Primary schools back sooner than expected?

[deeplybaffled]

It’s hard to know what to believe, but PHE now seem to be suggesting that primary schools can safely return after half term - which seems to contradict all other recent reports and government comments
focussing around Easter!

Yeah it’s good to raise the point of a cutoff.

But at some point, I don’t think it’s fair to continue disrupting their education in order that the rest of society can get a risk-free life.

Is it fair for kids to bear with it a few weeks longer? Well, no, not in my view. But if just a few weeks, I’m sure they can manage it.

But when we look to extend that out for weeks and months, it isn’t a small sacrifice anymore.

We need to work out a way to integrate a respect for the virus without such a penalising effect on a group that we should be nurturing. Closing down in person teaching is such a blunt instrument.

Open up the schools, and we have work hard to work around the issues it causes. But it’s pure selfishness to think we don’t absolutely have to do it.

@LyndaLaHughes

Just to be clear there is massive manipulation of data around so-called outbreaks. My school had 4 bubbles closed and 7 cases. My children's school had 6 cases. Neither of these were classed as outbreaks. Schools are reporting to the DFE not PHE so the true picture of what has happened. There is massive manipulation of the data around schools. With regards to the latest figures from the ONS, schools were closed or partially open for the majority of that time. It would have been more helpful to do a comparison in the last few months of the year when schools were actually open to all children. DFE's own data which is not being widely reported shows risk of catching covid is higher for teachers. I'm fed up of the gas-lighting and lies.

Education Staff may be more at risk of covid than the general population but they are not at any more risk than many other occupations as per the ONS data released recently.

It’s a delicate balancing act unfortunately.

Well @CovidbyPost, those figures might look very different if they had only thought to use data from September to December, when schools were fully open to all pupils, as opposed to averaging them out since March to make the numbers appear smaller.

@CallmeAngelina

Well *@CovidbyPost*, those figures might look very different if they had only thought to use data from September to December, when schools were fully open to all pupils, as opposed to averaging them out since March to make the numbers appear smaller.

Maybe but also lots of other work places were closed too in March plus September to December everything is back open and everyone inside again too so the other occupations may have been even higher?

None of it proves anything!

We need to work out a way to integrate a respect for the virus without such a penalising effect on a group that we should be nurturing.

Absolutely.

And why does anyone accept that schools were not given substantial extra funding to do deal with the pandemic because this is the crux of the matter. Every other sector is being propped up with education left at the bottom.

This exactly. It’s counterintuitive to be paying businesses to stay shut (and I appreciate there are many many exceptions to this) while doing nothing to reduce the levels of transmission in schools (so indirectly the community) which would allow limited opening in both schools and community, instead of this invidious start-stop situation.

My solutions - rotas so class sizes are halved. Benefits from smaller classes will offset less taught time. Use of additional spaces, rented if necessary or on site. Additional set work for when not in the classroom being taught - can either be done at home or, if KW/vulnerable, in school under supervision - so everyone gets the same amount of teaching. Greater scrutiny of key worker status. Sessions of outdoor exercise. Usual SD, sanitising, masks.

Will need money spending on staff, spaces and equipment but would be fairer to pupils as a whole and predictable so parents could plan, instead of the current hot mess.

Don’t know if that solves the KW issue @MarshaBradyo?

re:100% safe
nothing ever is. We did our own "analysis" and agreed that as long as the rates are low (who threshold or lower) AND everyone/everywhere/all the time has to be in a proper mask we are fine for our kid to attend school. We still have these 2 criteria. But I'm afraid that even after 100k extra deaths and a year of experience/data these will not be fulfilled whenever they reopen schools.

A friend asked me why we didn't send our kid back to school in sept. it's really easy - he has a 50/50 chance of having inherited a faulty gene that can cause a life long condition which might be very serious (many surgeries) or mild/okay to live with. We know that sugary/bubbly drinks contribute to activation of this gene. So we never introduced them, it is not part of his daily life.

In a way I feel parents lobbying to open as if normal are basically forcing down sugary/bubbly drinks on someone's throat despite knowing that it might hurt them. But as long as it's not hurting their child it's fine.

Somewhere, far better mathematicians than me are analysing age profiles of cases and hospital admissions, running projections, setting up differential equations, crunching the big numbers and guessing as hard and as well as they can. They are making predictions and testing them with every new piece of data they get.

And the big question is: What can we release, and when, to keep cases in decline?

