Department for Education has refused to plan, fund and implement a multi-layered, scientifically recognised covid mitigation strategy for schools.

[Zotter]

I have not seen - may have missed it - much coverage on the government failing to offer a mitigation strategy for levels of CoVid in schools. Other countries have done so but not England. A good, short article on this and the repercussions of not doing so.

yorkshirebylines.co.uk/news/education/safety-in-schools-and-covid/

Which I know you know, Rule.

@martim

Our school budget is being hammered by our supply bill. We have 5 teachers to cover (so far) for all of next week. 2 we can cover using TAs, we'll need supplies for 3. This is not normal for our budget, when we came back after the summer holidays our supply budget had already been hammered by isolating teachers in the summer term, we thought the change in rules would help, and it has, but now teachers (and support staff) are getting Covid. Not all have been able to return after 10 days. We know our budgets have fallen in real terms, now we are having to deal with this additional cost. Catch up seems to have been forgotten by the government, but that is a joke, we're not even standing still. Every time a TA is used to cover, they are not providing interventions to the children who need it. Every time a teacher covers a lunch duty (because we are short of TAs) that is less time spent preparing lessons. It's the children who are losing out, I'm not sure our government care!

It's crazy how a few years ago the information in this post would be enough to identify your school. Now it's happening so regularly that it's schools with no supply staff and a healthy budget who are rare enough to be indentifiable. 😢

Bloody hell, this thread.

Finally, people get it!

I absolutely think schools should be better funded in this regard, but come on, the ‘sensible measures’ referred to here include kids being in school less of the time. You can euphemise it as ‘reduced class density and freedom to remote learn often via blended and rota systems’ if you like but surely you can see why people might not fall in behind you and campaign for that?

Here is the education minister meeting with two MPs with connections to U4T and HART

twitter.com/ALewerMBE/status/1463558630318350339

The document on the table is a piece of much discredited, non UK based research.

Zahawi is also choosing now to clamp down on attendance despite absence due to covid being sky high amongst workers in schools, and pupils. He has only this weekend released separate advice for CV and CEV families despite being asked repeatedly to consider their concerns. This was only after being pushed and pushed by The Good Law Project.

Everyone of working age in pretty every job that involves being in the same vicinity as other people is just waiting. Everybody I know is getting infected. It isn’t unique to teaching. Stop pretending it is.

2.5% of teachers were off with actual covid two weeks ago (another 2 % were off for other covid reasons). I saw an article that research has eventually admitted that education workers are more likely to contract covid than other workers but it has quietly vanished.

@thecatfromjapan

I think Christopholous is saying that she - and others like her - are just waiting to get knocked down by coronavirus.

That she goes in to schools where staffing has been wiped out, where there aren't effective control measures, and she takes a deep breath & does her job (supply cover) - which is basically trying to keep a hurtling train, with its engines on fire, and loads of passengers, on track.

And all the while, she's feeling a slight sense of dread because she knows it's not a question of 'if' but 'when' she gets ill.

And, as a supply, she knows that if she gets ill, she's economically fucked.

I mean, I may have mis-read, but I reckon that's what she's saying.

I think the public haven't really grasped how parlous the situation in schools is.

It feels as though it's all being held together by the education workers giving every last bit of emotional and physical energy they have to keep the thing on the road.

And that isn't sustainable.

The pandemic is clearly not going to be over for a while.

Apparently, pandemics take 5-7 years to burn out.

Yes, we have vaccinations. But not global vaccination. And without that, we're going to keep on having to deal with the risks of mutations. And we're going to have to keep on having recurrent mitigation measures.

We needed planning that looked at a 7-year plan at least.

For example, to keep schools functioning optimally, we needed massive amounts poured into the NHS. As in funding for increased numbers of NHS staff and infrastructure.

Keeping schools functioning optimally requires their being embedded in a holistic approach that planned to keep the NHS from collapse.

Instead, we saw billions wasted on short-term catastrophe planning and ridiculous crony contracts.

It's a tragedy of squandered time and incompetence.

Yes!
Thank you for 'getting it' and explaining so well.

Totally agree, having no plan is shocking and binary arguments so unhelpful. A friend is a supply teacher and said yesterday that the pool of supply teachers available in our area is so tiny, agencies can no longer be realistically considered as a back up if staff go off sick. Regular staff are covering for one another’s classes, sometimes with admin staff stepping in. Friend says that she is asked to do many more hours than she’s able as the situation is so desperate. Is it similar in other areas or just ours?

It's a mad situation.

Completely mad.

So, please bear with me ...

I'm a child of the 80s. We used to have a joke about pop bands - they always stuck a girl on keyboards.

And, in a way, for government, Education was the keyboards.

The blokes would be front and forwards, on the guitar, bass, drums. Bird off to the side, on keyboards. Likewise government: PM, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Health - men; Education was a confusing mixture of seen-as- fluff and also tricky - so given to the ladies (& Gavin Williamson).

The pandemic has exposed what we all knew: health, social care and educstion are absolutely bloody vital. And completely underfunded.

They are carrying a huge amount of weight, increased over the years because we've underfunded the public sector.

