Surely it should not be beyond the wit of mankind/the DfE...

[drspouse]

to find large spaces to hold schools in that mean they can be socially distanced and/or in rotas?
Surely?
My DCs' schools are quite close together (primary but two different schools) and one is opposite a closed (well, distance learning) college. There are 2 secondary schools within walking distance and you could easily fit all of the primary years 4-6 plus half of the secondary schools into the college classrooms at 15 per regular sized classroom (or a whole class of 30 in a lecture hall).
Then the remaining pupils could socially distance and years R-3 could split into half sized groups (given we don't think they are very infectious but they are poorer at socially distancing and more likely to run riot on a college campus/break a village hall).

It would require the DfE to get their act together and provide:
Individual technology for the secondary school pupils and a classroom setup for the primary teachers plus portable equipment for the primary teachers.
Minibuses from each village/town area for each year (e.g. you'd have Year 7 Lower Wallop bus and Year 8 Hill Estate Bus) that serves the secondary school pupils (to get them to the college without being together on a bus and IMPORTANTLY to get them home again without congregating all together in town.)
DBS checks for all maintenance/caretaking staff on the college campus and in any other halls used.
Weekly PCR tests for all staff and ditto all secondary school pupils unless exempt.
Employing a full time TA per primary class of 30 so that half of them could have the TA and half the teacher and then swap over.
Mobile connections for all secondary pupils (where it's not e.g. a college) and for primary teachers' equipment.

What else have I forgotten that is actually just a matter of money not impossibility?

The primary school my DD is in also has 2 church halls in walking distance and there are others around and about.

I know not ALL schools could use other halls but surely it's better to send SOME children back rather than NO children back?

I do like blue sky thinking @Piggywaspushed, you've burst my bubble.

Sorry OP.

It would be nice of the DfE were thinking about any plans, unworkable or workable. Somehow I doubt it.

Yeah I know. But I've learned not to expect too much.

there’s 78 schools in my local authority... 2 colleges, 2 cinemas and 1 small theatre

Where are the rest of the buildings going to appear from?

Where's your "can do" attitude?

Some areas have a lot more public buildings than others - we are an older city with a LOT of churches etc. We do already have a heck of a lot of inequality though. If we can boost school time for most children that would be better than where we are. But ideally this would have happened last summer.

I have to say the "how do I drop off both DCs to different places" comment made me 🙄 as that's just life for a lot of us. Better than no school at all, eh?

Some areas have a lot more public buildings than others - we are an older city with a LOT of churches etc.

That's an understatement and a half! How would this work in rural areas?
I can't find a venue to run a dance class never mind what you're proposing!

just physical distancing is not enough to prevent covid. it is airborne and is spread by breathing the same air without enough ventilation.

So putting 30 kids in a large theatre where they have to shout to each other for a whole day will spread covid nearly as much as putting 30 kids in a regular classroom. That means there is no point in dreaming up elaborate schemes to use different spaces. The only option is to get community transmission low and wait for the vaccine.

The DfE aren't really willing to spend any money on schools returning safely, though- are they?

I also think that whilst cities may have lots of useable spaces available, rural schools have far fewer options. In my town and the next town over, there are two secondary schools. The local primaries would fill the secondaries (so no distancing would be possible) and there's nowhere really to displace the secondaries to- there just isn't a building that would fit that many students- appropriate or otherwise.

@drspouse

Some areas have a lot more public buildings than others - we are an older city with a LOT of churches etc. We do already have a heck of a lot of inequality though. If we can boost school time for most children that would be better than where we are. But ideally this would have happened last summer.

I have to say the "how do I drop off both DCs to different places" comment made me 🙄 as that's just life for a lot of us. Better than no school at all, eh?

Churches?

So where are the homeless people using churches as shelters going to go?

What about the food banks/ testing centres using churches, where are they going to go?

How many classes do you think you could get in one church? We have a small one. Say 12 students in the main body of the church and 10 in the hall? We don’t have enough toilets for adults and children to have separate ones. So we have got two thirds of a class in. You then need 2 teachers, security, reception, WiFi, IT support, cleaners, first aider, manager, premises staff, etc.

What are you going to do if two pupils fight? That can take 3 or 4 staff to deal with.
What are you going to do if a parent comes storming in with a weaponised dog? Not unusual. Again, you would need 3 or 4 staff to deal.
What are you going to do if a child develops a temperature,/vomits,/faints ? The adult who looks after them cannot then return to the classroom or be near any other staff or students until the child is tested.

Then what if there is an outbreak and hdd as of your staff have to storm isolate? You are talking about finding 10-15 staff to be available for two thirds of a class to be in lessons. And paying all those staff, when they would mostly just be sitting waiting for the fight/ dog/ illness.

And BEFORE Covid we were down to amalgamating 4 classes in the main hall because we only had 2 teachers and one TA to share between them , this was a weekly occurrence from 2018 onward

So, turf out the homeless people and food banks, find and pay 10-15 school staff, when we have a critical shortage of teachers, build extra toilets, security fences, WiFi hubs, and then find buses to bring in the students. And that’s more than half of a single class sorted out right there. Then repeat for every single class in every single school in the country.

Again. We HAVE school buildings. We do not need to be commandeering random unsuitable buildings to use as schools.

