Covid secure classrooms

[EnemyOfEducationNo1]

30 teenagers shoulder to shoulder in a cramped room with windows that only cracked open.
And the DfE says no masks allowed in classrooms as they impede teaching and learning.

Teachers don't want to close schools. They just want better safety measures.

You say this like it's a revelation. It's been like this in schools since September.

One of the rooms I teach in doesn’t even have a window as it was an old office space in a portacabin.

These are not my photos. But they represent the reality in most schools. Except most schools don't allow masks because that is what the DfE says. Some heads have bravely gone against those instructions of course, but most haven't.

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

You say this like it's a revelation. It's been like this in schools since September.

I know - I was just reading another thread and it seemed that some people still don't know what it is like in the classrooms. Some classrooms I teach in there is literally the width of a narrow desk between me and the front row. If I write on the board I bash my legs on their table.

The corridors are the worst. Constantly bagging into each other.
My carbon dioxide alarm regularly lights up too and the windows have bars over them.

Those classrooms actually look bigger than my classrooms. No spare desks in my rooms! No masks either.

@noblegiraffe

Those classrooms actually look bigger than my classrooms. No spare desks in my rooms! No masks either.

Ditto! Larger than mine and also no masks here.

I really don't see how people can compare this to the conditions in a supermarket, or a building site, or a mental health ward.
And yes I have been in all 3 places.

Send a few to the BBC for their school related stories.

My carbon dioxide lights up too. Even when the window is wide open, so closing one bubble is pointless because the class that are sat in the room 30seconds later don’t have clean air.

On Breakfast tv this morning they showed a picture of one of those classrooms that had about six desks in the room all spread 2 m apart like they did briefly in the summer. So viewers will assume that's what classrooms are like.

Safety measures which involve smaller classes, which involve a load of pupils not in school so involving shutting schools to those pupils.

I don’t even necessarily disagree but I find the “we don’t want to shut we want it safer” argument a bit hollow, safer schools were what we had in June and it meant that over half of the school pupils in our primary got no education at all, school will never “feel” open to those kids and parents however you spin it and admitting you want to open to some but not others (to make it safer) would be much more accurate.

@Wsdhgujn

Safety measures which involve smaller classes, which involve a load of pupils not in school so involving shutting schools to those pupils.

I don’t even necessarily disagree but I find the “we don’t want to shut we want it safer” argument a bit hollow, safer schools were what we had in June and it meant that over half of the school pupils in our primary got no education at all, school will never “feel” open to those kids and parents however you spin it and admitting you want to open to some but not others (to make it safer) would be much more accurate.

Personally I'm in favour of rotas, and during the "off" time enrichment alternative provision hubs being set up (for specific bubbles) - in empty community spaces, closed libraries, in parks festival style, etc - using those extra curricular teachers who are currently unemployed such as peripatetic music teachers, circus skills, art teachers, forest schools, sports camp, holiday club staff, plus Ofsted staff and volunteers etc. Could be awesome.

safer schools were what we had in June and it meant that over half of the school pupils in our primary got no education at all

That was a government decision to open primary schools fully to certain year groups and remain closed to the rest. They could have organised it so that all year groups were in some of the time, but decide not to.

They also banned schools from making use of alternate spaces which would have enabled more pupils to come in.