what does ‘safely’ even mean? If you mean absolutely no risk (which I think you do)

No one here can help you with that unfounded presumption

Yes, I am worried. I work across schools and have seen first hand the lack of safety measures, it just is not possible to keep children safe.

Whilst schools are open, I'm also dealing with MH issues of children who are at school, anxiety about catching COVID, especially where their friends have, guilt for passing COVID on to family members and more seriously the long term MH issues on children where staff members have died. Horrendous for them in lost relationships, guilt in a 'was sitting next to him, did I pass it on' worry.

I also balance the needs of the vulnerable who have been identified and supported because school closure is a challenge, with children where school closure has been a huge benefit.
Children who have developed so much independence in their learning and made more progress than they do in school whilst working at home.
School refusers who had the pressure to attend every day taken away and were happier and more able to learn.
SEN & vulnerable pupils who attended school during lockdown and benefited from smaller groups, more attention and less structure. They too made more progress than usual.

All irrelevant though as schools can't stay open without staff. With rates of COVID so high, school staff must be at least proportionally affected. No staff, no school.

@LoveNote

are there any teachers on this thread?

Yes I am, and clinically extremely vulnerable and now even more so as I'm about to add on another drug which puts me at risk

I've taught in a special needs school throughout, not shielded and very much want schools open.

I will continue to work and continue to send my kids as key worker kids or if schools are open.

I've not been worried for me or them or DH at any point

Very worried. Not planning on sending them in until as long as the virus remains out of control (Hancock's words 2 weeks ago, we are now at a whole new level of 'out of control' now!!). I also feel sorry for the teachers who have no say in this. Totally unfair.

Schools should remain open only if they can be made safer with rota systems for part time attendance, masks in classrooms and PPE for teachers.

@OppsUpsSide

Also, what does ‘safely’ even mean? If you mean absolutely no risk (which I think you do)

No one here can help you with that unfounded presumption

But you could answer the actual question, right?

How do you suggest schools are made ‘safe’?

Hi Pandemic, I recognise that frustration! If only motherhood were recognised as a job! Don't know how you've managed both though, congratulations.

The slanging match on here is bizarre. Many many things matter and are very important, including the following:

Children's physical health
Children's mental health
Safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children
Access to education
Access to childcare for younger children
Preventing the entrenchment of future inequality
Teachers' physical health
Teachers' mental health
Parents' physical health (especially the clinically vulnerable)
Parents' mental health
Parents' ability to work and secure the economic wellbeing of their children
Preventing further damage to the economy and increases in the social security bill.
Reducing the spread of the virus

Just because a working parent prioritises their child's access to education and their ability to keep a roof over their family's heads doesn't mean they don't care about any of the other things listed above, including teachers' health. Likewise, those focusing primarily on the risks to teachers and wider viral spread are not wrong... they are just prioritising the matters which affect them the most, probably because they're not the ones who face losing jobs and homes if school closures leave them unable to work. But that doesn't mean they're indifferent to child poverty and other harmful effects of school closures... just that they're not prioritising them. We are all motivated by self-interest, whether we admit it or not.

Where the matters listed above conflict, it is the government's job to work out how to balance the conflicting interests. So if schools close to protect teachers and the wider population, we need to have a discussion about how to mitigate the effects on families - for example, laptops/devices provides to all families who need them, a grant of up to £2,000 to all families with younger children to cover alternative childcare/unpaid leave for parents and much better mental health provision for children of all ages.

No more worried than I am about a sickness bug. Get a grip.

All guidance from the government currently is ‘where possible’
15 in a bubble ‘where possible’ I have 30.
Bubbles not mixing ‘where possible’, tiny school, we keep them separate ‘where possible’...
Hand washing - my 30 share this with the preschool. we have 2 (working) sinks for all children (mine and theirs) and 3 toilets between them (on a good day)
Staff flit across all bubbles as there simply isn’t the staff or money or space.

I'm a Primary teacher. Aged 52 with an ECV partner and a son with severe mental health problems. I teach in an area of profound social deprivation. My class has not been impacted over the last term and have made some good progress. I have also given up my own time to run booster sessions and interventions to make sure that they make up lost ground. I am very concerned about them if we go to remote learning because many of them don't have the tech and most of them don't have the support at home to be able to access home learning effectively. I would much rather have them where I can see them and they would much rather be in school.
If we go to home learning we will be sending out paper packs to many, providing online work to some, and some will just not engage at all. This is not our fault. We do what we can, including visiting our more vulnerable kids three times a week and providing food parcels.
This government have handled school opening extremely badly - there has been no forward planning and everything has been reactive and knee jerk. I see Gove is blaming teachers again today when it's the governement's own scientific experts questioning whether schools should reopen.
School staff are worried. We are worried about the children we teach and their families. We are worried about our colleagues. We are worried about bringing an infection home to our families.
I'm 52. I have another 8 years left on my mortgage so cannot resign (and as I'm the main breadwinner I probably can't retire for a while either). Yes I'm lucky to have a job. I know that. Which is why I go above and beyond for every single child I teach. But surely I should be kept safe whilst working?