Betting: when will schools be shut?

[notevenat20]

My guess is the govt will shut all schools soonish. This view is partly based on reading www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-12-31-COVID19-Report-42-Preprint-VOC.pdf

So what to do in a crisis? That’s right, betting. Here are the questions.

In which month will secondary schools next be open?

In which month will primary schools next be shut?

My votes are: March and January.

They may open primaries on the 4th but I don’t think it will last. Secondaries won’t open at all in Jan/Feb.

no macdonalds/kfc takeaways, all closed

Other takeaways were open though. I spent a fortune on JustEat! And McDonald’s drive thru defo opened before the lockdown was over - the queues at my local one were insane.

I reckon primaries will go back on Monday but close within a week. Don't think secondaries will be back this half term.

I would really love them to stay open - homeschooling was hell and it wasn't good for any of our mental health - but I think they will be overwhelmed with staff and pupil absences.

The testing idea would be great if the tests were reliable, which we know they're not. I reckon testing rather than isolating close contacts will only increase transmission.

We're in the West Midlands and one of my kids missed half of last term due to repeated periods of self-isolation. Teachers were off, and some classes had only a handful of students in. Our rates are relatively low, and the new variant has only just started taking hold here.

The testing idea would be great if the tests were reliable, which we know they're not

I hear this repeated but I am sure it's right. If you look at the mass testing Cambridge university it seems to have been entirely successful.

This is their report from the end of term.

www.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.cam.ac.uk/files/documents/pooled_testing_report_30nov-6dec.pdf

It looks very convincing to me.

noteven what suggests it was a success at Cambridge? They didn't double check the negatives with a proper test.

When they did double check the negatives at Birmingham University, they found that the mass testing had only correctly identified 3% of positive cases as positive. It had said all the rest were negative.

www.newscientist.com/article/2263746-test-caught-just-3-per-cent-of-students-with-covid-19-at-uk-university/

Itisasecret how dare you make out I'm lying! I never once said I worked in a school I said our school as we are a community. You proved my point exactly as to one of the reasons why they should be in school, I am not a teacher & as you so kindly (rudely) pointed out I can't use the correct terms! Just to clarify our school did not have one case! We played to the rules.

Are you a teacher by any chance!!

The schools have been shut for some time now in California (I think schools in some states didn’t return last semester in some states) but the cases there are huge and rising. I don’t think closing schools are the whole answer that people On Twitter, and some MPs believe it to be.

@notevenat20 re the tests, it's the figures from Birmingham uni I have been hearing about. My understanding is that the rapid tests are less reliable even when administered properly, and their accuracy decreases if not administered by health professionals.

I am also dubious about what the take-up will be of these tests. I've done a couple on my y7 child recently and it was ok but not exactly enjoyable. Our school had a bit of an outbreak and was officially advised to ask all parents to get kids tested. A lot of parents I know didn't do it because their kids had had it done previously and been really upset. So that's another separate issue.

www.newscientist.com/article/2263746-test-caught-just-3-per-cent-of-students-with-covid-19-at-uk-university/

For balance, it does point out that the sample size was small so might not mean anything, but it certainly raises some questions.

Oh sorry I see someone shared the same link already!

I agree with 0gfhty's point.

What do you mean when schools will close?? They ARE closed in my entire county!!!??

@ChloeCrocodile

you can not expect schools to close & the detrimental effect on our children when such non Essential shops are still open.

Try looking at it from someone else’s point of view. For example:

1. a restaurant owner who can’t pay their mortgage and has staff who are desperately struggling to survive on furlough. Why should that business be shut when it barely effects transmission, whereas schools have a big impact?
2. a new mum with PND whose doctor and health visitors refuse to see her due to COVID risk. Why should her care be curtailed while schools are open and fuelling transmission?
3. a clothing shop worker who is now on 80% pay while the business is shut, can’t pay her rent and even when open the restrictions around trying on clothes means sales are down and her employer has started planning redundancies. Why should she be made homeless while schools are open and driving transmission?

It’s easy to say “schools should stay open”. I desperately want them too - because it is better for the kids and my workload is much more manageable. But, in reality, there are millions of people getting poorer and poorer partly because of the decision to keep schools open full time to all pupils. And poverty is pretty shit for a child’s life chances too.

