Do you think schools will return as normal in January?

[LucozadeGirl]

Just that really.

We don't hear a lot about Canada and how it's coping here. Is 17th a normal restart date for you there or has it been delayed?

The 17th seems so far away must be a nightmare arranging childcare for all those weeks .

@noblegiraffe

Not being in any position to ascertain what people do when they're not posting on the covid board, I don't feel any such certainty. Could you perhaps tell us which posters don't actually care about vulnerable children and are only using them to make a point

After Arthur Labinjo-Hughes was murdered, there was a spate of 'Little Arthur wouldn't have died if schools had been open, schools should never close again' posts that were particularly obvious and sickening. I wasn't the only one calling those posters out.

What is really obvious on MN is that there's so much concern about keeping schools open 'for vulnerable kids' when there's talk of a lockdown, but the rest of the time, trying to drum up any interest in discussions about CAMHS or SEN funding or the crisis in school funding and it's crickets.

Mmm, this doesn't explain which posters you're discussing and how you reached this certainty though.

Mmm it's more of a general attitude - I agree with @noblegiraffe and it has been noted by others.

The implication is that vulnerable children can be used as a pretext for arguments that suit other, less appealing interests.

The need for business to have childcare for their employees, for example (also, of course, very important, other things being equal).

Mmm, this doesn't explain which posters you're discussing and how you reached this certainty though

noblegiraffe is summarising a tendency, which has been noted by a number of posters.

Noblegiraffe claimed certainty on the point, which is a rather high standard. Nobody seems able to provide any receipts though. It's certainly a claim that a number of you throw around when someone says something you don't like, but we never get any further than that. This matters, when it's being used as an active tool to try and delegitimise.

@VikingOnTheFridge

Noblegiraffe claimed certainty on the point, which is a rather high standard. Nobody seems able to provide any receipts though. It's certainly a claim that a number of you throw around when someone says something you don't like, but we never get any further than that. This matters, when it's being used as an active tool to try and delegitimise.

This is MN, no receipts needed, and others vouching for this is surety enough.

If you think noblegiraffeis lying, take it up with MNHQ and get her posters deleted.

No receipts needed? Lmao, no. You either prove what you say or people are going to point out your failure to do so.

It isn't necessarily a question of lying either, as it's quite possible for people to genuinely think assumptions they're making or beliefs they hold are objective truth.

Seems to be a personal one here against @noblegiraffe

I suggest moving on...

(And no, I won't "prove it" 😉)

@kittensinthekitchen

Seems to be a personal one here against *@noblegiraffe*

I suggest moving on...

(And no, I won't "prove it" 😉)

I'm addressing multiple posters, and the one I first called out wasn't noble, so not really. And these swerving attempts on her behalf seem very pessimistic: perhaps she's going to show us all her workings when she comes back.

Ultimately though, as long as any posters respond to points about the harms of school closures with their own inventions about motivation or by taking it on themselves to apply moral standards for participating, they're opening themselves up to this. Anyone not liking it has the option of simply not starting it in the first place.

I would just point out re the specific case of Arthur, that in actuality noble is slightly wrong. No one did express concern about school closures and harms after he was murdered. It was only after the trial and the press coverage. If people had been so concerned following the murder, that might have noticed more that his school was not closed to him. I am not going to copy and paste assiduously all he info on these threads but there is a lot of misinformation on treads like this about social harms. I wouldn't go so far as to say it is disinformation, just opinion posted as fact, or ideas from Twitter or elsewhere on MN, repeated onwards with no due diligence.

Very few posters have commented on the primary issue of failings in social care provision , which is longstanding because school closures are a convenient stalking horse, it seems.

Sadly and troublingly, the murder rates of teenagers has gone up since lockdown ended, especially in London. I await the concern about this.

@herecomesthsun

Mmm it's more of a general attitude - I agree with *@noblegiraffe* and it has been noted by others.

The implication is that vulnerable children can be used as a pretext for arguments that suit other, less appealing interests.

