So it looks like we're being prepared for children not to go back until after Easter

[choosingcrumble]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/children-face-months-at-home-as-schools-stay-shut-until-easter-wp5ltpm82?fbclid=IwAR1l0gRSzuJLIv508reRmBEojbYfoGOsWwe3_pBFmKpA4EbI1IgC5dKC2uE

I suspected it wouldn't be until then, let's just hope that it doesn't stretch into the summer.

Secondary schools have very low levels of attendance at the moment. In that respect talking about rotas etc is very different to primary. Also childcare and teaching time are not the same thing. Whilst I know it’s not totally straightforward it could be part time teaching for all, plus either time at home or in childcare, which could be done by suitable adults. Would require extra funding though

Has anyone started a case yet for children and young people’s right to an education under the Human Rights Act. It would be good to see what the judges have to say when presented with the facts, one year in. Also whether remote learning in the way provided by the majority of schools fulfils the criteria? Especially for the younger children. Also what does education mean, does it include physical education etc.

How does it help giving teachers the vaccinations when the children are spreading it.

My understanding is that some of the HTs in that Daily Mail article are from private boarding schools. So if the pupils stay on site all the time and all staff are vaccinated then it would work for their schools, but not for your average state school

@EmmanuelleMakro

Back after Feb half term.

Er, no.

Even if they jab teachers before Feb half term (which they won't), that will be ONE jab and the partial immunity won't kick in for 3 weeks.

Plus you seem to be under some kind of weird illusion that this is about the government caring about teachers' safety?! It's not. It's about community infection.

Keep schools closed til easter i can live with, what I won't accept is keeping our children locked indoors until then too. Prisoners probably have more freedom than our children currently its not fair. There needs to be relaxation in terms of mixing before Easter, rule of 6 outdoors for example, children need to have some form of socialising with their peers and extended family

Has anyone started a case yet for children and young people’s right to an education under the Human Rights Act

I bet Us4Them have, it's exactly the sort of thing they'd think is a good idea.

Because it would give the teachers less chance of catching it.

@Musicaldilemma

Has anyone started a case yet for children and young people’s right to an education under the Human Rights Act. It would be good to see what the judges have to say when presented with the facts, one year in. Also whether remote learning in the way provided by the majority of schools fulfils the criteria? Especially for the younger children. Also what does education mean, does it include physical education etc.

I may be wrong, but the right to an education does not necessarily mean an education provided by a school or a even a qualified teacher.

@EmmanuelleMakro

Back after Feb half term.

That wont solve the community transition which is why schools are closed! Also even if teachers were given their first vaccination over the half term they wouldn't be protected until 3 weeks after that date and then would only have partial immunity until 2nd jab 12 weeks later!

@YardleyX, I’m in Connecticut USA and my kids have not been in school full-time since March 2020. However, we are finally preparing for a full return Feb 1st.

Since September, classes have been split into two, with cohort A attending school for three hours in the am and cohort B attending for three hours in the pm.

During the part of the day my children have been home, they’ve had about two hours of work to do, via a mixture of Zoom, online assignments and handouts. My children are 7 and 9.5. Each child was given a Chromebook for work back in September.

As for the classrooms, each child shares a desk with one other child and they have a Perspex shield in between. Children wear masks at all times, including on the bus, aside from when they go outside for mask breaks. Because of the arrangement of school hours, they’ve been having lunch at home daily.

It hasn’t been perfect, but we’ve probably only had seven or eight cases the whole time, and obviously those classrooms reverted to fully online teaching for two weeks. Blessedly, my kids weren’t in those classes and so they’ve been in school—albeit for quite a short amount of time—since the beginning of the school year.

I will say that my children have been so happy to be at school, see their friends, even if school has been a lot more rigid and they’ve had to wear masks, which, let me tell you, they haven’t complained about since week one.

@3littlewords

Keep schools closed til easter i can live with, what I won't accept is keeping our children locked indoors until then too. Prisoners probably have more freedom than our children currently its not fair. There needs to be relaxation in terms of mixing before Easter, rule of 6 outdoors for example, children need to have some form of socialising with their peers and extended family

Why on earth are your children locked indoors? My children are out playing pretty much every day. They also have remote PE and we go for family walks. They don't mix with friends and family because of the hugely contagious virus (which doesn't care how 'fair' that is) but they are not locked in like prisoners.

I’m not sure if I can cope having dd2 home until Easter, I’m already struggling, she has ASD and a ehcp so technically she should be in, school could only take a certain amount so I agreed to keep dd home thinking it would be until Feb half term. The thought of having to home school her until April fills me with dread. Also have her sister who’s trying to study A levels, she’s working so hard but it’s not the same as being at school is it?

I do feel that teachers should be vaccinated but it won’t solve the issue if it’s continuing to spread amongst children/young adults. I don’t know what the solution is.

@MyDcAreMarvel really don’t think there was no need for that comment was there?!

Just for your information we have lost family and friends in the last year!

Giving jabs to the teachers is good for the teachers but what about the pupils who can still catch it and transmit it.

@EmmanuelleMakro

Even if that happened.

Feb half-term + 3 weeks to allow for immunity to develop still is just 2 weeks before the Easter holiday.

Two week notice takes us up to Easter hols. It’s a five week term.

And still this only protects teachers from getting hit too badly from the virus (thank you very much though!) but it will not prevent:
*children passing it to other children
*children taking it home to parents
*staff off sick albeit mildly
*staff having to isolate
*year groups or ‘bubbles’ having to isolate

The vaccine is sadly not a miracle that will eliminate all risks, that are still deemed unacceptable.

