Teachers/TAs - what can we do?

[Khara]

Ok - so as a primary school TA of a certain age (over 50) and overweight ( in the obese but not morbidly obese category) I am understandably nervous of going back to work next week in a newly tier 4 area.

My family, to whom I rant about these things, have said you need to stand up for yourself/do something. But what?

My dh says I need to complain to the Heath and safety executive. He says the risk-assessment provided by my school isn't worth the paper it's written on. (He works in the chemical industry and has been on courses about writing risk assessments.) Apparently it should include an actual numerically calculated risk. He has done some research and calculated my risk of death in the workplace as 1:400. The Health and Safety executive say that any risk lower than 1:1000000 is unacceptable.

Have any other teachers/TAs (especially in primary atm) considered actually complaining

@OverTheRubicon if that’s the case why won’t the government release the figures since September. If it’s so safe why hide them?

Echoing others that your only option is to get signed off with stress and, I guess for you, hope that schools shut by the time your time off runs out.

[quote cardibach]@OverTheRubicon if that’s the case why won’t the government release the figures since September. If it’s so safe why hide them?[/quote]
They're not the government's figures, they're from the ONS, which is an independent body. There was a further update published in June, since then there has been more focus on other measures, in particular ethnicity and health risk factors. This could be a dark conspiracy or.more likely because as they note here, ethnicity, economic and health status play a larger role in risk. Like most of us, statisticians have been pretty busy, and slightly hamstrung in what can be achieved through recent months.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19relateddeathsbyoccupationenglandandwales/deathsregisteredbetween9marchand25may2020#:~:text=1.-,Main%20points,March%20and%2025%20May%202020.

TA here who is currently covid positive having contracted it at school. I have got off lightly I think as my only symptom has been loss of taste and smell which has made Xmas miserable but could have been so much worse. I want to go back to work but I must say I am now more anxious because even though it’s not been as bad as I thought it would be I am concerned I might get it again but worse next time. My school is one of those on the list that is staying closed but think I may be expected to go in to look after keyworker/vulnerable children ( just like I did during lockdown 1). There is no answer other than accept the risk, get signed off sick or resign.

The figures from March/April do not take into account the new strain that is allegedly more prevalent in kids though. Also I'm not sure how the fact that hairdressers potentially work/worked in unsafe conditions makes it ok for me to do so too...

OP I can absolutely see why you are concerned I think ASN assistants and TAs have been ‘forgotten’ when it’s come to the extra risks that are specific to their roles. You need to contact your employer and ask for an updated risk assessment given that the new variant is more transmissible. They need to look at what other mitigations could be put in place to improve on safety. You also need to be on to your union about it. If none of that helps then your choices are GP to be signed off due to workplace stress, asking for unpaid leave from your employer or handing in your notice. I was reading that they might offer up the vaccine to those with underlying conditions working in education.

For those quoting the ONS data this was a controversial report:

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-schools-urgent-warning-over-misleading-teacher-covid-data%3famp

They actually made changes in light of this and admitted that the report did not show ‘no difference’ in fact the data set was so small that they couldn’t really reach a meaningful conclusion about it. Factor in the timing of the report and the data they were working with it is very much out of date!

In addition to this the new mutant strain had not become dominant at that time, and if the preliminary conclusions about the transmissibility of the new strain and the fact it is easily spread amongst and by children is to be believed then all of that previous data isn’t really very relevant any more.

@Haggisfish

That won’t wash-sorry. I don’t think there is a lot you can do apart from get signed off or resign.

Hi

I am Khara's DH; I wrote the original risk assessment.

I am curious how you know for a fact that is "won’t wash"? Do you work for the HSE? Have you had a lot of involvement with them?

Or is this merely you uninformed opinion that you are presenting as a fact?

I do not want to come across as rude, but this is potentially people's lives we are talking about here, and it is important that we have the facts right and we can distinguish between what the facts actually are and uninformed opinion.

I am Khara's DH; I wrote the original risk assessment.

You have made some utterly ridiculous assumptions and come up with utterly ridiculous figures that don’t pass the most basic common sense test. Your calculations were worse than pointless. Leave it to people who have some idea what they’re talking about.

Op, mh is huge right mow, now more than ever, stress is a killer in itself, go and tell your gp how afraid you are, how your dh is trying to find ways to help, you are terrified and can't sleep at night...

Say you need a letter and don't feel you can go back.

Has anyone seen the latest corona thread? Someone's reckons they caught it in a 3 min car journey.

[quote OverTheRubicon]You are absolutely right to want support, he is absolutely wrong that your chance of death in the workplace is anywhere near 1 in 400. It's more like 1 in 212,766.

Below I'll link a rough calculator via Oxford University - the mortality rates come from the first peak so they're a bit more pessimistic as we now have better treatments and a lot of people with few or no symptoms weren't showing up as positive then.

