AIBU to stand up for children and parents...

[alwaysraining123]

... and say that closing schools is not an option. Some observations.

(1) millions of children will suffer poorer mental health, educational deficits and be at risk of physical harm.
(2) if schools close now the government will struggle to get them back open.
(3) the unions are playing a highly political game preying shamelessly on people’s fears.
(4) online learning is of no use for most of the primary school years. Parents basically need to be available all day to support children.
(5) more parents are going to find themselves unable to work causing more financial hardship. This won’t affect your middle class sahps or people who can work from home as much- there are people who actually have to go out of their house to earn a living.
(6) if you’re parent and you’re worried you can keep your child at home.
(7) educational transmission of the virus is low and infection control standards can be escalated where needed.

Whatever is done we need to place maintaining educational provision for children at the heart of it. We need to make it work...there’s no other option.

YABU. The figures are horrendous. Schools need to close to protect children, their families and teachers and to ease pressure on the NHS

YABVU

I’m in Scotland. I agree something needs to be done, I’m having to take unpaid leave from my work as I’m not a keyworker. But are all these parents that want the schools to close going to keep their children at home? As when I’m out and about picking up prescriptions and shopping I’m seeing teenagers in huge groups hanging about the streets, whole families in Tesco, kids running around touching things. Fair enough I know it’s difficult if your a one parent family but I’m seeing both parents with the kids. I thought the whole point was for the kids to stay at home?

OP can I ask what your job is?
In your first post it says ‘some observations’ so I am assuming you’re a teacher or something similar and have first hand experience?

educational transmission of the virus is low and infection control standards can be escalated where needed

Really? I mean, REALLY ??? Where are you getting your information from?

Most teachers are working in conditions that would be illegal under COVID-security regulations in any other workplace.

Am interested to know where a lot of the people that suddenly seem concerned about child poverty and the implications for the poorest in society with schools closing have appeared from and where they’ve been for the past 10 years?

@formerbabe that's my fear too that they'll close for far longer than is justified. i still remember end of last May all the OAPs trooping up to go to the garden centres whilst the schools remained shut and the playgrounds padlocked (this is Scotland btw). There was no reason why schools couldn't have opened at that point - numbers were low enough to support it.

I believe it's right for them to be closed at the minute - due to the new strain the numbers are unprecedented- but I expect schools to be the first thing that opens as soon as it is possible and if that means vaccinated school staff, then great let's get on with it with no further prevarication.

We watched Wuhan become engulfed. We watched Italy. We didn't take decisive action, unlike,for example, New Zealand. We didn't act in a preventative mode, we acted late, in a reactive mode. Things could have been so different.
Now we are back in the same position, but this time watching it unfurl in certain areas of the country. Cases of the new variant tripled during a lockdown in November, when schools remained open for on-site teaching.
Surely to goodness, at this critical point, the decision has to be to go back to remote learning for now, before the entire country goes the same way as London and the South East.
A wise man learns from other people's mistakes - we didn't.
Now we're at the point where the wise man isn't going to learn from his own mistakes either. Again.
What's happening down South is spreading throughout the country. It will ultimately replicate everywhere and boy how stupid England will look then. No one can say we didn't see it coming. But then there's none so blind as those that will not see.

^^
Most teachers are working in conditions that would be illegal under COVID-security regulations in any other workplace.

This 1000 times over.

@toocold54

OP can I ask what your job is? In your first post it says ‘some observations’ so I am assuming you’re a teacher or something similar and have first hand experience?

I work as a researcher in pharmaceutical R&D

@GypsyLee

If you have kids you have to be prepared to take care of them 24/7 Most kids have 2 parents, 50/50 caring responsibilities is the fairest. You can't expect others to care for them, especially in a pandemic.

Fair enough,

You also can't expect to be paid for a job you aren't doing.

Am interested to know where a lot of the people that suddenly seem concerned about child poverty and the implications for the poorest in society with schools closing have appeared from and where they’ve been for the past 10 years?

👏👏👏

For years schools have cared about education, child poverty and their mental health.
Now all of a sudden they apparently want schools to close because they don’t care about these things.