And we've stripped back the working conditions and professional status of those working in those sectors - not despite their importance but because we desperately need those people to keep on giving more, for less, and we can't afford for them to stop.

And sling comes the pandemic. Placing more and more pressure on all of that depleted, underfunded infrastructure.

And we kept on with the strategy of demanding more for less. An approach which is essentially quite coercive and bullying.

Where was the acknowledgment of how crucial schools' Rome is? Where was the dialogue with those involved in the sector about what they needed to keep going? Where was/is the planning?

It's interesting that Nadhim Zahawi is now in role. Perhaps there will be a new seriousness in the discourse.

I'd have liked to see Wes Streeting take on Education for Lsbour. I think he really could have made a big difference to the narrative and put a great deal more pressure on the government. But, hey, he's in Health.

But ... you know, it's like the fawn in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe', when he says: 'It's not a question of what I've done, Lucy, it's what I'm doing now' - you know, because his betrayal is ongoing.

It's not just that the U.K. didn't plan - it's that we are continuing to not plan.

We can see, right now, the consequences of no planning. The devastating, unsustainable impact of not acting and pursuing an approach of 'demand more of people for less'.

We can see it's not working.

We can tell, right now, it is going to go on not working.

But we are not changing our approach.

Which is insane.

Just insane.

I mean, if you are doing something that you know is not working, you stop, right?

But, no ... on we go.

It's madness.

@TreborBore

Totally agree, having no plan is shocking and binary arguments so unhelpful. A friend is a supply teacher and said yesterday that the pool of supply teachers available in our area is so tiny, agencies can no longer be realistically considered as a back up if staff go off sick. Regular staff are covering for one another’s classes, sometimes with admin staff stepping in. Friend says that she is asked to do many more hours than she’s able as the situation is so desperate. Is it similar in other areas or just ours?

Similar everywhere.

Supply agencies all over are reporting they can't meet the demand.

We are using supply teachers who are no better than babysitters, but we don't even have the support staff in school to be actual babysitters. We'd not have some of these teachers back in normal times, but no choice at the moment.

Anyway, @thecatfromjapan - your posts are brilliant. You should do a TED talk, or at least get on Marr!

I see people arguing 'but we can't do x, y, z ... it's too expensive. It's not realistic.'

Well, here's the thing: you can keep on saying that but the pandemic keeps on coming at us.

And what is becoming utterly, depressingly clear is that, 'realistic' of not, some pretty bloody major adjustments are going to have to be made.

Because our old ideas of what 'realistic' looks like are taking a bloody hammering in this pandemic.

The virus does not give a shit that people are hesitant about halving school sizes (by whatever means).

It just goes on, mutating in a global pool, not giving a fuck about competing ideologies about tax and public expenditure.

And, at some point, we're going to realise that seven different shades of denial isn't going to get us anywhere.

People break, people get sick, people are worryingly finite. And the virus is just a virus that doesn't give a stuff about our daft politicsl ideologies and psychological evasions of uncomfortable realities.

Because schools - even not very good ones - usually run so smoothly, people don’t appreciate the level of planning and organisation that goes into achieving this. Everything from schemes of work through rooming and timetabling to dates of inset and parents’ evenings are planned, scheduled, timetabled and calendared to the nth degree. This is part of the reason that you can cram 1500 children into an often inadequate space and have them do things they don’t necessarily want to do without riots and nervous breakdowns.
The astonishing thing is that many schools have demonstrated such agility and staff have coped so willingly and imaginatively in the face of the pandemic, despite dire resource provision, limited information and constantly changing advice. To move from normal classroom teaching to remote in a few days or weeks with no prior planning, practice or training is an amazing achievement. Where it hasn’t worked is less an indication of reluctance or ineptitude but a dearth of resources that would make it possible.
The lessons from the first lockdown, both with regard to the pandemic and to education were clear. The probability of further waves and lockdowns was obvious. The lack of resources was evident. The need to develop a model - possibly involving blended learning, rotas for attendance, contingency planning in case exams needed to be cancelled again, and definitely involving significant investment - should have been paramount. Instead it was ignored and the concerns of the education sector ridiculed and dismissed.
A hands off approach from the DfE coupled with ready cash would probably have seen many schools develop effective models of their own that would have delivered an education of reasonable quality to the majority of children while keeping them, their families and school staff safe. A recognition of potential problems for exams could have seen a robust model of ongoing assessment nationally in order to make school assessed grades more robust and manageable (children taking public exams in 2022 will have had nearly three years of disrupted education).
Of course none of this happened and schools are still kept on the back foot, rather incredibly keeping going as best they can with none of the underpinnings that normally help them run smoothly to educate and support children.

The virus does not give a shit that people are hesitant about halving school sizes (by whatever means).

The virus also does not give a shit that teachers are stressed, and yet I think we as humans probably should.

Look, if you want to argue that the absolute best option for education is for children to have less time in school (forever? For until the virus has gone away? For the time it takes to double the size of the school estate and at minimum double the teaching workforce?), then okay, go for that. But surely surely you can see why people - including politicians, but more importantly including the voters who are looking at what they do - might not buy that alas The Science has decreed this is the only possible option, based on an opinion piece in a newspaper?