According to this, as a woman over 50 with an o BMI between 30-40 your risk of death if you contract covid is around 1 in 21277 (0.036%). Given that the chance of you contracting it are still relatively low, that risk lowers again. At my school, in a covid hotspot, we've had 4 of a teaching staff of over 90 be off with positive tests, so around 4.4%. Even if the number was much higher, say 10% of teachers caught covid at your school, your risk of catching and then dying from covid caught in the workplace is 0.00047%, which is well over 1 in 200,000, and under the benchmark you said your DH set.

It's also worth noting that by ONS figures, the first wave did not show any higher death rates for teachers than for other white collar workers, it was people like hairdressers and factory workers who were far more affected

Your DH is being incredibly anxiety-inducing with his maths, he may be trying to help but it sounds incredibly stress inducing. You are almost certain to be ok. I hope you are able to get support and also vaccine priority.

www.qcovid.org/Calculation[/quote]
Hi

As I said in the previous post, this is my assessment, and first off, thanks for a reply that uses facts and cites it sources.

I used a figure from here for the "case fatality rate":
ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid?country=~GBR

That is, the probability of dying if you catch the disease, so not the same thing as the figure you have, which is (I think, if I did the same as you) " the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic"

You say "Given that the chance of you contracting it are still relatively low, that risk lowers again." That is not correct. The probability of catching COVID is already part of the calculated figure from the web page you link to.

And that ignores the fact that she is far more at risk because it takes no account of what her job entails. The whole point is that she is at higher risk because she is working in a primary school.

I am not trying to scare people (I was not aware she was going to post this); my figures may well be off, but I very much believe there is a relatively high risk, and therefore she should raise this with the HSE. I provided the calculation for that purpose; this is why we are so concerned.

I am not trying to scare people (I was not aware she was going to post this); my figures may well be off, but I very much believe there is a relatively high risk, and therefore she should raise this with the HSE. I provided the calculation for that purpose; this is why we are so concerned.

I do not want to come across as rude, but this is potentially people's lives we are talking about here, and it is important that we have the facts right and we can distinguish between what the facts actually are and uninformed opinion.

[quote happytoday73]It's not an occupied building assessment or for a comah report... Looking at what is 'alarp' from a high hazard industry perspective. Its a bog standard risk assessment which can quite legally have or not have scores..these type of RA or JSA are also used on chemical sites for day to day tasks

In fact the example from the HSE website for covid doesn't have scores on
www.hse.gov.uk/coronavirus/working-safely/risk-assessment.htm[/quote]
Those types of risk assessments are fine if the risk is low. It is more about raising awareness than actually assessing what the risk is. But they are not good enough for high risk situations where you are determining if the risk might be too high to allow the job to proceed.

There is nothing special about an occupied building assessment or for a COMAH report; the reason they have these scores is the risk is high. Any situation with potentially a high risk should be given a score.

I find it disturbing that the HSE website does not have scores on it (and I had already seen that). It looks to me like schools are being mislead, and told to do the wrong sort of risk assessment, and that is a big part of the problem.

"Its a bog standard risk assessment which can quite legally have or not have scores."

The legal aspect is that employees must not be exposed to high risk. Implicitly then, the employer has to do the right risk assessment for the situation, and that is simply not the case.

People may dispute my figures - and I may well be wrong, I fully acknowledge that - but someone somewhere really should be doing the calculation, and telling us what the figure is.

Why have local education authorities not done this already? Why has the government not done it? Or have they, and they do not like the figures so they keep them secret?

@PurpleDaisies

I am Khara's DH; I wrote the original risk assessment.

You have made some utterly ridiculous assumptions and come up with utterly ridiculous figures that don’t pass the most basic common sense test. Your calculations were worse than pointless. Leave it to people who have some idea what they’re talking about.

Hi

Can you tell me why you disagree with my figures? You are clearly much more knowledgeable than me on this; I would love to know what figures you come up with.

Thanks in advance.

Can you tell me why you disagree with my figures?

Teachers are not dying at the rate of 1:2000 or 1:400.

I will not be coming up with alternative figures. I’ll be leaving that to experts. As should you.

Campaigning for a safe workplace does not need made up figures.

@PurpleDaisies - the OP is not a teacher, she’s a TA. Imvho, a TA is at significantly more risk than a teacher. It’s the TAs who spend the most time in very close proximity with the children. Also the TAs most likely to be covering lunch duties, clearing up vomit, tending to injured and ill children, doing extra cleaning duties, etc. The teachers, after all, have to be getting on with teaching. Schools are also notoriously bad at considering the risks to support staff, as it is generally the headteacher doing the primary school risk assessment, and they are a former teacher and focused on preserving the health of their most expensive, least expendable staff. Teachers are also more likely to belong to a union. I think the OP is right to be concerned.

I think the OP is right to be concerned.

Absolutely. I am not disputing that at all and she should be pushing for safety at work.

What I think is deeply unhelpful is coming up with some ridiculous calculation to “prove” it that doesn’t hold up to the most basic of scrutiny.

All thd TAs I’ve worked with have been in unions.

