Looks like the plans are now leaked.

[pinkhappy]

The Times seems to have leaked the plans now. I for one will be very happy if children's outdoor sport starts on March 8.

March 8:
Schools
Kids outdoor sport
Golf + Tennis

Early April:
🛍Non-essential retail
Outdoor pubs + restaurants

Mid April:
Gyms

May:
Cinemas + Theatre
Indoor pubs + restaurants

August:
Foreign holidays
Clubs

@MrsHamlet

Are teachers really that militant and petty that they're not prepared to spend an hour or two - or even a full day of that's what it takes - doing something that'll help keep them and their pupils safer? I'm neither militant nor petty. I am a very qualified and highly experienced teacher of English. We've been vilified in here for months about online learning being a poor substitute for face to face... so I'll happily go and teach my students about Macbeth because that's my job. Testing is SERCOs job. They have been paid a huge sum of money to do that. So they can do that and I can teach year 11 how to answer an exam question for some form of assessment.

Will it's just as well my nurse friend didn't say to her boss "I'm a specialist coordinator of an outpatient clinic. Looking after people in intensive care is an intensive care nurse's job" isn't it? Or the Covid death toll would be a lot higher than it is!

And as a teacher don't you sometimes have to deal with pastoral issues? Sort out fall outs? First aid? Manage fire drills? Or do you say "I'm an English literature teacher. That's all I do"? Surely not? SERCO don't manage lateral flow tests - mostly they're managed by employers, who give them out to their staff who seem to manage to learn how to use them ok.

That's not my recollection? But to be honest its all blurring into one now

@beckett12

Absolutely furious! I want normality back as much as everyone else but to send all schools back at once and no phased return feels like all the hardwork of lockdown is just about to be undone!

Exactly!!

‘None of my school staff have had a vaccination yet, pipe down.’

How many of them are CEV?

@LimitIsUp you think but we don't know do we , so no point speculating and they haven't mentioned half the things like adult sport , indoor sport , weddings , visiting family indoors, travelling , overnight stays etc
So there is a lot missing from their leak

AllAroundTheWreckin - teachers locally here have indeed had training on on using lateral flow testing. They’ve been testing themselves and KW children over the last lockdown.
This will look entirely different however, testing over 1000 children!!

Yippie for schools reopening on the 08th!!! They will only be in for three and half weeks until it's the Easter holidays so it's actually great timing ! Hope this is true !!!

My fag packet calculations guestimate the local rate will be about 90 per 100,000 on 8th March if trends continue. I personally had been hoping for two extra weeks (which would put the rate at 50 per 100,000 which is roughly the bench mark for reopening being adopted in Germany).

HOWEVER I do see that lockdown is starting to break down here. And I find it interesting that socialising has been prioritised BEFORE businesses this time which suggests that the government also believe that lockdown is / or is about to breakdown spontaneously and that mental health is a rising consideration before the economy.

So I think perhaps on balance this is as far as things could go. Which makes it slightly on the risky side for cases shooting up again. If that happens, Stage 2, 3 or 4 may be put back slightly.

But realistically I think its only going to slip a month at worse (cos of where the vaccination programme should be - provided we get no hiccups on that).

Which means July / August should be ok.

The question mark is then about new variants and the SA mutation (and similar ones) and the need for a new vaccine going into the Autumn.

We shall see, but atm I'm not worried or thinking there will be an Autumn lockdown (just yet).

8 March is just 3 weeks prior to the Easter holidays. A natural firebreak and the opportunity to assess implications of school reopening for the R rate

The "leak" is what is happening. Sky even have quotes that BoJo will use in the commons tomorrow.

Meanwhile schools have been operating this whole lockdown with lots at around 50% capacity.

Teacher. Over 50. Asthmatic. Overweight. No vaccine (band 6). I hoped for exam years in and phased for the rest to give more time for teachers like me (in my school of 75 staff 1/4 are over 50) to get vaccinated.
Several local staff died or have long covid.
Year 11s had three 10 day isolations from September to December. 8 positive cases during lockdown of socially distanced kids. And now we are going to Chuck 'em all back in.

And yet the most important thing oh here seems hair and nails?

Don't worry - you won't need it for summer holidays as lockdown 4 will be in full flow

So any positive cases will already be mixing in the school ?

[quote HopelessBlue192]@purplebatbear schools or universities? You know, where lots of young people who have been blamed for the spread, move halfway across the country to socialise with lots of different young people?[/quote]
All education settings showed to be vectors of transmission. Just go and look at the ONS data. Boris even called them 'vectors of transmission' during a ramble (speech)

It’s all speculation and will be open to change depending on numbers at each stage anyway.

@3littlewords yes thank you.

@purplebatbear

Teaching is not my paid job either but yet I’ve been expected to teach for the best part of the year (along with my actual job). Teachers need to be more adaptable

Gosh, I must have missed my adaptability. I didn’t move all my lessons, assessments etc, online back in March and teach full time whilst homeschooling my own children. Nor did I rework schemes of work for exam classes in September after testing. Or rework it all again in January. I didn’t plan half a term of face to face learning that I had to adapt at less than 12 hours notice to online learning. I haven’t spent hours and hours trawling the internet, laising with colleagues in other schools looking for innovative and interesting ways to present my lessons and I certainly didn’t spend hours making new learning resources to suit. I didn’t spend hours on the phone talking in vulnerable children, making them learning packs and delivering them and I haven’t just spent 6 weeks delivering learning simultaneously online and to keyworker students in my classroom.

Yep, the answer is teachers learning adaptability....

@pinkhappy

Those suggesting lockdown 4 seem very pessimistic. Very few people infected after 14 feb will die in the uk because of the vaccinations.

Yep, the government has made sure that the predominantly conservative-voting age groups are safe from dying so the rest of us can take our chances.

We don't die in quite the same numbers as the over 60's and deaths are the only thing that seems to matter (as seems to be the case for the OP) - no-one ever seems to worry about those who survive it but with serious long-term consequences.

(Btw where I live is above average for the rate per 100,000 but not the highest level nationally for a reference point on that - many places will be close to 50 per 100,000 come 8th March, which is good. There are just a few too many places higher than that, that I'd like).

[quote donewithitalltodayandxmas]@LimitIsUp you think but we don't know do we , so no point speculating and they haven't mentioned half the things like adult sport , indoor sport , weddings , visiting family indoors, travelling , overnight stays etc
So there is a lot missing from their leak [/quote]
I've had a subscription to the Times for a while now - long enough to observe that their leaks tend to bear fruition

@BadMotherLover

I am sick of them all. They are corrupt and incompetent. They need to be arrested and put in prison.

Totally agree and judging by moments across SM, the tide has turned it seems on them now.

Do I do first aid? No.
Do I manage fire drill? No.
I often deal with pastoral issues. That's part of my job, which I have been trained to do. My main job is teaching English to my classes - 3 of those should take external exams this year. I'll be very happy to see my students again but I won't be getting involved in testing them.
I'm sure I could manage to learn to use lateral flow tests should that be part of my job. But it isn't, so I won't.

@HopelessBlue192

Facts. There you go.

Data: https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3mpd6nzn7ie93t/onsinfectionnsurveybyyage_2…
Source: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare…




mockolate the front pages if the papers are all online now, and political journalists are tweeting. I read a Telegraph article which had the dates slightly later (May for hospitality, for example) but everything has schools/meeting outside.

As much as they may want to, teachers and teaching unions don't get to dictate when schools open or who attends.