Sunday Times just reported that all schools in England will be back on 8 March

[LimitIsUp]

This quote from the article:
"All schoolchildren will return to the classroom on March 8 under plans to start lifting the lockdown, Boris Johnson will announce in a national address next week.

Under the government’s blueprint to reopen society, adults will initially have only small new freedoms so as to prioritise the return of schools — a move ministers know will raise the coronavirus R number for infections.

Adults will be allowed to sit down outdoors for a coffee or on a park bench with one friend, or with members of their own family — a slight relaxation of the current rule, which permits outdoor meetings only while standing up.

The decision to reopen both primary and secondary schools goes against the advice of some government scientists. But the prime minister was swayed by faster than expected reductions in hospital admissions and infections."

I can link to the article but for those of you without a subscription, there is a pay wall

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/back-to-school-on-march-8-as-johnson-starts-lifting-lockdown-0v5zbz5bt

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• Title edited by MNHQ (it said October, we've changed it to March as reported) *

So thirty final year students in a classroom is safe. And yet thirty 19-year-olds in a room is so dangerous as to be worth a £10,000 fine for the organiser and £800 for those attending. Unless someone is going to show me how the virus knows the difference between a house party with 19-year-olds and a school classroom with 18-year-olds, I'm sensing another catastrophic error by the government. Keep schools shut until Easter at least.

There is absolutely no way that wearing masks in the classroom is feasible. How would one communicate? The point is a return to face the face teaching with staff. There is no way there can be communication and learning when wearing a mask for 6 hours a day in the classrom

loverofoldfilms
We have long covid and our little boy too but milder than us. Has truly ruined out lives. Opening the schools now will absolutely backfire and all we have done now will have been in vain.

Anyone else thinking of moving to another country once this has calmed a bit?”

I’m so very sorry to read this. So many people just don’t seem to realise (or don’t want to acknowledge because it’s too uncomfortable) that children are affected sometimes too, and previously perfectly healthy ones.

We’re looking at New Zealand. (Tbf we had it in mind anyway, but this has cemented it).
Whatever you do, wish you the best.

Lillith111

There is absolutely no way that wearing masks in the classroom is feasible. How would one communicate? The point is a return to face the face teaching with staff. There is no way there can be communication and learning when wearing a mask for 6 hours a day in the classrom“

Our son has asthma. He has been wfh for a year now, barr 6 weeks of P/T face to face in Sept./Oct.
He wore a mask (as did half a dozen classmates), his Korean 5 layer fabric mask with inbuilt medical filter, each day every day.
Sorry, but you are talking absolute rot. It’s perfectly do-able. He felt no discomfort at all. He wears it now when he goes for a walk.

Of course one can communicate with a mask on! Hospital staff do it all day every day - and their communications are often crucial ones... children in lots of countries are wearing masks at school.

• he had no issues with communication, whatsoever. He listened and he spoke. If he had hearing difficulties or was deaf, we would have provided him with a transparent mask. The tutors were unmasked.

@Lillith111

There is absolutely no way that wearing masks in the classroom is feasible. How would one communicate? The point is a return to face the face teaching with staff. There is no way there can be communication and learning when wearing a mask for 6 hours a day in the classrom

So what are you suggesting? How do schools attempt to keep staff, children and their families from catching covid?

I've been teaching in a mask since October, I won't say it's easy but it has been fine. My dc has been wearing a mask for the same length of time. I thought he'd complain about it loads but he simply hasn't.

@genie111

So thirty final year students in a classroom is safe. And yet thirty 19-year-olds in a room is so dangerous as to be worth a £10,000 fine for the organiser and £800 for those attending. Unless someone is going to show me how the virus knows the difference between a house party with 19-year-olds and a school classroom with 18-year-olds, I'm sensing another catastrophic error by the government. Keep schools shut until Easter at least.

Spot on!

@genie111

So thirty final year students in a classroom is safe. And yet thirty 19-year-olds in a room is so dangerous as to be worth a £10,000 fine for the organiser and £800 for those attending. Unless someone is going to show me how the virus knows the difference between a house party with 19-year-olds and a school classroom with 18-year-olds, I'm sensing another catastrophic error by the government. Keep schools shut until Easter at least.

