What are your predictions for this school year?

[Sheepsheepmoresheep]

Be interesting to look back. I didn’t think they’d close the schools again this time last year, but I was wrong!

I don’t think they’ll close the schools again … but we’ll see!

One of our colleagues very nearly died. Several of our students lost parents. Didn’t stop most people saying that they’d prefer not to have to wear a mask or keep windows open though. One member of staff had to be spoken to because she was preventing the cleaners from cleaning her room at the end of the day because she found it distracting whilst she was marking.

As SLT we had far more staff questioning our measures because they thought they were excessive, than we did questioning them because they thought they were insufficient. Speaking to colleagues in other schools locally they had similar. I’m not saying I necessarily agreed with them, but I’m not at all surprised that there are teachers online who feel like they did. As a school we felt that mitigation measures were important to make vulnerable colleagues and students feel safe, but also to try to minimise bubbles popping. They weren’t all popular measures though.

mumsneedwine I’m (twice) retired so very experienced (even if something of an old school martinet) but I so enjoy teaching I had planned to do some supply over the next two years or so - Maths so in constant demand. However I have a mild heart problem that may have been exacerbated by a brush with Covid last year before vaccination - hard to say, it might have been stress - but there’s no way I’m setting foot inside a school before children are (mostly) vaccinated and rates are down. So I may not, ever, which saddens me. Good luck to you and to all colleagues going back soon.

What hadn't occurred to me until I saw it on twitter was that I knew parents would be unhappy at their child sitting next to a kid whose household had covid and not being told....it's entirely possible that they would have been sat next to a child who went on to test positive for covid and not be told.

How would parents know this anyway? Unless you knew the family personally or on SM maybe and they mention it no one ever knows the health situation of the whole classes family members. Its unlikely school are going to be sending letters home advising that Little Billy's Dad has covid are they?
Even if class mates are off sick my dc wouldn't normally share this information unless maybe it was their best friend who had been off. Will schools be sending letters home if it was in fact Little Billy who had covid? or will it go back to it being a confidential matter between pupil and school as to the reason for absence?

Parents would have previously known that their was a case in their child’s class because their child would be isolating. They could then be more cautious if CEV or visiting grandma. Now they won’t know even if the kid that was sat next to them all day got a positive result while at school (as don’t need to isolate for a PCR taken as a close contact).

Again last year I wouldn't have known which of my ds's class members were in school or not nor would I have known the reason for absence in the rare occasion they did mention someone was off. I only knew this if I knew the family personally and found out through other means than being informed by school

The only way we knew was via class WhatsApp and parents informing others to look out for symptoms or do LFT

I wasn’t informed officially of covid cases unless my child was a close contact. However, in all cases my child knew the score through social media!

@Wellbythebloodyhell

What hadn't occurred to me until I saw it on twitter was that I knew parents would be unhappy at their child sitting next to a kid whose household had covid and not being told....it's entirely possible that they would have been sat next to a child who went on to test positive for covid and not be told.

How would parents know this anyway? Unless you knew the family personally or on SM maybe and they mention it no one ever knows the health situation of the whole classes family members. Its unlikely school are going to be sending letters home advising that Little Billy's Dad has covid are they?
Even if class mates are off sick my dc wouldn't normally share this information unless maybe it was their best friend who had been off. Will schools be sending letters home if it was in fact Little Billy who had covid? or will it go back to it being a confidential matter between pupil and school as to the reason for absence?

We got an email telling us someone in the class had tested positive at 5pm.

Asked DD if anyone was off sick and she said only xxxx, they had to go home at lunch as they weren't well, they were coughing and hot.

Deductive reasoning soon filled in the blanks.

@HalfShrunkMoreToGo will we still get emails about children testing positive? And we'll certainly never know who has a positive household member, nor where we told last year if a child was absent isolating due to a household positive, not by school anyway, of course we may know by SM or group WhatsApp if the positive household chooses to share that info, some will some won't.

@Wellbythebloodyhell we are and I would imagine all schools will do as the recommendation is that anyone who has been in contact with someone who has tested positive should get a PCR test done, even if double jabbed/under 18. So schools will have to communicate positives to allow people to do the PCR.