That's the only thing that has any bearing on anything and it's too complicated for us to work out on a forum without a big research grant and all the latest figures. We can argue until we are blue in the face about the pros and cons of online teaching and the negative effects of lockdowns on mental health, but until cases are in decline and not just going to rebound like a jack in the box from hell when we release lockdown, it's not going to get released.

In a way I feel parents lobbying to open as if normal are basically forcing down sugary/bubbly drinks on someone's throat despite knowing that it might hurt them. But as long as it's not hurting their child it's fine.

I equally feel that parents lobbying to keep schools shut are hurting other children, but as long as schools shut doesn't hurt their child it's fine.

There's no easy answer, but it's not a black and white issue. There's varying shades of grey and a balance must be found. The schools cannot simply reopen because of the risk to vulnerable people in society, but equally they cannot continue to stay closed as they are due to the mental health implications of many children.

There's no easy answer, but it's not a black and white issue

I agree plus parents who do want to schools open are increasing their own risk too.

I think rotas so that kids have some semblance of normality when schools reopen, but fewer in a classroom mean less risk to teachers and other kids. There is also the issue of how transmissible the virus is from people who have been vaccinated and how sensible/altruistic those that have been vaccinated are if the virus is still transmissible. I wish there was less gaslighting on the impact of schools being vectors of transmission. I suspect there are a large number of cases where asymptomatic kids have passed it onto parents, parents feel symptoms, get tested and assume they are the ones that caught it first...not that you can get a test for the often different way the virus presents in kids. Boris was still saying schools were safe the day before he closed them. Long covid in kids and adults is a real thing. Underlying conditions can be a range of things from a broken bone to psoriasis. I'd feel so much more at ease if there was some honesty about the situation. I hope we do not open in such an unsafe way again, with high numbers. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, for adults anyway.

@Legseleven1990

In a way I feel parents lobbying to open as if normal are basically forcing down sugary/bubbly drinks on someone's throat despite knowing that it might hurt them. But as long as it's not hurting their child it's fine.

I equally feel that parents lobbying to keep schools shut are hurting other children, but as long as schools shut doesn't hurt their child it's fine.

There's no easy answer, but it's not a black and white issue. There's varying shades of grey and a balance must be found. The schools cannot simply reopen because of the risk to vulnerable people in society, but equally they cannot continue to stay closed as they are due to the mental health implications of many children.

I don't know how many more ways it can be said and I'm at the point of giving up.

The debate SHOULD NOT BE open/close
It should be about how the safety measures can/will be implemented, where will schools find the time/money/space to implement rotas, how is it best to do so, etc.

and yet a year in there is still more talk about why children should not be wearing masks ... it really feels like arguing with a pigeon.
(not you personally, but in general on the topic.)

I've written i the same post that you copied from the min criteria I think would be mandatory in schools to open. Yet you didn't address that point, but made it look like I wanted all schools shut because mine is vulnerable. I never said that.

btw, when I was 12/13 (y7 here I think) we had to do rotas for almost a year because a new part of the development (imagine a small inner london borough) where we lived was finished and the school population doubled almost overnight. So until they got a new "temporary" building up and running we were switching between:

• full week in school 8-13
• half time week 15-18
• not in school
• some weeks/days 12-16

and we never had lunch.

It's unimaginable but there was really no other choice. It did take time getting used to the almost hectic schedule, but it's actually not as bad as many would think. We had to cram the actual learning into a very tight class-timeframe, little socializing, almost no fun in school, no lunch, 5 min breaks between 45min classes and only one bigger one.
On the other hand: we were free for half of the day (and not just 1-2 hours before dinner, etc), we had to learn to learn independently, and we also had huge green spaces next to the school where we made up for the socialization part, and many times did our homework collectively on the ping pong concrete tables :)
There is a lot of resilience in kids, if they see that the adults want to make it work. And what helped us was the HT having a "shrug of the shoulder" attitude and saying out loud, that it is what it is, we can cry about it and feel miserable or we can make the best of it.
I cannot remember more than 3 kids in a class of 38 who really struggled. And this part of the city had everything from very low middle-class (almost to the point of uneducated) to high middle class/very educated families - so quite a mix.

Oh and those 3 kids got extra help and the next year 2 stayed with us, only 1 got withheld to redo the year. But he probs would have ended up there anyway.

@puppeteer

Yeah it’s good to raise the point of a cutoff.