It is a very cunning virus but for some reason it can’t get into schools. Magic walls

Other countries have children wearing masks from kindergarten upwards. The children are back in full time face to face schooling, life is returning to normal and much lower cases and deaths.

@Staffdontblowitnow Maybe bojo will announce on 22 Feb go all teachers 45 plus to get down to the surgery and get jabbed.

If he had an ounce of common sense he'd have thought this through and got school staff vaccinated in half term and then had a two week school closure to allow for the vaccine to become effective.

Yeah, @cherryolives sod the old and vulnerable!

@genie111

So thirty final year students in a classroom is safe. And yet thirty 19-year-olds in a room is so dangerous as to be worth a £10,000 fine for the organiser and £800 for those attending. Unless someone is going to show me how the virus knows the difference between a house party with 19-year-olds and a school classroom with 18-year-olds, I'm sensing another catastrophic error by the government. Keep schools shut until Easter at least.

Exactly. How many posters would be prepared to attend a gathering of 30+ people indoors at the moment? And if not, just have a think about why not and then transfer those reasons to your average classroom.

@WouldBeGood

Yeah, *@cherryolives* sod the old and vulnerable!

The old and vulnerable are done now. I’m having mine on Thursday and would have happily waited another week or two to get the kids back to school.

@Lillith111

There is absolutely no way that wearing masks in the classroom is feasible. How would one communicate? The point is a return to face the face teaching with staff. There is no way there can be communication and learning when wearing a mask for 6 hours a day in the classrom

I taught in my infant school in a mask through November an December, after returning to work following 7 weeks off work recovering from covid.

I removed it to teach phonics where I stood at the front of the room, 2m away from the children.

Our school guidelines changed following approx 3/4 of the staff caught covid during a 6 week period from October. We wear masks in all communal areas and staff can wear masks in the classroom if they wish.

It's pretty much our only protection bar the odd open window, as social distancing isn't possible.

It's perfectly possible to teach in a mask.

Not a single child struggled with me wearing a mask - at that point I was teaching 90 children a week. I am more than capable of speaking clearly, a little more slowly and with a little more volume where necessary.

@WouldBeGood

Yeah, *@cherryolives* sod the old and vulnerable!

School staff are also vulnerable in some cases. Care home workers (not just ones with elderly, vulnerable people but ones working with children - I know several through work) have been vaccinated so why not teachers?

Care home workers are vaccinated to protect those in the homes. Not them.

I think there’s some other thing going on with schools. Something BJ tried, paused because of public opinion and is now going back to.

There’s a reason they won’t make schools safe/ ban mask wearing/ won’t consider blended learning/ won’t vaccinate teachers etc

I don’t know what it is. Could be some idea of herd immunity amongst children? Eugenics? I have no idea. But it’s not just incompetence. I’m sure of that.

@Lillith111 with a mic headset. Similar to the ones that aerobics instructors have-really useful when teaching with a mask on.

The data that they used on infections in teachers was over a period of 9 months from March to December, 6 months of which schools were closed.
Why would they even think this was an accurate picture to go on? Or maybe they don't care about schools.

@WouldBeGood

Care home workers are vaccinated to protect those in the homes. Not them.

How are children in care homes more vulnerable than those in schools? All children should be protected.

The virus was rampant in schools last year, and contributed to the spike in infections. It sounds like schools are going to resume as normal, but businesses not. What’s the point of pushing education forward when there won’t be any jobs for them to go into by the time we’ve got businesses back up and running.

@cherryolives children should be protected: they should be back in school

OP's lighthearted reference to "Stockholm Syndrome" above made me want to refer people to enlightening recent BBC podcast on a programme called Sideways that was about Stockholm Syndrome. It seems like a police psychologist/negotiator created the syndrome to describe the behaviour of a woman who did her best to survive while held hostage in a bank robbery in order to deflect criticism of his botched police work.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s2kt/episodes/downloads