Anti-lockdown campaigners using children to push their agenda

[noblegiraffe]

I can't be the only one disgusted with how certain groups are using faux concern about children to push the earliest dismantling of lockdown restrictions.

They are loudly catastrophising on the front pages of the press about our kids. The lost generation. £40,000 in lost earnings. Articles about schools full of traumatised kids suffering PTSD caused by lockdown.

And the solution they propose is always to re-open schools as early as possible. Even before March 8th. Regardless of covid.

Now, the situation in schools before Christmas was awful. Some areas of the country had less than 50% attendance due to the new variant ripping through secondary schools. Secondary school kids were the most infected subset of the population by far, and are now the second least infected subset of the population behind the 70+ age group after schools were closed, demonstrating that there was a massive problem with transmission in secondary schools. It wasn't good for pupils' mental health or education to be in a situation when they didn't know if they'd be in school or out at the drop of a hat. But before Christmas, there was complete media silence on the impact that this was having on children.

CAMHS has been devastated by cuts. Waiting lists are intolerable and children in dire need of support don't even qualify. Same for social care around vulnerable children.

Yet you won't hear these people clamouring for schools re-opening as soon as possible talking at all about how to improve safety measures in schools to prevent the scenario we had before Christmas happening again. You won't hear them demanding more funding for children's mental health services and for more support for social care services.

And the reason you won't hear that is that THEY DON'T GIVE A SHIT.

The reason that they want schools re-opened as quickly as possible is because the message was that schools had to open first.

They can't get what they really want open (everything else) until schools are open, hence the massive focus on schools and how terrible things are for children.

This catastrophising isn't good for parents or kids. It's scaremongering and unhelpful.

I know that there are kids (and parents) really struggling with their mental health and worried about their education. Blaring out messages about how terrible things are and how they will never recover because you want to hype up the message about schools going back is irresponsible and sickening.

We need sensible and calm conversations about how to support children and parents. We need funding for schools and massive investment in support services. We need a long-term program of recovery, not 9 months of a Catch-Up Tsar and quick fixes. We need a measured and sensible approach to schools re-opening that won't see kids in and out and in and out due to lack of mitigation measures causing rampant covid spread (particularly with the new variant).

We need these anti-lockdown campaigners to shut up and stop dominating the narrative.

For students old enough to understand the risk of Covid to their parents, the prospect of a return to school can be a real source of stress.

Yes,a recent source of stress (reported, funnily enough, only in a tiny addendum to an article in The Guardian) reported that wellbeing had been found not to have declined on the whole, and that the most stressed were older girls : and that a source of the stress , largely, was return to school not absence from school. It is a very under reported survey finding.

If we want ti manage students' stress, we also need to manage the return to school bit : this does not seem to be something the government acknowledges. They think everyone back in school, magic wand, stress and anxiety gone. Schools are stress inducing places for many, especially in covid times and especially for oldest studnets. But the MN focus does always seem to be on primary school.

Me too. Only on Mumsnet. This isn’t really life. I’m a teacher and a mother and I am so so excited about 8th March

All my teacher friends are looking forward to schools reopening.

And my teens have suffered massively (mentally and academically) from being kept isolated at home since December.

Given that the most vulnerable are now vaccinated and hospitals will have spare capacity, I feel that schools need to open ASAP!

If we want ti manage students' stress, we also need to manage the return to school bit : this does not seem to be something the government acknowledges. They think everyone back in school, magic wand, stress and anxiety gone. Schools are stress inducing places for many, especially in covid times and especially for oldest studnets. But the MN focus does always seem to be on primary school
That's quite true.
The government has shown zero concern for the wellbeing of secondary students and have continued to dilly dally on exam arrangements. It causes a huge amount of stress for our older students, and makes it much more difficult for us to support and give reassurance.

Secondary schools aren't considered to be childcare though, so the students are easily forgotten.

But the school situation before Christmas wasn't awful. Our school has had not one covid case in the whole year. The kids were getting on great then closed again. I don't care who it is, we need to get the kids back into school. Far better than them being ignored because we're working full time as keyworkers but can't get a school place.

@HalfPastThree

I'm also not completely clear what "safe" means in schools - it feels like the wrong question. There's no such thing as 100% safe.

I would ask: "Given the way in which we could reasonably open schools tomorrow, with appropriate safety measures, do the harms of keeping them closed outweigh the risks of opening?"

That's all we are asking for "appropriate safety measures." It's just that what you think is safe really really isn't!

@LolaSmiles

Where did the rest of my sentence go?

I would guess families choosing to hire nannies to facilitate home learning are the same sort of families with a mum on MN accusing any teacher who advocated appropriate measures to open responsibly of wanting schools closed forever

Why is that?

