Going back to school .

[Sallydimebar]

Feeling really uneasy on DS 12 returning to school , Just feel this omicron is going to rip through and although I’m told it’s mild 2 people currently with covid are vomiting, stomach pain and feeling dreadful , barely moving out of bed. I’m thinking it’s probably omicron they’ve got .
I feel with out the vaccine I’m sending him in with no protection. Not feeling 100% on the jab but don’t want the risk of long covid and he really seems to suffer quite badly with illness . He had it in October was quite poorly with it , can’t get jab till end of jan . Was poorly 2 weeks ago with headache and temp for four days then cough lft negative . Just don’t want another 8/10 days of omicron . It’s being described as highly contagious so very likely to be in school again in jan .

Are parents going to lft kids twice a week (if test-kit available as I can’t get hold of any at moment) ? Not heard about masks yet , but they were only needed in corridors not in class .

Was hoping if you had delta maybe that would protect you for a bit, if he had antibodies but I’ve read delta gives you no protection from omicron.

Really don’t want schools shut again and so vital for his mental health to be with his peers as well as education.

@rainydogday

Yes and a direct result of covid spreading on checked is many many teams like yours will be down staff. What is the likely tisk of just 2 midwifes having to care for the number of pregnant mums and newborns that usually requires 7?

I do agree though, exams should go ahead - compared to all the other things done this year (plays, nativities, school assemblies, singing) the exam itself is very low risk, naturally socially distanced and you're not supposed to talk so can sit there masked for the duration.

Teacher grades aren't the same at all and disadvantage bright state school kids when the teachers grades are being monitored and adjusted back towards the norm. Those kids who are actually really bright and going to surprise everyone in exams don't get the chance with teacher grades.

They can grade based on the cohort alone, all of whom have been living through the same covid clusterfuck in this country, so it'll be relatively fair and probably fairer than the alternative as well as being good for kids to actually do exams I think. I know that not all schools have been equally affected but that's going to affect teacher grades too. There's no way around that other than tutoring perhaps.

I've never understood why exams which are so low risk have been cancelled when other, much higher risk things have been happening. Like normal classes and no masks.

The prospect of exams would be a motivation for home learning too if we end up having to do that. A lot of kids in my experience (I was one once) need that motivation of exams to work.

If exams don't go ahead there will be a year group of students who don't have GCSEs or A Levels. They will go to university having never sat a formal exam. Really not ok.

Having the exams but having some kind of special consideration for those who had missed more than x weeks of face to face education would be better (though still not ideal).

theemperor
I don't think it was the risk of the exams themselves. It's more the disparity of education across the country. I know there has always been that disparity but this time it affected middle class children too!

Plus it genuinely widened the gap between private and state. Most private school teenagers had full online timetables from March 2020 onwards and had no interruptions to their education at all. It would have been unfair to ignore that at the expense of the majority who could not receive that. Many teens had no live lessons in the first lockdown at all and some still couldn't access them in the second lockdown.

Blameit not just about whether lessons were live online or not - private school children more likely to have decent internet access and a personal computer to use it on, a bedroom or study that isn't shared with anyone else.. all of that helps

Mistress - oh yes, definitely. Totally agree with that. But that's more of a class issue, I think. Middle class children in state schools had that too. But often no online teaching to go with it because many LEAs decided it was a safeguarding issue for teachers and children to able to see into homes, bedrooms etc. Or maybe that wasn't the reason but it was definitely safeguarding of some sort, I know a few teachers who weren't able to teach online for that reason. Other schools had too many key worker and vulnerable children in school for online lessons to happen and others had too many welfare checks to make on vulnerable children (some teachers were actually walking the streets with care packages!) Whereas private schools did not have to follow LEA decisions and pretty much all provided a good standard of learning (don't know if it was all live) because if they didn't the parents wouldn't have paid the fees!

@blameitonthecaffeine

Mistress - oh yes, definitely. Totally agree with that. But that's more of a class issue, I think. Middle class children in state schools had that too. But often no online teaching to go with it because many LEAs decided it was a safeguarding issue for teachers and children to able to see into homes, bedrooms etc. Or maybe that wasn't the reason but it was definitely safeguarding of some sort, I know a few teachers who weren't able to teach online for that reason. Other schools had too many key worker and vulnerable children in school for online lessons to happen and others had too many welfare checks to make on vulnerable children (some teachers were actually walking the streets with care packages!) Whereas private schools did not have to follow LEA decisions and pretty much all provided a good standard of learning (don't know if it was all live) because if they didn't the parents wouldn't have paid the fees!