But at some point, I don’t think it’s fair to continue disrupting their education in order that the rest of society can get a risk-free life.

Is it fair for kids to bear with it a few weeks longer? Well, no, not in my view. But if just a few weeks, I’m sure they can manage it.

But when we look to extend that out for weeks and months, it isn’t a small sacrifice anymore.

We need to work out a way to integrate a respect for the virus without such a penalising effect on a group that we should be nurturing. Closing down in person teaching is such a blunt instrument.

Open up the schools, and we have work hard to work around the issues it causes. But it’s pure selfishness to think we don’t absolutely have to do it.

Good post agreed

The schools are still open in Spain and the cases of contagion in primary schools are very low. In DD's school two teachers have it, but they caught it over Christmas during family gatherings. The measures here are strict and the kids have been wearing masks at school ever since the schools reopened. There is no mixing of classes in the playground or at lunchtime. The cafeteria is separated by plastic sheeting and the eating times are staggered. It is possible to get kids back to school and in DD's case, educationally and for her mental health it has been much better for her to be in school.

FYI, I'm a teacher in a language academy and I've had three students who came to my class who tested positive for Covid. Neither I or the other students in the class caught it. We wear masks, the desk are spaced out, there's a ventilation system and strict hand hygiene measure and no sharing of materials.

Also it's clear many schools are coping differently. My dcs school was doing class bubbles, staggered start & leave times, shorter days. Lunch was longer to allow it to be staggered, certain days were lunch boxes, different playgrounds & open windows. Obviously not every school can implement these measures.

I am 99% sure that the case in DS school (specialist school, fully open) and the multiple adult cases in DD school (she's in part time as a KW) leading to almost all bubbles in DD school closing within a week of opening, were down to adults catching it over Christmas. It all seems to be settled down now.
I'm not going to say that teachers shouldn't mix with their families as allowed and should stay home like hermits - but it also means there's no need for panic.

@NuttyinNotts

After half term is too soon for the first 4 vaccination groups to have had their first jab and a few weeks form the immune response to kick in. Group 4 of those, 70-75 and working age clinically extremely vulnerable are the vulnerable demographic most likely to mix with primary aged children. This seems unwise to say the least.

But why? I don’t understand why we would close schools so a section of people can mix in groups like this. I thought that wasn’t meant to be happening?!

Expat, do you have the Kent strain yet in Spain?.
It's this new strain that's causing the massive problems because it's so much more infectious.

@drspouse

I am 99% sure that the case in DS school (specialist school, fully open) and the multiple adult cases in DD school (she's in part time as a KW) leading to almost all bubbles in DD school closing within a week of opening, were down to adults catching it over Christmas. It all seems to be settled down now. I'm not going to say that teachers shouldn't mix with their families as allowed and should stay home like hermits - but it also means there's no need for panic.

Anecdata is meaningless. We have had 3 bubbles out of 4 close in my primary school in the last 3 weeks, in each case due to a child in the group testing positive.

We do justbeer. It's all over Europe.

Drspouse- the peak was i think the 29th so 4d after xmas. If the teachers caught it at xmas they likely would have had symptoms before going back unless they were mixi ng after xmas day more likely they caught from someone else at school.
Our case in school was at least 2w after return.
But going back on 4th jan was always going to be an issue as its so soon after ny and only about 2w after xmas day. So any asymptomatic would be contagious 29th say for 10 days.

@expatinspain

The schools are still open in Spain and the cases of contagion in primary schools are very low. In DD's school two teachers have it, but they caught it over Christmas during family gatherings. The measures here are strict and the kids have been wearing masks at school ever since the schools reopened. There is no mixing of classes in the playground or at lunchtime. The cafeteria is separated by plastic sheeting and the eating times are staggered. It is possible to get kids back to school and in DD's case, educationally and for her mental health it has been much better for her to be in school.

FYI, I'm a teacher in a language academy and I've had three students who came to my class who tested positive for Covid. Neither I or the other students in the class caught it. We wear masks, the desk are spaced out, there's a ventilation system and strict hand hygiene measure and no sharing of materials.

How many in a class in Spain? Are they all typically well-ventilated? Ventilation is a bit of an issue in uk.

sortof They split the classes, so there are max 15 per class. The windows and doors are kept open for ventilation. Where I work we don't have windows, so we use a proper ventilation system.

@expatinspain that's good. Would love that to happen here