School staff ARE more at risk from contracting COVID than the general population- according to data released by the DfE yesterday.

[Feenie]

neu.org.uk/press-releases/impact-covid-school-workforce?fbclid=IwAR2ayf6jFbhEMcpICBffM5daowz8tdrIs77bqyCKFQHWaKB109Z1TktZXEk

Data that contradicts continual assurances that were still being given as late as yesterday by Dr Jenny Harries to the Education Select Committee.

@sundowners

Sorry OP - you’ve not had the result you’ve wanted. You’ve not had the working parents amongst us, particularly the parents of primary age kids - currently all going stir crazy - all suddenly change our minds and agree that keeping schools off is a good thing. Next-

Thank-you and to be honest my partner is out each day just wearing a mask the same as the teachers and police officers etc are prob more at risk getting spat on ......

I think it's interesting that TAs and support staff are higher risk than teachers according to this data and yet in many schools right now teachers are working and teaching from home while TAs and supposed staff are the ones in school supporting the keyworker children.

This is data from before Christmas that has been sat on.

@LizardWar why that works for your family , another family is trying to wfh with three kids and one device , so not all are finding it easy.
Personally schools being shut doesn't majorly affect me , mine are college and yr 11 so can work independently, but I can see how awful it is for others.
Also my teacher friends are still working in schools and having to send there own dc to school as well so risks for them are still there.
You can't just shut schools for a year and not think that won't have an impact on most children, I don't think there are many teachers that want that either.

just wearing a mask

I'm sorry, what? You think the DfE says we should wear masks? Think again! They say we don't need PPE.

How do people STILL not know this?

my partner is out each day just wearing a mask the same as the teachers

And that just demonstrates why people don’t get why teachers are pissed off.

Teachers and pupils are expected to work in poorly ventilated indoor spaces with no social distancing and NO MASKS.

Each individual class is a bubble and they are kept completely separate from all other bubbles which means the few cases we have had have been able to isolate a small group and stop the spread.

This doesn’t happen in secondary.

@feenie thanks
My dh goes to work every day and goes into peoples houses ( essential) and whilst he wears a mask to protect them, no one is protecting him.
I do think we need a graph of all professions though as if bus drivers are more at risk , then they should be first, if teachers etc secondary ? Primary.
The only good thing is numbers do appear to be going down and vaccinations appear to be going well so far .

Until it is compared to other keyworkers going out to work, it is meaningless. Comparing it to the general population lowers that comparison, as most people are working from home.
How many times are they going to change the goalposts before our children can return to a normal education?

I do think we need a graph of all professions

Please email your MP and ask why the government is refusing to provide this data. They are ignoring FOI requests.

@feenie like I said my dh wears a mask but those he is seeing don't so he isn't protected , that will be same for poilce and many others as we have been told time and time again, masks protect others and not ourselves .

Even now in the middle of lockdown.

No masks for teachers OR students in crowded key worker provision in schools.

How many times are they going to change the goalposts before our children can return to a normal education?

Who is ‘they’? The government is the one making all the decisions here.

LizardWar good for you then. You’re definitely a minority who seems to think it’s a really enjoyable thing.
You confirmed you don’t have younger primary age kids 8 and under. It’s a completely different ball game getting them to engage and learn on a zoom class. They can’t just be left alone. I need to prompt, lecture, shout, coach on most calls and with almost most work set. You also don’t have a SEN child, it’s seriously completely different and SO challenging trying to get them to engage and focus. There’s no way we could have this carefree existence you seem to describe.
Your post sounds pretty condescending, just because you’ve managed to see this as something great, there’s something wrong with the rest of us who don’t and can’t .
We’ve also definitely not saved a fortune in this! All the extra meals/ snacks/ incentives/ home learning materials not to mention constant things around the house needing replacing or updating with the extra wear and tear in suddenly having a full household 24/7.

This would and should never continue for a few more months, let alone a year!

But as you love it so much, then go for it and keep homeschooling even after lockdown ends!

I have absolutely no confidence in Dr Jenny Harries. My opinion of her abilities is falling towards that of Gav Williamson

@donewithitalltodayandxmas

Right, his professional body should be lobbying the government about that.

Meanwhile, this thread is about teachers who apparently need no PPE whatsoever and are no more at risk than anyone else. The data shows this to be blatantly untrue.

@noblegiraffe

Each individual class is a bubble and they are kept completely separate from all other bubbles which means the few cases we have had have been able to isolate a small group and stop the spread.

This doesn’t happen in secondary.

But it does in primaries, so we need to be looking to treat primary and secondary schools differently.

It is possible to make primary schools safer, to ensure measures are in place that do keep contact limited to small groups, ensure frequent cleaning and good hygiene, allow mask wearing. I know it is possible because DDs school do it and as a result have had very few cases and no cases where they have then spread outside the initial bubble.

With that in mind primary schools should reopen, with those measures in place.

Secondary is more of a challenge because of the structure of having different rooms/teachers for different subjects but there are reasonable and cost effective changes that could be made like wider mask usage, rota attendance to reduce numbers and increase distancing.

Having primary school children at home and pretending that they are able to effectively learn remotely is a joke, a 6 yo with parents working all day on their own computers/calls, cannot learn online by themselves. They can fill out a few worksheets on stuff they learnt before the school closed, maybe, but they're not learning new content or social skills.

Completely agree HalfShrunkMoreToGo

So the Shroedinger's school's theory wasn't correct then? Colour me surprised.

A virus spread by droplet infection, will spread when people are in close contact. It has been madness to pretend otherwise.

^

LIZARDWAR you can't be serious!!! You must be winding everyone up? Next January. Poor children

This morning I compiled tables of hospital admissions by age for every region in England here: www.covidmessenger.com/hospital-admissions/

There are very few cases in school-aged children that become serious enough to warrant hospital admission. Which certainly suggests schools aren't particularly hazardous.

However, this is not the complete picture, obviously.

While these charts are very reassuring - our children are at very low risk of becoming seriously ill - they don't give us a complete picture on whether teachers, TAs and staff are safe ie they don't tell us how much transmission is occurring in school.

However, the original chart posted at the start of the thread doesn't do anything to clarify that point either, for lots of reasons many of which have been pointed out already.

PHE were producing a weekly report ii Autumn that detailed outbreaks in schools - I wonder if that is still available. I think those charts would be very helpful to this discussion.

Let me dig around and see if I can find them......

[quote LizardWar]@sundowners

Frankly whether primary DC can access zoom lessons is neither here nor there.

The priority at the moment is keeping people safe. Schools opening will expose DC, staff and parents to the risk of death or permanent disability.

Even after everyone has been vaccinated, schools will only be able to open on a rota basis with social distancing.

Because

1. Vaccines do not prevent Long COVID,

1. They are not 100% effective so some DC and teachers will die otherwise and

1. We need to minimise the workload of our poor NHS nurses and doctors- 0.1% of teachers needing hospital is 0.1% that wouldn't if schools stay closed.[/quote]

Here we go again

Misclick! But it does in primaries, so we need to be looking to treat primary and secondary schools differently.

Obviously and I have argued this all along. What is not clear at the moment is whether the previous measures in primary schools continued to be effective in the face of the new variant. There was a worrying rise in the infection rate in primary school children just before Christmas.

What we need is to see the infection rate data now that primaries have partly re-opened after Christmas. Unfortunately that data was due to be published by the ONS last Friday and has still not been published.

@Feenie

just wearing a mask

I'm sorry, what? You think the DfE says we should wear masks? Think again! They say we don't need PPE.

How do people STILL not know this?

The teachers at the school were I live are wearing ppe !