Safeguarding was mostly around the hacking of Zoom. There are other platforms, but schools might not have been able to afford them. The issue of working from bedrooms is significant, and the rules for my Victorian school was that all lessons had to be carried out in public areas of the house, both for pupils and teachers. Since Teams allows you to choose your background, this became a moot point, but it did mean that families did not have to have their private lives on view, as it were.

I agree that money matters. In my school all pupils had their own laptop and seemingly decent internet access. In-school teaching of key workers was minimal. The handling of vulnerable pupils is shrouded in secrecy because of privacy laws, so I've no idea what went on there.

@blameitonthecaffeine- not my experience - I have one DC in an independent school that took full fees upfront at beginning of term and provided substandard tuition online in year groups of 60 and no marking/feedback, whereas my DC at state primary had amazing quality online provision both live and really good work set largely marked/commented on.

There are people who spent thousands on school fees, lost their jobs and got a very poor service from private schools too. The same independent for my older son had key worker children in a room to access online learning only without teacher input, whereas state primary had teachers in teaching live to keyworker children and to the kids online at home at the same time, with help of the TAs.

@blameitonthecaffeine

If exams don't go ahead there will be a year group of students who don't have GCSEs or A Levels. They will go to university having never sat a formal exam. Really not ok.

Having the exams but having some kind of special consideration for those who had missed more than x weeks of face to face education would be better (though still not ideal).

But the problem will also be those that can't sit the exam due to testing + That could amount to a lot. There should be contingencies in place if exams don't materialise.

Agree there is a huge disparity between state and private home learning but I simply don't believe the reason the government decided to cancel exams was because it was unfair to poorer kids. If anything, their deeds not words suggest that the opposite is more likely to be true.

I have friends in a US state, their son got a computer to take home for home learning from his state run school. It's a well off state of course but every kid in his class got one - he wasn't special - the state funded extra resources. This government could have invested in state schools and they haven't. They haven't even invested in ventilation.

I think the decision to cancel exams was purely political, to look good and give the appearance of fairness, I suspect if anything it benefited private schools who could claim that all their kids would get As because they could massage the figures from the past. .

It'd be interesting to find out if the proportion of state vs private students who entered the top universities went up or down last year based on teacher assessed grades.

Also how can they physically sit the exams without spreading it.
My dd sat her prelims just before xmas ( mocks)
Omicron thankfully was in its infancy.
Now with all the cases a hall full of children sitting exams is sure to spread it!
Its airborne.

Mine are secondary and will of course be going to school covid permitting. I agree that it's primary schools that need to look out, they don't test those children and obv unvaccinated and so no wonder it's everywhere in primaries now. The virus will seek out the easiest routes to thrive and multiply. Hopefully teachers at secondaries can keep their distance, in many circumstances, a lot more plus many children are vaccinated and will be getting their second jab soon too. We have all managed to avoid it so far but returning to school makes that unlikely to continue I guess but holding on with a wing and a prayer!

But there are ALWAYS children who don't sit exams due to illness, and there are provisions made. It's not really rocket science to come up with some solutions.

There are ALWAYS kids who miss an exam sitting and have to resit. Exams will ALWAYS be a bit unfair for a small proportion (those whose pet died the night before, for example), you can't make them perfectly fair for everyone.

Covid isn't going away soon, I don't think, unless we cancel exams for the forseeable future we need to come up with some solutions - there's been plenty of time, where are these solutions?

Plus, with the lack of mitigations in schools, most kids will have had covid so it may be by the time exams come around (in the warmer weather) that very few kids would be off with covid itself. Many have had covid more than once - why on earth when we're not protecting them in school would we deny them exams? It seems hugely punitive.

I agree that it really would not be ok for a cohort to have not done GCSEs or A-levels.

Exams are relatively low risk - can be done in well ventilated halls, they're usually physically distanced anyway, masks (ffp2) could be worn, no talking which is one of the main ways it spreads.

