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?

"A few weeks out of a school career honestly won't make that much difference, everyone would be in the same boat."

Everyone won't be in the same boat unless you ban all children from receiving any education during that time and that is not even considering all the other inequalities that will occur.

Corrr I could punch those saying school is seen as a babysitting service by parents & that’s why they don’t care .. ITS THE WAY SOCIETY WORKS. Kids go to school to get an education & enhance their life chances & selves .. in turn, children being at school means parents or sorry, woman can go to work to enhance their lives, pay a mortgage, put food on the table. The two are completely intertwined. I love my children, I love playing & parenting and having them at home. I also love my job, my career, my house that we can only afford with two wages and the fact my children never have to worry about food.

These comments suggest we should all go back to women being housewives so we aren’t ‘reliant on school‘. F**k off. My kids deserve a good education, it’s the utter most importance to me but equally, I want to be a good role model mum who works really hard to give them a happy life.

The two go hand in hand. There’s no way around it.

And no, I don’t worry about nursery/schools. It’s a very mild illness for children, I worry much more about sepsis or meningitis. I do have empathy for the teachers & nursery workers, it’s not an easy situation. I think more should be done to protect them.

No absolutely not, it's ludicrous to close schools again they are already predicting children are 18-22months behind how on earth can they ever catch up on this? They will already lose out once their education is done from the lost time.

We will have a generation of kids that are not educated to the normal standard and will have more limited options than those before/after

@turnitonagain and many low income people can't do their jobs from home, so if schools close and they have young children at home they can't work. I'm one of them.

I’m not overly worried about my children catching COVID - I believe that they’d not be at high risk of serious illness - no more than they are from other illnesses that I don’t put thought into either - life is full of risk and I think it’s minor.

I am however worried I’ll literally have a nervous breakdown if schools close for any substantial amount of time. My dh can’t work from home whilst I can. However I can’t work and home school / look after a 4 year old. And I’m so crazy busy at work (due to covid) I’ve been working stupid hours last term to try and keep up and regularly in tears. It’s not a key worker role so wouldn’t be entitled to childcare but equally I doubt I’d be allowed to furlough as I have my own clients and all managers are equally busy. We need my income.

School might not be childcare but realistically it is what allows parents to work and my normal back up of grandparents can’t happen as they’re over 70 and as my husband works outside the home it’s too risky for them.

Hi @mumsneedwine why have you posted an image of your gym cancellation with your bank details visible?

@Posturesorposes thanks I have asked for post to be removed !! Teach me to post and work at same time.

No worried, the missing education bothers me more.

It is worth noting, if you have younger primary school aged kids (reception, y1, y2) that we start formal schooling absurdly early in this country. In my home country children don't even learn to read til 7 or 8 and our educational outcomes and excellent (much better than the the UK's!)

Whether they suffer socially is another matter, but a 5 or 6 year old is not going to suffer academically from lack of schooling.

More worried about the teachers tbh - I will feel happier when they are vaccinated.

But as for my own dc, I am much more worried about the effect on her of another school closure, not just because it's her GCSE year but because the first lockdown affected her mental health to the point that she developed an eating disorder, from which she is now still struggling to recover. I'm terrified a second school closure will set her back again.

Incidentally my dd is far from alone in this, as today's Guardian makes clear:

www.theguardian.com/society/2020/dec/29/hospital-admissions-for-children-with-eating-disorders-rise-by-a-third-in-england

More worried about the impact of them being denied an education. The online learning was inadequate and ineffective particularly for my year 6 DS. I can't work and educate my DC and sorry, yes I'm a key worker so I need to! I know plenty of people WFH who are using elderly grandparents as free child care when they don't have to, ie they've got other options but it's easier for them to use grandparents. How you can have a kid in school and then have them cared for by grandparents is beyond me. Shielded and vulnerable teachers and kids with family members in that category need more support.

