Are schools allowed to shut down classes / year groups if lots have Covid?

[Tuliprain]

My child’s year group are going down like flies at the moment. Just wondered if there is a point when the school is able to close for that class or year group? Or will they just have to keep going?

(It's also worth saying that we went from 'no staff off with Covid' to 7 off overnight, taking us down to a skeleton crew - as said above, it's not an approach, it's luck.)

It's simply the government's approach.

I personally find it horrific that staff and children aren't permitted to wear masks if they wish.

(Further edited to say - all 7 were fully vaccinated)

Am a primary school governor. We have had a class sent home (after proper consultation) as too many teachers off sick with Covid and not safe to open fully.

Another local school had a three week half term as so many children and teachers were off sick with Covid. Leading up to half term some parents kept their children off as siblings had Covid and they didn’t want to contribute to any further spread - this was supported by the head.

You know what would keep classes open more?
If the government had used the £24 million they have just given Ofsted to ramp up the inspections; the ones that are making more staff even more ill.

At about £1000 per school, that would mean at least some chance of getting in the few supply staff still out there, to ease the burden for a while.
But no, the government couldn’t care less that ‘children were failed the moment they closed’ and it seems that plenty of posters are letting them get away with it.

@Sherrystrull

There are no staff absent through covid presently (as the vast majority are vaccinated and have had covid) but there have been points when many have been unavailable.

DH has managed this while keeping the school fully open by merging classes, having teaching take place in the assembly hall by senior management and classes being overseen by support staff.

I understand @GreenLakes.

Can you see how this isn't school running as normal? How it can have a massive detrimental effect on the staff and children?

DH has managed this while keeping the school fully open by merging classes, having teaching take place in the assembly hall by senior management and classes being overseen by support staff

Yep-lots of that still taking place round here.

And Ofsted want to come and add more stress to a profession on their knees, by assessing schools’ recovery from COVID? Is that really a priory now, when classes don’t have enough teachers to function adequately?

I’m not sure they’ll see much ‘recovery’ from my deputy head teaching literacy to 2.5 classes in the dining hall whilst she’s simultaneously trying to explain the Pupil Premium budget allocation, the new phonics scheme (that hasn’t got off the ground due to staff absence) and the Science subject intent!

I think it’s appalling Ofsted are doing this. If the government really wanted to help children, that money would be going directly to schools. Ofsted inspectors-who are all teachers-should be sent to local schools who are struggling to staff classes due to absence, and teach, until the pandemic isn’t having such a huge impact on staffing.

GreenLakes,

I completely understand that your DH's school has been 'open', by my first definition:
"able to keep children within the building, fairly safely - in terms of not doing anything too actively dangerous and with some kind of adult having oversight".

So, by that definition, have most schools for almost all classes since September.

Is this a school 'properly open and delivering education as normal'? No.

Yes, many parents may prefer the provision of daytime childcare in the school building by an assortment of staff to class closure. However, let us not claim that this is genuinely good education.

There are also often children - many of them our most vulnerable children with SEN - for whom huge mixed classes, unfamiliar adults and 'busywork' is far more detrimental than good, well-structured home learning.

@Sherrystrull

What has a massive detrimental impact on staff and children is schools being closed or healthy DC being out of school unnecessarily.

Some areas are impacted more than others at the moment too. A local Primary School had more cases in a single week just before half term, than they had in total since the beginning of the pandemic. Schools in this area are really struggling.

You can add helping in the kitchen to the list @Redlocks28@red. If Ofsted come into any of our local schools I think the inspectors will be drafted into teaching and inspecting at the same time!

Ofsted inspectors-who are all teachers

I wish they were. Sadly, a large proportion are not (cultivated under Wilshaw’s era). In my last inspection, our assigned inspector was an ex-Ed Psych and in the inspection before that, someone who used to work for the LEA but lost their job when most schools in the area turned Academy and the LEA no longer ran the HR tasks.
Someone needs to tell Ofsted that were not post recovery yet, we are very much still in the thick of it.

@cantkeepawayforever

There are also often children - many of them our most vulnerable children with SEN - for whom huge mixed classes, unfamiliar adults and 'busywork' is far more detrimental than good, well-structured home learning.

Yes-I have seen numerous posts on here recently from parents saying their child’s teacher has been off for ages, they are being covered by numerous people in a week, they aren’t happy, they don’t know when the teacher will be back, the child has SEN and is really struggling with change etc

Do parents in that situation really think £24m wouldn’t have been better off being given to schools directly?

We have run out of our supply budget for the year already-it’s not even December.

[quote GreenLakes]@Sherrystrull

What has a massive detrimental impact on staff and children is schools being closed or healthy DC being out of school unnecessarily.[/quote]
I don't disagree. But you said that schools need to be open as normal. I'm explaining that they are far from normal
and that has a massive impact too.

