Schools in meltdown. Put your kids in masks

[0None0]

Long story short

First case May 10.
By May 17 th, half of all year groups at home. Many staff sick. Some departments have no staff at all. Some students sent home for lack of staff, rather than quarantine.
20th May. School closed. Half term brought forward one week
31 May. Reopen.
1 June several more cases identified
3rd June. All lower school sent home. Year 10 and 12 kept in only. Masks, which had been optional, are now made compulsory again. Too late
7th June. School closed again. I am now teaching online

So in the last few weeks, I have spent 3x longer on COVID related activities than on teaching. Including trying to get students home when classes close, and they can’t use public transport. Teaching doubled up classes, 30 online, and 30 in front of me, because there are hardly any staff in. Administering tests. Taking students to and from the testing site. Recording results. Cramming information in subjects I know nothing about, but have been told I am about to teach. Much of the time students have just been told to read in silence, while we get on with our main business, as a covid testing site.

So please put masks on your children. There is no reason for a secondary aged child not to have a mask on their face, and a spare in their bag, and a spare spare.

And please support what’s schools are trying to do to enforce masks.

I see so many posts of mothers up in arms about masks. We are desperately fighting to keep education going, and we need your support

I belong to a MAT composed of 3 large secondary schools. Within our 3 schools we have:

A 15 year old boy who developed type 1 diabetes when he caught Covid

An 18 year old girl who lost most of her hearing through covid

A 14 year old boy whose heart has been left so damaged by covid he might need a transplant.

It’s heartbreaking.

Please send your children to school in masks before this bomb explodes in all our faces. Most schools allow masks, even the ones that don’t make them compulsory

I won't be, the heat (in the south east at least) has made me feel quite faint in my mask this week.

The heat won't be helping. I suppose at least windows can be wide open.

OP I am quite certain that you are not a teacher. I know you say that as your school is closed you have time to spend on MN during the day. However real teachers would be spending time with their students teaching them online. So, please stop scaremongering on MN - find something better to do with your time.

It’s a shame voting wasn’t enabled. I would have voted YANBU.

@PaulGallico

OP I am quite certain that you are not a teacher. I know you say that as your school is closed you have time to spend on MN during the day. However real teachers would be spending time with their students teaching them online. So, please stop scaremongering on MN - find something better to do with your time.

O know you can’t help your ignorance, and tbh it’s basically your problem that you choose to cover your eyes and put your fingers in your ears, not mine.

But just imagine if one single person reads your wrongheaded foolishness, and on the basis of that decides not to put their child back
In a mask.

You will now live the rest of your life not knowing if that happened, abs what the consequences were.

MY SCHOOL IS CLOSED.

GET IT????????

hundreds of schools have been hit. But if it isn’t your school yet, you don’t realise what’s happening.

That’s why I’m here. To tell people what’s happening. If you read the thread, you will see many others are reporting similar. You might not be experiencing g it yet, but today could be the first case in your child!S school, and the school could be closed by this time next week.

School children need to be wearing masks.

If you are one of those deliberate mask-refugees, so be it. You will be helping this pandemic along and the consequences are on you.

However, there are thousands of reasonable people who are not telling their children to wear masks because they simply don’t realise the need.

I started this thread for them

We have one year group out at moment

@WaverleyPirate

The heat won't be helping. I suppose at least windows can be wide open.

They should be open as far as they go - many school windows have very limited opening, either through age or through restrictors - obviously dc not jumping or falling out of windows is also very important!

No masks at the local schools. There was one case at the unmasked secondary about a month ago and there's been no spread.

It’s all going wrong here today it’s ripping through secondary schools and we are all now at home for 10 days again due to being contacts
The problem for me is that if we don’t all pull together again children are going to continue to have major disruption to education until vaccinated.

And now myself and my DH who have critical NHS roles are out of work again despite being double vaccinated due the the self isolation rules. Having to cancel patient appointments and procedures which are already massively delayed
And all our hospitals are being told to plan for third wave to peak 1 August. Covid patients will be less ill but they will take up significant bed space and time in hospitals meaning that procedures and non covid work will be delayed again
We have had completely normal schooling with no cases and all extra curricular activities until about two weeks ago. Now it’s entire year groups being sent home again.
The delta variant does seem way way more infective
The risk of serious illness now is much less but it’s the cycle of self isolation on parents work and children’s education that is ramping up again
I was also negative about masks in schools but now feel we need to try to mitigate until secondary school children are offered a vaccine

@PaulGallico

No..I am sorry OP ...your last post convinces me that this isn't real. You are doing this for attention. Also, if this does happen to be real I am very glad you are not my childs teacher - writing such emotive, rubbish on the internet.

I'm reporting your post so mumsnet can decide if OP is a troll. Troll hunting is banned, remember

Saying someone is doing something for attention is not the same as saying they’re a troll.

If we rooted out everyone on MN ‘doing it for attention’ we probably wouldn’t be left with much.

Thank you @TheKeatingFive
@Mistressiggi - feel free to report my post if you wish.
However I think it is important to question the OP. We are in a pandemic, covid is in schools. However there was a lot of inaccuracies and 'shouty' replies from the OP that you do wonder if it is a post to get attention instead of having a balanced discussion.

There's a system for questioning the credentials of the OP. Fair enough to debate, but the "you're not a teacher" is just basic troll hunting.

Debate the issues raised

Basic ad hominem fallacy

Yes it’s happening right now in my central London primary school. Asked to collect and self isolate for at least 19 days! Here we go again but this time with ever more child impacting super contagious and deadly Indian Delta. Hope vaccines for adults helps! Still secretive information regarding impact on schools as the cover up continues. Supposedly a few London schools already impacted but not reported as off radar.

*10 days isolation (typo!)

@ResIpsaLoquiturInterAlia

Yes it’s happening right now in my central London primary school. Asked to collect and self isolate for at least 19 days! Here we go again but this time with ever more child impacting super contagious and deadly Indian Delta. Hope vaccines for adults helps! Still secretive information regarding impact on schools as the cover up continues. Supposedly a few London schools already impacted but not reported as off radar.

Yes. I am aware of London schools closed. They are trying to avoid Gavin Williamson finding out. That is school staff and PHE officials all conspiring to keep the names out of the public domain, because that man cold bloodedly forced Greenwich schools to open the Wednesday and Thursday before the Christmas holidays, leading, predictably, to massive spread, illness and deaths.

Lesson learnt. Make sure that idiot can’t find anything out. Even the press are reluctant to draw attention to it.

But the flip side of that is that schools are in a very precarious position and lots of parents are totally unaware

It looks like it's going to come down to a straight choice for the summer term.

Either choose masks / improve ventilation and keep schools open

or accept multiple isolations / school closures.

Question is which do parents and politicians prefer?

@WaverleyPirate

It looks like it's going to come down to a straight choice for the summer term.

Either choose masks / improve ventilation and keep schools open

or accept multiple isolations / school closures.

Question is which do parents and politicians prefer?

Exactly

All gone wrong here this week as well.

Sunday evening/Monday morning we had many positives from LFTs. Most of these have since been confirmed with a positive PCR.

School is now closed for the week as so many staff/students are positive or isolating due to being close contacts.

Choice 3. Keep the school's open without masks, do as much outside/with windows open as possibl and accept that some people will catch Covid.

Just like we've accepted that some people will catch flu, chickenpox, noro...