School is so important in terms of developing social skills, friendships, independence as well as learning. My DS needs to be back at school as he has no siblings and he needs to be with this peers. Play dates are a dim and distant memory and it is too cold to go to the park which is what we did in the autumn.

I would happily home school if I could continue to get paid and my job was held open for me. But the grim reality is that I am expected to home school and do my job which while not directly front line is pretty essential. But we can't access education hubs because both parents need to be key workers for this.

So all that happens is that my mental health and resilience and that of DH is destroyed. For a virus that isn't actually that much of a threat to the greater majority of the population.

I do think however teachers should be offered the vaccine first alongside NHS / social care staff

@messallover Absolutely agree, everyone should have equal access to devices etc for learning.

My concern is that the children that thrived in our school the last time were the ones whose parents were at home (not WFH) and able to spend them. During the March lockdown curriculum was put on hold, so some (primary) kids were able to learn other core skills from their parents, with or without devices. We were lucky, we had devices (albeit smaller than the most so hard to work on), but both parents were WFH full-time (which I appreciate is in many ways also very lucky). However, this also has an impact on our kids, when we have very little time to spend with them. Only 1 out of 3 children received regular engagement from their teachers. I appreciate everyone was doing their best but without engagement my kids were loathed to do anything after the first couple of weeks.

So yes, money is part of the solution, but there is so much more that needs to be done if kids are to survive another similar lockdown without any further deterioration in either MH or education. Throw money at it, but wisely.

Oops, that should be spend time with them. Clearly, I need some more schooling too :)

Honestly no, I’m not convinced there is much or any risk to kids really, less than 10 children have died. So no I’m not worried. I’m not worried about them bringing it home either. No one vulnerable in my house.

We desperately need a really good plan around catch up www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-05-29-new-study-reveals-long-term-impact-disaster-related-school-closures

To answer the OP, no (my DC are in primary school). I work in a children's hospital and we have seen very very few DC unwell as a result of covid. We are seeing increasing numbers of DC with covid as we test them all on admission, but in the vast majority of cases they are in hospital for a different reason and just happen to have covid too. So, yes, there is a minute possibility that my DC could get covid at school and become seriously unwell or get PIMS-TS or some other complication, but there is always a minute possibility that they could pick up a virus of some sort at school and be the one in a million that becomes seriously unwell as a result and I don't worry about that.
I am worried about the risks to staff and to CEV relatives of other DC (my CEV FIL came to our garden the other day and hugged DC, which I didn't think was a good idea at the time, then that evening I received texts from the school to say both DC had been in contact with seperate covid cases at school at the end of term that they could have passed on to him).
I am also worried about the impact on their mental health of being away from school and their friends when it closes/ they have to self-isolate due to contact at school which has happened to both of them this term, and, to a lesser extent, the impact on their education, as I am not a good teacher and don't have time to cover all the work set while also doing my job.

@booksarenotessentialinwales this with bells on

To answer the OP no, not at all.

No worried about them catching COVID or passing it to us or other family members as none elderly or ECV. For me the costs of closing schools by far outweighs the benefits of reduced transmission. I understand this isn't the case for everyone though.

@Allispretty

We will have a generation of kids that are not educated to the normal standard and will have more limited options than those before/after

Please, you are blowing things out of proportion, we are talking 12-18 months here. Surely most children will be able to catch up?

@MoirasRoses

Kids go to school to get an education & enhance their life chances & selves .. in turn, children being at school means parents or sorry, woman can go to work to enhance their lives, pay a mortgage, put food on the table

You talk about 'enhancing lives' when we are in the middle of a pandemic, do you realise how out of place these comments sound?

Surely most children will be able to catch up?

Never, for most children - for that length of time. There’s been a lot of research done in the US about the impact of long summer holidays - 2.5 months has been shown to have a huge impact. Don’t forget that kids regress when they’re not at school. There’ll be an element of catching up on what they’ve already done as well as what they’ve missed.