Schools in areas with lots of Delta variant….

[MegCleary]

Have the schools got masks back in class. Just curious.
Not much where we are yet but wondering if I should ask schools if they will bring them back if local numbers start to increase.

im in lancashire in a variant area and dont know a single cases in any of the local schools. I have kids in the high school who through media know thousands and there are no cases

the biggest rise age group is 16-24 so its likely sixth forms and young adults

school age teens are 3rd on list of were most cases are

I’m in lancashire in a variant area and dont know a single cases in any of the local schools

You are very lucky. Or possibly you just don’t know about the cases.
Our head teacher has meetings with the other local head teachers. Every single secondary school in our borough has had cases. Lots of kids isolating at home.

If you only had a kid in year 9 at our school you might think we were unaffected. But we’ve had cases in all the other years.

We never got rid of masks. Hard to say if they help or not. They won’t stop it spreading but there’s a good chance they will reduce the spread.
Beats sending them all home again for distance learning.

Surrey, no masks in DD's secondary unless kids choose to (about a third were when I went in recently for a careers talk). No cases in the school that I know of (not sure if they would notify parents for cases outside of the year group, but I've only heard about a couple of cases all year and both were in Jan).

@sadperson16 I think they do make some difference, yes. Certainly there were far fewer outbreaks at my kids' secondary when full mask wearing came in, and far fewer teachers off sick. However, their school was very hard hit in Nov/Dec last year so its possible that a level of immunity amongst staff and pupils is at play too. In the last week of Dec 40 staff were off sick or self isolating and the whole school had to close.

In Wales we neber stopped, and weve got much lower rates than the rest of the UK

I’m in Lancashire and the high school never stopped wearing them
The school had 13 cases before half term so closed the school early
They did surge testing on all pupils, staff and family

Yep I'm in Bolton,the LEA made a decision ,that all the high school,s were to continue with them

[quote BarbarianMum]@sadperson16 I think they do make some difference, yes. Certainly there were far fewer outbreaks at my kids' secondary when full mask wearing came in, and far fewer teachers off sick. However, their school was very hard hit in Nov/Dec last year so its possible that a level of immunity amongst staff and pupils is at play too. In the last week of Dec 40 staff were off sick or self isolating and the whole school had to close.[/quote]
That’s because the cases were really low in the community then. In my daughters secondary school nobody is wearing masks and they haven’t had a single case since they went back in March

Our school (London borough) went back to them a week after they'd been lifted. I don't think they make much difference - not unless they're worn properly.

I used to work in a forensics lab so we were taught how to put them on and take them off properly. From what I see with the kids at DSs school - I really don't think they're doing very much.

A group of parents sent their children’s face masks off for analysis after they were worn for 6 hours and this is what they found:

townhall.com/tipsheet/scottmorefield/2021/06/15/a-group-of-parents-sent-their-kids-face-masks-to-a-lab-for-analysis-heres-what-they-found-n2591047

@Olivia333 yes to an extent but ds1 didnt catch coronavirus at Christmas "from the community", he caught it at school. Then passed it to me.

Is there any scientifc eveidence that face masks are serving any useful purpose at all please?

Thanks for the replies.
I’m debating asking the school to reintroduce if cases locally go up but would hope they’d come up with it themselves.