[quote stopgap]@YardleyX, I’m in Connecticut USA and my kids have not been in school full-time since March 2020. However, we are finally preparing for a full return Feb 1st.

Since September, classes have been split into two, with cohort A attending school for three hours in the am and cohort B attending for three hours in the pm.

During the part of the day my children have been home, they’ve had about two hours of work to do, via a mixture of Zoom, online assignments and handouts. My children are 7 and 9.5. Each child was given a Chromebook for work back in September.

As for the classrooms, each child shares a desk with one other child and they have a Perspex shield in between. Children wear masks at all times, including on the bus, aside from when they go outside for mask breaks. Because of the arrangement of school hours, they’ve been having lunch at home daily.

It hasn’t been perfect, but we’ve probably only had seven or eight cases the whole time, and obviously those classrooms reverted to fully online teaching for two weeks. Blessedly, my kids weren’t in those classes and so they’ve been in school—albeit for quite a short amount of time—since the beginning of the school year.

I will say that my children have been so happy to be at school, see their friends, even if school has been a lot more rigid and they’ve had to wear masks, which, let me tell you, they haven’t complained about since week one.[/quote]
This sounds so good - split days, perspex, masks, chromebooks...

A world away from schools in the UK.

‘There's a lot of evidence to suggest they're unsafe. Teachers getting Covid at 300% the rate of the rest of the population, for example’

Can you link to your sources for that please?

Secondary maths teacher here, and hand on heart, I can absolutely say that I am delivering a more effective education to more students in lockdown than I was from October to December. If we returned to the classroom without doing anything to reduce spread within the student population of the school, (especially given that this year we are dealing with the new variant, and I am basing my observation on the old variant) then many students would receive a worse education, not a better one.

This is not to say there are not advantages in terms of student mental health, though I think if they did not experience it first hand, people underestimate how stressful being in and out of school was, particularly for exam year students who were well aware that some of them were receiving much less teaching than other students in the same group. I think we should separate the issue of mental health from the issue of education, in that it may be possible to come up with solutions for improving mental health in teenagers that do not involve opening schools.

It's right to keep the schools closed. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck, but pandemics (and earthquakes and famines and floods and other natural disasters) aren't based around what fits in with our lives and what's 'fair'. It is what it is and at least we have light at the end of the tunnel.

One consideration I would like if it is after Easter is bringing the Easter holiday forward to the fortnight before Easter then they go back after Easter Monday. It would take pressure off working parents who are definitely getting the raw deal out of all of this.

It's weird how everyone someone says " vaccinate teachers now" there's a lot of "but"..
Surely if teachers get vaccinated by mid Feb, all schools can open fully by mid May at the latest?? Yes I know " but community transmission" and "vectors" but what's the alternative?? To keep children from mixing with each other for years? No football? No swimming? No dance class? No hanging out with each other? Until when? Because apparently part time school is not an option and this virus is not going anywhere.
Of course there will still be community spread. You can't eradicate that. But teachers were on here for months saying they were scared and unsafe..so, once the very old and the very vulnerable are vaxxed ( happening at a good clip now) and the teachers are also vaxxed, surely the community spread will put a less severe strain on hospitals? And teachers will no longer be so at risk??

Has anyone started a case yet for children and young people’s right to an education under the Human Rights Act.

They are getting an education though - remote learning regardless of how good it is is classed as an education.

I would also think that a worldwide pandemic would trump many of these things too.

@Doublefaced

‘There's a lot of evidence to suggest they're unsafe. Teachers getting Covid at 300% the rate of the rest of the population, for example’

Can you link to your sources for that please?

This 'link to source' instead of just googling like everyone else is the latest dickish thing on Mumsnet but here you go:

www.tes.com/news/exclusive-coronavirus-schools-teacher-covid-rates-333-above-average

@ChevyCamaro teachers welcome the vaccination but for now the “community spread” you speak of needs to be suppressed. It’s really quite simple.

[quote catgirl1976]@starrynight19 I didn't say it was deemed to be illegal I said it was legally flawed.

And NEU withdrew the S44 template letter (though refused to admit they had been wrong in proposing a mass S44 exercise across the education industry - they would have been much better advising people to use it in indivual circumstances where an employee could reasonably show they believed there was a serious and imminent danger for example in a high case area with many children still in school)[/quote]
Can you stop spouting such utter misinformation? You clearly have no idea what actually happened.

The S44 letters were intended for full school opening only, the NEU made it really clear they supported openings for key workers and vulnerable children. So the S44 letters only applied to one day of term- it was withdrawn because legally it did not apply to the more limited school opening the next day.

It was not legally flawed- otherwise we surely would have seen some action against teachers who refused to work on that Monday- enough of us didn't go in that it would have happened.

Each teacher who sent in an S44 did so on an individual basis because they believed there was a serious and imminent danger from going to work in a FULLY OPEN primary school. And this was the advice of the union, that it was an individual action and an individual choice.

It was also a strategic move, in conjunction with unison, but also, more importantly, the NAHT.

The NAHT had a legal action in place, asking the DfE to prove schools were a safe working environment. They would have had to prove this on the Tuesday when schools were shut. Co-incidence, no?

The irony is that the NEU advised exactly what you suggest they should have done- you're just misrepresenting their position.