Good news for teachers; less so for care workers

[WouldBeGood]

Teachers significantly less likely to die from Covid than their peers.

Social care workers significantly higher, along with other low paid but essential occupations.

Amazed that a national newspaper would publish this data as 'proof' that schools are safe! Not only were attendance numbers massively reduced during the first lockdown, followed by the summer vacation, but also key worker bubbles in our children's schools kept siblings together in lockdown 1 as they were providing childcare not age related learning. Therefore, each household with children at school in March would have been mixing with fewer other families and social distancing etc was possible in such empty schools.

The revised guidance of 'magic' bubbles with full classrooms in September cannot possibly be compared with the six months prior. My DD 14 caught Covid at school (T&T identified her as a close contact & we were shielding at home) in a classroom of 30 with windows that barely opened within 3 weeks of term 1. Cases in her year group and teachers all term after that. Don't need to understand statistics to work out this safety claim is utter crap.

Why not come up with a scientifically valid plan to make schools safer instead of blaming the education sector? Teachers didn't allow 10,000 infected individuals to fly into the country, did they Boris? Teachers' individual risk may be based on their age and health but where else do we rely on 'magic' to stop an airborne virus in crowded indoor spaces? Didn't work at the DVLA did it?

If they’re talking education professionals does that include uni ? And teachers who were working from home? LA specialist service was mainly WFH etc

It's really reassuring to see that MNers (so you'd hope general population too) have the ability to critically analyse statistics and not just take them at face value.

@TheLuckiest

Hmm, I wonder if this includes TAs, support staff, cleaners, kitchen staff & lunchtime supervisors? The term 'teaching and education professionals' implies that this statistic doesn't include all staff who work in schools otherwise it would state that.

If it doesn't, I'd be very interested to know.

I also think March - Dec covers a considerable length of time when schools were limited to KW / vulnerable children or specific yeargroups. If the majority of the deaths were Sept-Dec, then that doesn't look particularly comforting really does it?

In fact, re-reading this, it clearly states 'teachers' meaning that TAs haven't been included presumably.

TAs who tend to have a lot of 1-2-1 contact with children, provide first aid, etc. The first people to get COVID at my school were TAs.

Good point luckiest.

@CausingChaos2

How convenient that data from when schools were mostly shut has been included.

This

Social care is just the toughest job. I am in awe of them.

You are misquoting the data- teachers are more likely to die than their peers

139 teachers, senior education professionals, education advisers and school inspectors died between March 9 and December 29. Over the same period, 46 teaching assistants and educational support assistants died.

Fifty-two of those who died were secondary school teachers, equating to a death rate of 39.2 deaths per 100,000 men and 21.2 deaths per 100,000 women.

These rates were higher than those seen nationally – 31.4 and 16.8 deaths per 100,000 among men and women respectively.

The ONS data says that Covid death rate among secondary teachers above average

chart of deaths

Its funny how there are certain corners who like to loudly shout "schools never shut" when people complain about schools being shut; and now faced with these ONS stats demonstrating teachers are not really at more risk than anyone else, those same posters flip that to "well the schools werent even open for most of that time!" Baffling

@siestalady, Is that really the extent of your reasoning powers
You can't see that schools being only partially open to a limited number of students, as well as being completely closed for the holiday periods within that timeframe (around 10 weeks) might make these statistics fairly meaningless?

@NapCracklePop

Has it included March-August when schools were closed to all but a few and then averaged the deaths out across the whole 10 months of pandemic so far? If so it is entirely meaningless when it comes to teacher safety in fully opened schools in a pandemic. Considering how they fudged ONS stats on teacher infection to look better than it really was I have very little faith in these being a true representation of reality either.

This.

It sounds as if they have done this. And from just that information we can already conclude that death rates when teachers were actually teaching must have been significantly higher than other occupations. They must really think we are stupid.

@siestalady

Its funny how there are certain corners who like to loudly shout "schools never shut" when people complain about schools being shut; and now faced with these ONS stats demonstrating teachers are not really at more risk than anyone else, those same posters flip that to "well the schools werent even open for most of that time!" Baffling

Obviously, if you want to make any meaningful statement about the risks to teachers, you have to look at teachers teaching their normal classes, when social distancing is not possible.

It is also clearly true that schools haven't been able to shut, but they are not operating as normal either. I really find it hard to believe that you fail to grasp this.

Surely the data isn’t an accurate representation because schools were closed for a big chunk of the time frame. Also the argument for school closures isn’t just about teachers it’s about the fact the kids are vectors and cause the spread at home.

Interesting. I wonder what can be done to help the taxi drivers, chefs, security guards and process plant workers (I assume social care workers will be getting vaccinated soon?).

@Foilball

Interesting. I wonder what can be done to help the taxi drivers, chefs, security guards and process plant workers (I assume social care workers will be getting vaccinated soon?).

Yes, that strikes me as a very pressing question that apparently no one else in this thread thinks is worth considering, as they're all too busy insisting that no one, ever can be harder done to than a teacher.

There is a petition to get staff in special schools vaccinated

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/566217

Please sign and pass on

Schools were only meaningfully open for less than half of this period - if 139 teaching staff have died during this time then extrapolated up would that not be be 2 x as many, if schools had been fully open? So about the same as average?

The most striking figures are that men are much more likely to die. There is a case for protecting men from exposure more than women

neu.org.uk/press-releases/impact-covid-school-workforce

Interesting how statistics differ. The OP statistics talks about death. Infection rate is also relevant.

On average the rate of COVID infection is 1.9 times higher amongst primary and secondary teachers than the general population. It is 2 times higher for special school teachers.
For teaching assistants and other staff, the rate of COVID infection is three times higher in primary schools and almost seven times higher in special schools.

The worrying thing is social care workers

@WouldBeGood

The worrying thing is social care workers

It is awful, but most of them have been vaccinated now so action has been taken.

This is the kind of data we need to have a discussion about prioritising certain occupations for vaccination after vulnerable groups. But to do that the data needs to be meaningful - spreading a terms worth of teacher deaths over 9 months to make it look acceptable isn't going to cut it.

I also think processing /plant stuff is worrying too because I feel strongly the is about employers not taking care of their staff properly. So i think these could have been mitigated. My husbands factory went all out to change the way the production line worked and has done really well.

For those mentioning about schools being closed, what about the huge number of people they were working from home last year (and still are). Are there figures to be discounted too?