WHEN it is safe to do do, we will be calling students back into their ACTUAL schools. While it is not safe to do so, it would be 100 x less safe to try and run fragments of schools in churches

My smallish town on the outskirts of London has 4 large secondary schools and 6 large primary schools. We have no buildings such as you imagine. Where do you propose we put approximately 7000 children?

@Princessdebthe1st

My smallish town on the outskirts of London has 4 large secondary schools and 6 large primary schools. We have no buildings such as you imagine. Where do you propose we put approximately 7000 children?

And why?

There are lots of supply teachers. It wouldn't have to be a TA teaching a class.

Most supply teachers have no work and no furlough at the moment.

This would be great.

But ... it was all decided against by the DfE. Which is baffling.

And, yes, it's worth thinking about this again because it's possible we're going to be dealing with coronavirus for quite a while.

sorry OP, but it seems to me that you have not got a clue how secondary schools work.

1. schools stream for different subjects, and then, after year 9, they do different options.

so child A has maths in group A, but then does German with a different group, and does triple science, so that is a different group, and then they do DT, where they need to be in samller groups for equipment, so those groups are different again.

1. teachers don't stand at the fron and teach, not sure how sticking large groups in halls, or lecture theatres works.

But the thing I mostly don't understand from your OP, is where are all the students that should be in that college building? Areyou just chucking them under a bus in order to use their building for schools?

Where doyou get the staff from? Every suggestion I have seen so far relies on magically finding thousands of extra teachers or TAs.

I think, for example, that rotas could work. But if my child goes in to school on Monday, then they need to have home learning from Tuesday to Friday. If their class teacher is teaching other groups from Tuesday to Friday, who is doing the online learning? Again, where dot he extra teachers come from. And please don't suggest that the poor teachers, after teaching all week, can just magically produce and record extra work for those other days.

@thecatfromjapan

There are lots of supply teachers. It wouldn't have to be a TA teaching a class.

Most supply teachers have no work and no furlough at the moment.

This would be great.

But ... it was all decided against by the DfE. Which is baffling.

And, yes, it's worth thinking about this again because it's possible we're going to be dealing with coronavirus for quite a while.

You might have lots of spare teachers knocking about. We have a critical shortage. We have zero applications for some posts, and can’t get supply teachers long term either. And by long term, I mean committed to finishing the week. We did used to get occasional day to day supply, but nobody who wanted anything more.

They don't care, OP. Literally don't give a shit.

All HE students are taught remotely as are almost all FE students at the moment. Did anybody think they are in college at the moment??!

We have one night shelter locally in a church hall, nobody uses the other halls or the churches themselves. Does anywhere have every church hall filled with homeless day and night? It's the hall where DS does Cubs normally so it's not even used by the night shelter in the day/early evening.

I think the availability of teachers is regional as well. My TA friends were mainly laid off in the last lockdown, one is now at work but in a mental health unit, another laid off again. But we are NW so like I say, it could be regional.

The thing is, it has been managed in other countries.

So, for all the people saying it's impossible - well, the clear counter-argument is that it clearly is possible.

As Piggy said, up-thread, it hasn't proved to be enough to keep schools open without any closures, but it's certainly helped keep schools more open, and keep transmission rates lower.

And, sadly, if these new mutations of the virus are indeed worrying, it may well be that we do need to do this. We'll need to do something. 🤷‍♀️

We definitely need some creative thinking on it.
If they do the same as last term, we'll be back to square one in no time.
Personally, I would prefer a rota/blended learning system initially (when levels are low enough).
Obviously for some keyworker kids and some vulnerable they might still need to offer full time.
But allow parents the choice - so equally if some would prefer their kids to do a fully remote timetable, let them - no fines.
The crying shame of it is, if the government went for a proper zero covid strategy we wouldn't need to be worrying about any of this :-(

@drspouse

All HE students are taught remotely as are almost all FE students at the moment. Did anybody think they are in college at the moment??!

We have one night shelter locally in a church hall, nobody uses the other halls or the churches themselves. Does anywhere have every church hall filled with homeless day and night? It's the hall where DS does Cubs normally so it's not even used by the night shelter in the day/early evening.

Night shelters typically rotate around several churches each week, to fit around other activities in the church, and voluntary staff available. Cubs is one thing, but how would your ad hoc ‘schools’ fit around that??

They wouldn’t.

You clearly know nothing whatsoever about running either a night shelter or a school

@thecatfromjapan

There are lots of supply teachers. It wouldn't have to be a TA teaching a class.

Most supply teachers have no work and no furlough at the moment.

This would be great.

But ... it was all decided against by the DfE. Which is baffling.

And, yes, it's worth thinking about this again because it's possible we're going to be dealing with coronavirus for quite a while.

no where near enough.

There is a national shortage of supply teachers too, and that is just for normal sickness absence let alone covid absence, and all these extra teachers.

And that is assuming that the supply teachers want to do it, which, given that part of the issue is safety for teachers, and that they may have their own kids ot sort out, they may not want to.

Do you remember the army of retired teachers that was promised back in March?

Hah.

Rowenasemolina What the hell is a harmonised dog?

Misses point of thread.

Weaponised not harmonised.