This doesn’t make sense.
Everyone who works in a school obviously wants the best for children so those claiming teachers are over-reacting, not wanting to do their jobs etc need to think about what it is they’re actually saying.
I am a teacher but I am also a parent - so if all of the professionals are saying it is safer for schools to close then I will go along with that to protect my own DCs as well as the 100s I see everyday.

Thatusernamewastaken

They've never cared, nor do they care that those kids getting fed 5 days out of 7 in the holiday are going hungry the other 4. They've not cared either about the huge cuts to the poorest schools by the government.

They chirp up every so often but do nothing to help the poor they pretend to care about.

[quote rookiemere]@formerbabe that's my fear too that they'll close for far longer than is justified. i still remember end of last May all the OAPs trooping up to go to the garden centres whilst the schools remained shut and the playgrounds padlocked (this is Scotland btw). There was no reason why schools couldn't have opened at that point - numbers were low enough to support it.

I believe it's right for them to be closed at the minute - due to the new strain the numbers are unprecedented- but I expect schools to be the first thing that opens as soon as it is possible and if that means vaccinated school staff, then great let's get on with it with no further prevarication.[/quote]
I agree it's sadly the right thing to close them now...but I'd like the kids to be back asap...my dc really struggled last time and my dd has already announced to me she won't do the home learning...God help me!

5 out of 9

You also can't expect to be paid for a job you aren't doing.

So all those on furlough because pubs and restaurants are closed should just get no money?

[quote chocolatesweets]@GypsyLee I agree. Now refund our tax money if the service isn't there. [/quote]
It would be great if we got money back for every service we didn't get.
We'd never pay any tax.

I really don’t want schools to be closed, let me make that clear first of all. I have two adopted DDs (11 and 8) who need routine, and lockdown was really bad for them in the spring. (Though the fact that I was very ill with Covid didn’t help. I have long Covid now, but I’m much better now than I was then.)

But we’re talking about a new variant, which is much more infectious and, according to what I’ve heard on the news, is more of a risk to younger people.

Understandably, teachers are anxious. So are a lot of parents. I have long Covid, as I said, and my DH has asthma. We’re also both in our fifties. So of course I’m worried, it would be daft to pretend otherwise. But for us, we only have close contact with our DDs. Teachers in primary schools have 30 kids in their classrooms and teachers in secondary schools have contact with several different classes every day.

Teachers have a right to be concerned about safety at work. I think they should be given priority in the vaccination process, particularly those who are older and have underlying health issues.

@GypsyLee

If you have kids you have to be prepared to take care of them 24/7 Most kids have 2 parents, 50/50 caring responsibilities is the fairest. You can't expect others to care for them, especially in a pandemic.

This is sort of missing the point. Regardless of whether parents are available to look after their children 24/7 children need and can reasonably expect education provision.

@Biscuitsareessential

Well its the same process as NHS, frontline nurse age 21 will vaccination over a 60 year old joe public. If teachers risk is as high or higher than a frontline NHS worker , then yes they should definately go tp top of vaccination list. Do we have any statistics so far to support that many teachers have caught Covid ir been seriously ill or died? That might go some way to evidence that they require PPE and / or priorty vaccinations. Surely the unions must have this data

You can want the schools to be open all you like, but you can't force teachers to work in circumstances that will put them at a great deal of risk. You just can't, and you shouldn't think you can.

You aren't standing for me. I want to keep my family safe and the teachers and staff at my dd's school. I also want to make sure that the nhs isn't on its knees if/when people need it.

I don't understand the "vaccinate all teachers an d then re-open the schools" argument. I absolutely agree that teachers should be high up on the vaccine list, but...

What about the children? Sure, it's a fairly mild illness in many children, but if a child contracts the virus, they will then be very likely to pass it on to their families.

Just vaccinating teachers is not the answer.

Not during a pandemic they don't.
They didn't get a proper education during the wars either, nor times of famine.
You just have to sort it between you, go pt, tighten your belt.
Do what others do who can't work, or both go pt.
Or leave your kids to their own devices whilst you both work.

That’s your opinion and I’m not going to tell you that it is wrong.
Personally, I’ll be keeping both my children home. It is not safe to be in school, I’m a secondary school teacher and by December it was hell and I saw some quite unwell teenagers going off. With an even higher infection rate and a new mutation, schools will be forced to close by February, due to lack of staff. (This happened at the last week of term where I work)