School being open trumps all of these things. It’s been calculated and reported that the long term effect of long term and frequent school closures will result in more poverty and shorter life spans in the long run (ie 30+ years from now) and this loss of years will hugely outweigh deaths from covid (in terms of years of life lost) Whilst schools are off, many children are simply not learning or not learning nearly as efficiently as in school.

Many are meeting in large groups anyway in houses or in a park / field / on bikes etc.

Parents with younger kids cannot work properly. Many women will have to quit their job and families will be in poverty anyway.
Many parents will get into mental health difficulties with the homeschool and trying to work at the same time hellish nightmare.
Many like myself are now facing 4 or 5 hours sleep for possibly weeks to work whilst their kids are in bed, just to keep a roof over their heads.

Marks & Spencer's open!!! Seriously!

I went to click and collect at M & S the other day. The nearest I got to another person was about 1.5 metres distance for a couple of minutes when I collected the item at the till - both I and the sales assistant wearing masks, and she was behind a screen. I didn’t have to go near any other shoppers.

I wasn’t made to cram into one aisle of the store for several hours with 30 other shoppers, none of whom were wearing masks. Do you not see the difference?

Strictly speaking I could have managed without the item I went for - but if I and millions like me don’t spend any money on goods and services it will be pointless educating children because there won’t be any jobs for them in the future.

And I’m particularly angry because we shouldn’t even be having this argument - if the government had made any sort of plan weeks ago to make schools safer then they and the shops could have both remained open. They did nothing to prepare over the summer and this is the result.

I posted earlier or on another thread, that there has been a report from the Royal Society of psychiatrists.

From what l understood their concerns were about the emotional effects of Covid infections ( death, fear for relatives, ptsd or children losing parents) than the effects of lockdown on mental health.

I’m a teacher. Schools closing now is going to have practically zero effect in 30 years time. My school closed for half a termwhen l was in Year 10. I still got a degree. The effects are so small as to be immeasurable. The reports l have seen say a difference of 8 weeks or so across a lifetime. And it’s cumulative, the difference becomes smaller as you go through life, to become unimportant.

notevenat20 re the tests, it's the figures from Birmingham uni I have been hearing about. My understanding is that the rapid tests are less reliable even when administered properly, and their accuracy decreases if not administered by health professionals.

If you read the article it is clear they mucked up the testing there in some way that they haven't got to the bottom of yet. It's completely anomalous.

*03Littlewhitedove2

What do you mean when schools will close?? They ARE closed in my entire county!!!??*

Well happy days for you.

However in a huge area of the country parents are expected to send our young children into schools on Monday.

Astonishing that there's a world outside "your county" isn't it!

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

I posted earlier or on another thread, that there has been a report from the Royal Society of psychiatrists.

From what l understood their concerns were about the emotional effects of Covid infections ( death, fear for relatives, ptsd or children losing parents) than the effects of lockdown on mental health.

I’m a teacher. Schools closing now is going to have practically zero effect in 30 years time. My school closed for half a termwhen l was in Year 10. I still got a degree. The effects are so small as to be immeasurable. The reports l have seen say a difference of 8 weeks or so across a lifetime. And it’s cumulative, the difference becomes smaller as you go through life, to become unimportant.

Do you have the link?

I kept saying the same thing, but nobody ever responded.
I partially grew up in a war torn country. Had 6 months off whilst evacuated into another country. And constant disruptions from bombings, air raids. I have 3 diplomas. Many that I keep touch with from that international school have multiple diplomas.
The 30+ students I went to high school with in my home country - who had 0 disruptions ever in their life: no diplomas at all, apart from me.

and also: almost everyone around the globe is facing similar, so they will be all a bit behind, and they will all catch up.

The biggest blow is to the league tables, that they can't be created/compared.

in our school we did everything we were told & had not one case of COVID or a bubble sent home

Covid-lucky or covid-unlucky, there is no covid-secure. We were fine until we weren't. Monday morning fine, by Wednesday lunchtime a third of the school were at home.

NEU are meeting today. Will be interested to see what they say.

They’ll probably just write another ‘strongly worked letter’. They have been utterly useless throughout.

Worded, sorry

Oh 😔

That’s very bizarre... sorry. They must have pulled the petition. I can’t link at all except for the page that states they’ve sent me an email

Ahh. I think it’s finally gone through. Here’s the link for the school closure for two weeks:

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/551740