If parents think that their children will get some kind of advantage by being in school, think again.

[OwlWearingGlasses]

I am a TA.
I am supervising 20 vulnerable and key worker children children in class (KS2 and spread across Yr 3, 4, 5 & 6).
They are doing exactly the same online work as the children at home.
Many of the children in school have challenges, I spend most of the day managing behaviour.
Children working at home have a MUCH better chance of getting individual attention.
Children working at home also have much less chance of getting COVID.
I would have much less chance of getting COVID if more children worked at home.

This post is not aimed at vulnerable children or those with 2 frontline parents. I am very happy to be supervising those.

This post is aimed at the (many) parents getting their children in on very tenuous links to a key worker space, quite a few with a parent at home who is not working (I am not kidding).

Sorry I needed to rant. I have had a very difficult day and it will be worse next week as I have another 4 in class next week.

It really is not an advantage to have your children in school. Please keep them at home unless there is no other choice.

See, you just can’t expect people to act ‘for the greater good’ if in doing so they’re expected to fuck themselves and their family over. They won’t. Looking after our own is a basic human instinct.
And that is exactly why parents are still sending their kids to school despite being in the middle of the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

The kids in my child’s school are being taught the full curriculum with their teacher and half the usual cohort. So yes they will obviously have an advantage socially and academically.

So our school of 330 had 3 separate positive cases since this all started. That's 0.009 % , but let's see if this rampant version wildfires through the keyworker children then? If our bubble pops then so be it, we are not seeing anyone else. We get Covid tested at work and are mainly working outside or in small team bubbles, when in public we mask up and it head to toe sanitised.

@humhumit

So our school of 330 had 3 separate positive cases since this all started. That's 0.009 % , but let's see if this rampant version wildfires through the keyworker children then? If our bubble pops then so be it, we are not seeing anyone else. We get Covid tested at work and are mainly working outside or in small team bubbles, when in public we mask up and it head to toe sanitised.

Actually that is 0.9% sorry.

I think what people dont understand is that there is pressure on employees to use the kw entitlement where it applies whereas in spring even if you could theoretically be entitled to it it was as a last resort and furlough for the private sector and special paid leave for the public sector were widely available to support that.

Now it is a different story and the headline is here is a critical worker letter and if you choose not to use it you will need to take holiday/unpaid leave.

Sadly not many families can afford to do so

In fact I think schools need to stop comparing takeup with march/april when even those who were entitled managed to move heaven and earth to keep kids out because it was made clear it was available as a last resort only. Problem is they cant compare with june when the messaging changed to all key workers are encouraged to send kids in as that was also the point that whole year groups were invited back. So the stats were blurred at that point and they never saw what a whole cohort of keyworker and vulnerable looked like. Now they are surprised

We have had a mail to urge parents to reconsider too.

I'm feeling so conflicted. I'm NHS mgt, wfh, and work 4 days over 5 so I only use wrap around for a couple of days usually, which we've now dropped to try and reduce the pressure on staff.
Dh manages a factory, he needs to be in, in order to do his job effectively.

Now, judging from some of these posts as a keyworker who works from home I should keep my 3 kids at home. I would have to give up work. How would that be better for society, or us as a family?

I reckon only one or two parents at the school gates know what I do, the rest see me rock up in jeans at school drop off and pick up and have no idea that I'm working for our nhs trust or how long my working days are.

And by the way, my kids are academically and socially heaps better off at school!

OP, you may feel like you spend a lot of time fighting behavioral issues, but it will probably be a lot worse when kids are at home. Kids behave far worse for their parents than for teachers and homes are full of distractions like toys and TVs. It is very hard for parents to get their kids to work unless they are supervising properly and on-the-ball, and most parents won't be because they are frantically trying to get their jobs done well enough to avoid being made redundant. In most cases there will be sod-all individual attention from parents.

Please do not misunderstand me. I think people should absolutely avoid sending kids in unless they really have to and during the spring I quit my freelance work for weeks in order to have my kids home, because I wanted to do my bit. But I really think we have to be honest about the fact that kids doing their work packs in a school environment are going to have a significant advantage.

Looking at the covid rates in the south east at the moment I am surprised anyone is risking sending their child in. Are people not worried about catching covid at a time when hospitals are overstretched?
Maybe you could give us a suggestion what my friend is meant to do with her children, she's a GP abd her husband is consultant on the local Covid ward.
Or what you might suggest I do with DD when DH is working earlies abd I'm in the middle if night shifts. We are both police

Have you considered how horrible this is for front line staff to read? I would love nothing more than to be at home with my children throughout this and to support them through their education but instead, I am working more shifts than usual to try support the country. I can only hope they get care and attention at school while we focus on work and keeping a roof over our head.

In the first wave, I also had the delight of seeing all my friends post the wonderful things they were doing at home with the children (I am fully aware there were stressful struggles between this) while I had to leave my children to go to work and was petrified that I may bring something home to make us all ill.

Maybe think about the impact of your posts on everyone before making them

@Kissthepastrychef

Looking at the covid rates in the south east at the moment I am surprised anyone is risking sending their child in. Are people not worried about catching covid at a time when hospitals are overstretched? Maybe you could give us a suggestion what my friend is meant to do with her children, she's a GP abd her husband is consultant on the local Covid ward. Or what you might suggest I do with DD when DH is working earlies abd I'm in the middle if night shifts. We are both police

It have no issue with families who have two full time key worker parents or a single parent who is a key worker sending their kids to school at the moment or vulnerable children being in school. However it is clear that many more people than this are sending kids to school. People unnecessarily sending children in means that the virus is spreading more putting key workers under more pressure in their jobs and also meaning restrictions will be in place longer making many businesses go bankrupt with a huge effect on the economy.

Actually that's 0.9% sorry

See probably best I don't home educate my kids then ?

@luckyrabbitfoot

"It’s hard isn’t it. But it’s just what we have to do!"

Absolutely, but I think there needs to be an acknowledgement that this group of kids are going to struggle mentally and academically much than anyone who has found a loophole to get school places. I'm not talking about genuine keyworkers, but there are parents in our school who are not key and work less hours than we do. Still managed to get places as they shouted loudly. The rest of us just get on with it.

See i am a keyworker and dp is not but he can't work from home. He earns much more than me and we can't afford for him not work. My nhs wage alone will not pay our bills. It's all well and good saying I shouldn't be sending our child to school but if I didn't we'd eventually lose our home. All the clapping and shit is irrelevant when people don't care about the reality of the situation.

@kokeshi123 Absolutely and this has to be acknowledged. There is an illusion often quoted on MN that everyone WFH is not doing a vital (not necessarily classed key worker) job that involves them fully focused during the working day. The gap will widen the more people abuse the system and the children of those of us doing the right thing are the ones who are going to suffer.

@Glenorma

See, you just can’t expect people to act ‘for the greater good’ if in doing so they’re expected to fuck themselves and their family over. They won’t. Looking after our own is a basic human instinct. And that is exactly why parents are still sending their kids to school despite being in the middle of the worst pandemic any of us have ever seen in our lifetimes.

I am interested to hear your alternative people lose jobs etc ? You are obviously financially ok due to your comments

@TrustTheGeneGenie

Bet people wouldn't think it was tough if it was them losing their jobs, though eh?

I've already lost mine, so I am at home with the dc but it also means I cant get another full time job until they are back at school. In the meantime I've no idea how i will manage financially