@cantkeepawayforever that is the situation at my school too. Two TA's and 3 teachers left this Summer. The Ta's are not being replaced (leaving uks2 with 1 ta for 4 classes) and the 2 teachers are being replaced with one nqt and one SCITT student : ie the cheapest possible. We had barely any applications because we are rural and not in a trendy area of the country.

And one position is still not filled!

[quote HalfShrunkMoreToGo]@Wellbythebloodyhell we are and I would imagine all schools will do as the recommendation is that anyone who has been in contact with someone who has tested positive should get a PCR test done, even if double jabbed/under 18. So schools will have to communicate positives to allow people to do the PCR.[/quote]
No - schools are no longer responsible for contact tracing, and should not be using any resource to do any, so any recommendations to take PCRs should come from Test and Trace rather than schools.

Regarding earlier posts, many jobs did have measures of protection in place but since July 19 it’s all gone in most places given no legal requirement

Distancing and protective measures are no longer necessary in any workplace now

Certainly where I work screens, bubbles, 1m rule etc have all gone

Distancing & protective measures are still no longer legally required in many workplaces. They are still officially there in most health settings, to protect patients and staff, and rightly so.

And the cafes and shops and transport settings I have visited this week still have a lot of precautions in place. And customers seem to be complying, even if it is only out of the goodness of their hearts.

This is where I miss the old TES staffroom board, as it would be interesting to get a more general picture of how many teachers are struggling to find work.

My impression has been that it’s been very hard to obtain a position, but many seem to be saying here that it is the opposite and teachers are leaving in droves.

@cantkeepawayforever

Just read the guidance and yep that is exactly what it says that schools will have no role in contact tracing but practically how will that work?

Looking at the guidance a form class is listed as an example of close contacts for schools. Which makes sense because a group of 7yr olds run about and interact with each other freely, there's no way a teacher or the child would be able to have any idea which children had been in close contact with each other. So how will test and trace get the contact details for all of the children in that class? The parent of the child who has tested positive won't have them so wouldn't they have to get them from the school or do they just not even try to make contact?

do they just not even try to make contact is my best guess.

Sounds about right 🤦🏻‍♀️

I am under the impression that the job market is tough at the minute. The employment rate from a local PGCE provider was much lower than usual, apparently, despite well qualified candidates in shortage subjects.

There is little movement round here.

Well, after this

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1013533/S1355_SPI-M-O_Consensus_Statement.pdf

I give it three to four weeks before the shit hits the fan.

It's rubbish really. This constant peddling of 'learning to live with it', without the tools is going to lead to so much avoidable chronic illness, wider community spread and in turn deaths etc. For what? So when we have to lockdown again, when more non-covid treatments are cancelled (hospitals have to deal with acute stuff first), when we finally have to do something about it; we will work longer and harder to get back on some sort of track, with far less benefit than if we'd have acted sooner. We have been here before and the government is not willing to change its stance. School communities could be so less, well, fucked really.

@noblegiraffe

Parents would have previously known that their was a case in their child’s class because their child would be isolating. They could then be more cautious if CEV or visiting grandma. Now they won’t know even if the kid that was sat next to them all day got a positive result while at school (as don’t need to isolate for a PCR taken as a close contact).

This is how I know deaths aren't going to stay at their current 2400 a month level.

@borntobequiet

Well, after this

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1013533/S1355_SPI-M-O_Consensus_Statement.pdf

I give it three to four weeks before the shit hits the fan.

I don't expect it to take that long.

And the more pupils and teachers that contract COVID-19, the more missed schooling there will be.

Here we go again.

Year 3 of disrupted schooling.

@PrincessNutNuts

My prediction is that our children's education will be disrupted for a third school year by the government's refusal to protect them adequately.

Hundreds of thousands of children will get covid.

Thousands will be admitted to hospital because of it.

And tens of thousands will have long term health consequences.

So make sure you keep evidence of positive tests in case you need to access one of the new Long Covid centres or other medical support because of long term covid effects in the future.

But so far, since the very beginning of the pandemic, 24 children (most with serious underlying conditions) under 15 have died of / with Covid. Not enough to disrupt millions of kids' schooling, surely?