Much lower risk than school assemblies unmasked with singing, which has been happening all of last term.

There was a study done in Germany where they held exams and no spread was found to be attributable to the exams (they did all the mitigations mentioned, including masks).

[quote Covidworries]@easterissland
Yes we will switch to home learning. Likely with the school support[/quote]
Unless government guidance relating to school attendance changes, currently any parent for any reason chooseing to keep your chilldren at home will be recorded as an unauthorised absence.
Any child absence recorded as unauthorised can not be supported by the school in the form of providing work.
You can of coarse deregister them and register them as home schooled.

I think the majority of children and teachers will be more than safe!

Yeah, no masks, no ventilation, whole school assemblies going ahead, not even an nod to bubbles….what could possibly go wrong?!

And the minority of staff and students who aren’t safe? You’re OK with hospitalisation, long covid, other post-viral issues, long term absence, death? What if it’s your child that needs urgent medical care that is currently clogged up with covid?

It's so weird that govt seem so reluctant to invest in kids - education, health, mental health. We've had thousands of kids hospitalised since the summer. There are studies showing all kinds of nasty organ damage, showing aging of the immune system too, yet we keep going for herd immunity by natural infection through kids. We prosecute vulnerable parents for keeping their kids off when there are cases in class, advertise for retired teachers, platform extremist views. We've heard all types of nonsense from kids don't get it/spread it/get ill/die/don't need vaccines - as though kids aren't human and won't be affected. It's crazy. Why can't we offer them, their teachers, their families some protection? Why should it be education or health?

@mocara

If you actually read my other comments you will see that we dont expect the school to provide work over this period but we do expect the school to be supportive and understanding of our decision.
But even if the school isnt supportive we will still make decisions that are in our families best interest as we will be the ones living with any conseqences

Getting a sense of deja vu here; we were all promised a bloodbath among children when Delta appeared. Didn't happen.

I get that some people here are simply desperate to see the virus doing a hatchet job among the kids, but the nonstop wolf-crying is really damaging the trust that people have in public health.

@beentoldcomputersaysno

It's so weird that govt seem so reluctant to invest in kids - education, health, mental health. We've had thousands of kids hospitalised since the summer. There are studies showing all kinds of nasty organ damage, showing aging of the immune system too, yet we keep going for herd immunity by natural infection through kids. We prosecute vulnerable parents for keeping their kids off when there are cases in class, advertise for retired teachers, platform extremist views. We've heard all types of nonsense from kids don't get it/spread it/get ill/die/don't need vaccines - as though kids aren't human and won't be affected. It's crazy. Why can't we offer them, their teachers, their families some protection? Why should it be education or health?

Could you share the data to back up those claims please?

Completely agree with this! We do not know the long term impact of this virus on health, particularly on children's developing organs. Based on this I am seriously considering keeping my children home until case numbers reduce to a risk level I am comfortable with.

@MumToBe1980

Completely agree with this! We do not know the long term impact of this virus on health, particularly on children's developing organs. Based on this I am seriously considering keeping my children home until case numbers reduce to a risk level I am comfortable with.

Is your aim for them not to get omicron at all?

Given his transmisssble it is will you be isolating with them? Even when case numbers drop how will you stop them getting it

@greenteafiend

No one was promising a bloodbath, being cautious until the data has been collected and properly assessed it is unknown. So thpse being cautious with delta and those being cautious now are not hoping for children deaths and servere illness they are concerned until that is known for sure.
Deaths and long covid did get worse with delta. Yes numbers still low but more children were impactes by delta than previoys varients.
There is evidence of organ damage and neurlogical damage from covid which is still being researched and there is much inknown on what this means longer term.

[quote Covidworries]@greenteafiend

No one was promising a bloodbath, being cautious until the data has been collected and properly assessed it is unknown. So thpse being cautious with delta and those being cautious now are not hoping for children deaths and servere illness they are concerned until that is known for sure.
Deaths and long covid did get worse with delta. Yes numbers still low but more children were impactes by delta than previoys varients.
There is evidence of organ damage and neurlogical damage from covid which is still being researched and there is much inknown on what this means longer term.[/quote]
Are you taking them out because they are at higher risk?