Don't imply that open schools at the moment mean that everything is fine.

[quote GreenLakes]@Sherrystrull

What has a massive detrimental impact on staff and children is schools being closed or healthy DC being out of school unnecessarily.[/quote]
I don’t know of any schools or class that are being closed unnecessarily. They are being closed because of a lack of staff.

We closed a phase last half term as I was the only member of staff available for 60 children (I should have been released for my admin duties that day, but obviously stayed in class). We only took in the children who could not be at home safely.

Having staff in school really is luck, nothing else. I’m the only teacher who has tested positive, but 6 support staff have had it. All but one were fully vaxxed. We all have teens at home, but they aren’t in the same school and in some cases the teens never tested positive in PCRs.

We are under a new system here as we are an enhanced response area. If we have more than 14 linked cases we will be allowed to close classes. At the moment we have a number of cases-I have 2 in my class/ bug they are linked to other sources.

good, well-structured home learning

This makes me shudder. What’s so good about it, would parents feel similar about doing home learning instead of in class?

I know I’m very far from this for DC but they have had very good provision so far in class.

@GreenLakes - was your husband an ICU consultant during the 2020 part of the pandemic?

If by open we mean 'consistently delivering the normal standard of education through the normal number of fully-trained teaching staff and with the normal levels of support for those children with additional needs', then that is something very different. Relatively few schools have managed this every day for every child since September - though this is very hard to establish 'from the outside' as parents, let alone the wider public, are quite simply denied the information that they would need to be able to judge this. My school has been extremely lightly hit in comparison with many, but we have been down to the point of having every single 18+ in the school (from lunchtime supervisors and part-time cleaners up) standing in front of a class, with no-one left in the office and with no 1:1s except for manual handling of a physically disabled child.... This is not 'education as normal', or 'schools open as normal'. It is 'the school building open to just about safely babysit between the hours of 8.30 and 3.30', but no more.

Yep, that. In every school I know about. I think that the gaps in academic stuff are going to be bigger and more random than they were last year. There is so much supply and busy-work going on, resourced by staff who don't have sufficient knowledge of the children. 40% staff down in my part of the school, random combining of classes, kids going down like flies, 2 staff (I'm one of them) a few days out of isolation, still not quite well but being back in the shitstorm, supply not available or only for half days (or to be honest, just dreadful). We're going to have to assess these kids out the wazzoo to try and work out what has gone in.

I'm glad we're back at school, I'm fine not wearing masks in class (we do in the corridors), but it is childcare again. Even the social stuff isn't working all that well because unknown staff can't deal with challenging individuals, so the knock on effect for everyone else is significant. Anyway. It is what it is. So long as kids are getting dropped off, no one really cares.

Last November and December was scary in school - not because of covid, but because school felt unsafe due to lack of familiar staff. It's the same now. But the pandemic is over. Ha.

This makes me shudder. What’s so good about it, would parents feel similar about doing home learning instead of in class?

Let me be very clear here - for the children I am talking about, schools running as normal, with familiar class teachers and consistent 1:1 and specialist staff, delivering all the adaptations specified in their EHCPs, OT and AST reports, MyPlan+ etc is the best possible option.

However, in turn, being given good home learning set by someone who knows them well is better, for many of those children (those with ASD diagnoses as well as a range of other SEN - hearing impairment is an obvious one but significant behavioural needs also feature) than being given busywork in the hall with 75 other children, an unfamiliar or wholly absent 1:1 and nobody who knows their needs.

A school near me has informed parents that they may have to close the school to whole year groups soon and it may not be possible to give more than one hours notice.

They’re running out of staff. Everyone ill with covid. This is what happens when you don’t vaccinate kids or ventilate classrooms and tell scrap bubbles and tell teachers not to wear any ppe.

It is shocking. More covid in Britain than in whole of Europe, because of government incompetence.

(IME, some of the parents of the children who suffer the most from the current uncertainties and changes within schools would prefer home learning to having to deal with the extreme behaviour shown by stressed, frustrated, out of control children after an unsuitable day in school. A couple that I have taught over the last lockdowns have made surprising strides with online home learning.)

More covid in Britain than in whole of Europe

Where do you get this from? Have you looked at numbers Germany is on 50k plus a day and Austria incidence rate in high 900s per 100k

My DD’s school had a large outbreak - around 25 per cent of children across 4 forms got Covid over about a month. Most of the year had a pcr test. This started end of September. After half term cases across whole school extremely low and many pupils have had the vaccine. School/forms never closed but straight back to measures - masks, no assemblies, no choirs etc. Have all been lifted again. Interestingly in DD’s school incidences amongst teaching staff remained very low throughout.