The pandemic has made me realise that hope has different forms.

Imagine, if you will, a small town, nestled by the sea. It's flood walls are ancient & have worked well. The city has prospered: bright houses run in joyful tumble down to the road that runs along the sea defences. Bright shops, selling all manner of things, have their doors open, and inhabitants and visitors wander through them, or chat in the market-place, or sit in cafes.
Boats bob in the sheltered harbour.

It's lovely. It's a wonderful place to live in; it's an idyllic place to visit.

And then, the weather changes. And storms blow in.

And the town council say, 'No need for change. No need for investment in the sea defences. It's all worked for years. It'll be fine.'

And a trim comes along, the line of which has never been seen.

And the sea defences start crumbling.

And you have two kinds of hope:

In one, the town elders tell the people to just carry on, 'hoping' that all will be fine. Don't need to do anything. Ignore the flooding, ignore those worrying cracks.

Just keep using the shops, go and have another coffee.

Let's just hope.

That's a lazy kind of hope. Ultimately, it's a pretty cynical kind of hope. It assumes the townspeople are too stupid and lazy and disconnected to actually do anything.

Other than drown and lose their beautiful town or run away, clambering over each other in their fear, when the flood happens.

But another kind of hope builds. It believes that the townspeople care about one another enough to act together. It believes in a fundamental goodness, altruism and strength of people.

It builds a vision of calm, strength and a future on the other side of difficulty and sacrifice - in order to get people to find the strength to make short-term sacrifices for a future they can share.

In that scenario, the town council tells the people that, yes, there is danger - but they believe that the people have the strength, courage and capacity to build new defences.

The town council digs down for the hope that that people care enough - about the future, about each other - to make sacrifices and build.

And it creates that believing Hope in the people.

And the townspeople have that hope too. And they do build - in hope: hoping for success, hoping that they have the strength and the capacity to do this. And they build in the midst of a storm, and at great risk, and in hardship - because they hope that they are building defences for a future, that they will all share in.

Which kind of hope is more realistic?

Sorry about my fat fingers.

'A storm blows in. The line of which has never been seen.'

@thecatfromjapan The Government need to read (and learn from!) your posts!

The probability of further waves and lockdowns was obvious. The lack of resources was evident. The need to develop a model - possibly involving blended learning, rotas for attendance, contingency planning in case exams needed to be cancelled again, and definitely involving significant investment

Also, 'they' just didn't listen to teachers. From a logistics perspective, as well as from a teaching and learning perspective. I have worked for central government, local government and in the private sector (not as a teacher), and until I worked in schools I had no idea how efficient schools and teachers can be. Shit gets done. We know how to do stuff.

My government actually did develop a model based on ‘blended learning’ and ‘rotas’, was all set to roll it out, and then went back in it post haste once it became obvious to kids and parents what that actually looked like.

I know, I know, we’re selfish short-term-ists who don’t care about science, etc etc etc. But the reality is that while there’s a decent amount of public support for the general goal of “invest more in education”, there is not much public support for “2 days a week in school, max.” And if people are not going for that, it’s probably for reasons other than having a sense of hope.

Ed Sec jut on BBC1

The situation in schools is a scandal.

Providing zero mitigations has impacted both of my children significantly during their exam years.

Last summer, so 2020, a friend who teaches in Spain shared the mitigations his school were employing, measures like infra red monitors, air filters, and screens up in the canteen, masks at all times. This was just 3-4 months into the pandemic.

The non existent approach in this country has led to a dangerous and disastrous situation in schools.

My government actually did develop a model based on ‘blended learning’ and ‘rotas’, was all set to roll it out, and then went back in it post haste once it became obvious to kids and parents what that actually looked like.

Perhaps they should have had the courage of their convictions and persisted. Education is being badly impacted now. I wonder what the situation will be in January. And I wonder how level the playing field will be come June exam time.

What's becoming clearer and clearer is that short-term solutions = protracting the pandemic.

Short-term = not having a global policy for vaccination.

Short-term = not starting to build infrastructure that pays of two years hence.

If we'd started building the infrastructure two years ago, it would be in place now.

If we started building now, it will be ready in two years.

We're not there yet, psychologically, to realise we have to start building. We haven't accepted that, without a global strategy on vaccination, the pandemic will be with us for fucking ages.

We're still in denial.

And no wonder - we're not used to this. Our whole democratic structure is built around problems with a shorter lifespan than a pandemic. We re-elect every 5 years or so.

No wonder governments don't want to commit to major changes, with a lot of short-term disruption and a long-term pay-off. It's the opposite of a winning electoral strategy.

But my guess is this pandemic will just grind on until, finally, we realise there are only a limited number of realistic solutions.

And they all involve substantial changes in approach: long-term planning and global approaches.

Anathema now - but the virus doesn't give a shit about that.

I've got loads of ideas for emergency teaching which would suit my school and the children in my current phase. No one in central government would a) trust my professional judgement on that or b) listen anyway.