Doesn’t sound like the OP is in a union to me, @PurpleDaisies.

Also, @PurpleDaisies, it is unhelpful to talk about teacher risk when talking to a TA.

@KharaDH

I used a figure from here for the "case fatality rate": ourworldindata.org/mortality-risk-covid?country=~GBR

That is, the probability of dying if you catch the disease, so not the same thing as the figure you have, which is (I think, if I did the same as you) " the absolute risk of catching and dying COVID-19 over a 90-day period based on data from the first peak of the pandemic"

You're confusing case fatality rate and infection fatality rate.

Infection fatality rate is the probability of dying if you catch the disease.

Case fatality rate is the probability of dying if you are diagnosed with the disease.

Given not all infections are detected/diagnosed then the case fatality rate is always higher than the infection fatality rate. How much higher depends on how many cases are missed.

The CFR you're using is from Italy in early march. It was much higher than the IFR because you basically only got diagnosed if you were ill enough to be hospitalised.

This in itself puts your calculation off, probably by one order of magnitude if not more.

However, all of this is irrelevant. The government have declared that schools are safe. There is little an individual head teacher can do to over-ride that. So @Khara's choices are to carry on working, quit, go off sick, or take annual/unpaid leave if allowed.

@Redbrickwall

I am a type 1 diabetic teacher, also a little bit fat lol, and I’m honestly not worried. Nor are the other members of staff. We are in a small village school but still. I want my class back

I'm CV in a larger primary school - 3 form intake. Old Victorian buildings, over crowding, many pinch points. Everyone trying their best but know the mitigations we have at hand are limited at best.

3/4 staff have now tested positive with covid over a period of 6-8 weeks plus many parents and some children who were eventually tested were positive too.

I was in hospital due to covid complications and 12 weeks on I am still breathless on exertion, I still get pains in my chest, my whole body aches and I am suffering from fatigue daily. My arthritis has had a massive flare up as a result and I am in new daily (full dose, probably for life) medication for hypertension which appears to have be caused by covid complications. Despite the full dose my blood pressure is still too high, though no longer dangerously so.

Several of our staff - those who are 40+ females - are still struggling with fatigue, brain fog and other post viral type symptoms.

But no, nothing to worry about at all, I'm sure.

Apologies.

TAs are not dying at the rate of 1:2000 or 1:400.

The only other options are to suggest safety improvements to the risk assessment to the headteacher, and to refuse extra duties that are not clearly in your employment contract - but unless the school then employed extra people to do them (eg the toilet cleaning), the result would probably be to make the school less safe, not more safe, although would probably then result in the school closing sooner rather than later, if covid then spread more quickly!
Are you allowed to wear a mask and/or visor? How would the HT react if you did? What woukd make you feel more safe, @Khara?

[quote OverTheRubicon]You are absolutely right to want support, he is absolutely wrong that your chance of death in the workplace is anywhere near 1 in 400. It's more like 1 in 212,766.

Below I'll link a rough calculator via Oxford University - the mortality rates come from the first peak so they're a bit more pessimistic as we now have better treatments and a lot of people with few or no symptoms weren't showing up as positive then.

According to this, as a woman over 50 with an o BMI between 30-40 your risk of death if you contract covid is around 1 in 21277 (0.036%). Given that the chance of you contracting it are still relatively low, that risk lowers again. At my school, in a covid hotspot, we've had 4 of a teaching staff of over 90 be off with positive tests, so around 4.4%. Even if the number was much higher, say 10% of teachers caught covid at your school, your risk of catching and then dying from covid caught in the workplace is 0.00047%, which is well over 1 in 200,000, and under the benchmark you said your DH set.

It's also worth noting that by ONS figures, the first wave did not show any higher death rates for teachers than for other white collar workers, it was people like hairdressers and factory workers who were far more affected

Your DH is being incredibly anxiety-inducing with his maths, he may be trying to help but it sounds incredibly stress inducing. You are almost certain to be ok. I hope you are able to get support and also vaccine priority.

www.qcovid.org/Calculation[/quote]
We need to stop using the first wave data when it comes to schools and comparing risk.

First wave data for teaching staff is pointless information. Half size classes, social distancing, vulnerable staff working from home, etc. That is nothing like what schools are like now, not even vaguely similar,

Find data from September onwards and it will be more relevant.

"the teachers must have caught it when shopping or from another adult as kids don't get it"

Oh yes, I have seen this so many times.

There are some posters who will refuse to accept any teaching/school staff could possibly have caught covid at school and most definitely not from a child. Even if everything else points towards this they will find a way to tell school staff it simply didn't happen that way.

I've even had a poster tell me that the health complication I've had since covid couldn't be caused by covid as they've never heard of it happening. This is despite the medical staff who have dealt with me before, during or after my hospital stay with covid have come to an entirely different conclusion. But no, some random person on MN must know better,

Data from late November onwards would be most useful - 50% of the staff at the school I work in managed to get covid in that time.