But the school situation before Christmas wasn't awful.

It was awful in terms of children being transmitters and a risk to the NHS becoming overwhelmed. There are local extremes, but government policy considers the whole country.

@Boredsobored

But the school situation before Christmas wasn't awful. Our school has had not one covid case in the whole year. The kids were getting on great then closed again. I don't care who it is, we need to get the kids back into school. Far better than them being ignored because we're working full time as keyworkers but can't get a school place.

It was awful. You were lucky. Tier 4 secondary school here for context and also my DS's special school in tier 4. Numerous staff and student cases.

But the school situation before Christmas wasn't awful. Our school has had not one covid case in the whole year.
It wasn't awful for you. It wasn't awful in my school. But a local secondary had to close completely because there were so many cases in so many years that public health told them to close.

I cannot see anywhere what noble is suggesting schools shouid do? Can anyone direct me to what page that is on?

@hercwasanenemyofeducation then what about your concern for all those companies out there, the thousands of them the HSE have been able to close for covid outbreaks? Everyone feels safer with kids all but locked up..they can't even go in shops or meet a friend - but it's adults and workplaces spreading this far more. There's been more Covid in local restaurants open for takeaway and Tesco than the local school.

@mrshamlet I'm sure some schools were like that but the minority. Closing down every school in the country (for most kids) is one way to deal with it - or maybe they could have looked at how well that school was managing covid. There's only so much you can do with teenagers, or even in a particular area where many parents work for a small number of employers - but some schools have had better practices than others.

I think it’s more that prominent people are now being allowed to talk about the damage it’s doing to children and their families. The narrative has changed. Before no one was allowed to speak publicly about the effects lockdown was having on society.

There is no special agenda. No secret group of people trying to murder teachers. Just parents that want their kids back in school - after all we’ve had years and years of governments and even MN threads telling us kids need to be in school.

The use of CAHMS and other children’s services bring used as as an argument is poor and completely irrelevant.

Schools should never have shut. France managed it why couldn’t we?

Most people on this thread haven't read the OP properly, or saw Noble's name and went off on a tangent.

@Boredsobored You're feeding a narrative that spread of covid is somehow the fault of a school. Every measure that impacts on spread (school size,layout, funding, community infection) are external factors that schools cannot control.

It wasn't the minority of schools with repeated isolations and multiple cases.

I have concerns for those companies. From an. infection pov better they were shut than allowed to continue to spread the virus surely?

Noble shared evidence above that children are usually the index (first) case in a household. Anecdotally this was an asymptomatic child.

[quote Boredsobored]@mrshamlet I'm sure some schools were like that but the minority. Closing down every school in the country (for most kids) is one way to deal with it - or maybe they could have looked at how well that school was managing covid. There's only so much you can do with teenagers, or even in a particular area where many parents work for a small number of employers - but some schools have had better practices than others.[/quote]
I agree. We have not had ONE case at our school in term time. We have been alerted to three cases but those were in school holidays.

The use of CAHMS and other children’s services bring used as as an argument is poor and completely irrelevant.

Whole point of the thread though.

France managed it why couldn’t we?

They allowed masks in classrooms, we didn't. They used rotas, we didn't. Their restrictions on adults have been far harsher than ours.

Their restrictions on adults have been far harsher than ours.

At the very start but not since.

but some schools have had better practices than others.
1600 people.
No social distancing because that's not required in schools.
Siblings in multiple years.
What better practices do you think could have been adopted?

But keeping cases low at the start was key. Something we failed on every time cases started rising.

I'd happily open schools with the same restrictions as France did when they had similar case levels.

@Remmy123

I cannot see anywhere what noble is suggesting schools shouid do? Can anyone direct me to what page that is on?

I did ask her as well but she never answered. If you find it, please it out to me as well.

@she

French schools have an average class size of 23 which must aid social distancing. As I understand every child over age of 6 wears a mask.

boredsobored The school situation here before the Christmas lockdown was awful with 46% of transmission in our borough being in schools and just 14% in hospitality. It was why they started closing the schools in East London even before they did so nationally. Schools were driving the wave and if you open them again with no change they will do so again. Hospital admissions have fallen but ICUs are still full and stubbornly so. Perhaps you would like to go into our local teaching hospital and explain to the exhausted staff why they have to do it all again. Or to my DD and I’s specialists on why they will continue to be unable to help their patients unless it is an emergency because the theatres have all been taken over to be used for ICU.

@HercwasanEnemyofEducation

But keeping cases low at the start was key. Something we failed on every time cases started rising.

I'd happily open schools with the same restrictions as France did when they had similar case levels.

Oh right so everything we've done since is pointless then?

And iirc I don't think France have ever restricted people's homes etc so in that respect we've had it worse.