The need for business to have childcare for their employees, for example (also, of course, very important, other things being equal).

I can’t see anyone ‘using vulnerable children’ as you and others suggest.

I think this exists in other people’s minds as a way to deflect from this issue and many others.

Very few posters have commented on the primary issue of failings in social care provision , which is longstanding because school closures are a convenient stalking horse, it seems.

This.

It was only after the trial and the press coverage.

Well yes, piggy, and I agree with you. After the details of the murder came out, and that it happened during the first lockdown, there were a spate of posts that immediately linked it to school closures and ONLY school closures, with the conclusion that schools should never close again. Given the major issues involving the police, social services and family court who weren't mentioned at all, and the fact that school was open to Arthur, one can only conclude that less concern was given to examining the lessons that could be learned from the case with an eye on preventing future incidents, than whether his tragic death could be used to make a crass, emotive argument to suit a favoured cause.

@Hercisback

Very few posters have commented on the primary issue of failings in social care provision , which is longstanding because school closures are a convenient stalking horse, it seems.

This.

100% this.

It is easy to search for old threads that discuss this; however it is a mumsnet principle not to use one thread to discuss another.

It also would be invidious to single out particular posters for expressing a fairly commonly held opinion.

It's not as if there is only one poster to whom we are referring.

Use the Search functions.

Very few posters have commented on the primary issue of failings in social care provision , which is longstanding because school closures are a convenient stalking horse, it seems.
This. Arthur's family was known to Social Services and they are culpable in his death IMO.
As a family with SEN children we have received no support from Social Services despite CAMHS referring us to Early Help. Clearly they are as underfunded as NHS,CAMHS etc etc.
Dd2 missed nearly 2 years of schooling and is now only part time due to us needing CAMHS to sign her off but CAMHS had no one to see her.
Now receiving 5 hours tuition a week in core subjects only. This is a probably twice exceptional child who now can't do the A Levels she wants due to being let down by the system.
It's like cancer patients really. Everyone was using them as a reason why lockdown was bad. Missed diagnosis etc etc. Now they are being thrown to the wolves by probably thr same people who think it is perfectly acceptable for all restrictions to end when we have 190;000 cases and for COVID positive people to carry on working if well. It stinks.

BMJ covers what they call silent / shadow pandemic re lockdowns exacerbating the harms to children and women. There are articles from the first lockdown too
www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2903

Silent because the media has focussed more on cases / Covid etc rather than harms but I expect Chris Whitty was including this when talking about harms from lockdowns and children better in school

And because the damage is wide ranging you can of course be very stressed about no childcare for your young dc as well as other issues - if the childcare part was easy we wouldn’t have needed key worker places.

I don't think anyone is saying Lockdown didn't come at a cost. My health definitely suffered both physically and mentally for sure.
But not all children are better off in school and not all kids even have school places. In LAs up and down the Country SEN kids have no special school places and either receive no schooling, a couple of hours schooling or are left to struggle in inappropriate mainstream schools.
We have had these issues long before COVID.

@ShinyHappyPoster

What age are your 'kids' Terfety? Because you don't sound like a parent.

I doubt the schools will be able to open. The numbers are so high that the schools will only have a skeleton staff. Everyone we know with Covid currently has already had Delta and they're vaccinated which means there's a good chance all the DCs who had it last year will get it again. Our school had 3 classes shut down. Friend's school they had some cohorts where 50% were positive over a 2 week period. I'm not sure why anyone is pretending that level of disruption is an 'education'. Let the teachers prepare online lessons and let the DCs at least have some continuity. In friend's school, MH issues were exacerbated by DCs being in school when Covid was rife. Lots of DCs have vulnerable family members and (unlike the Government) they actually care about them and don't want to put them at risk of Covid.

I don't sound like a parent? What because I actually care about my children's education rather than mass hysteria testing healthy children to find out if they are ill?

@TerfetyTERF

Are you against all health screening? Or just for those which have no or limited apparent symptoms - HIV, routine mammogram, prostrate screening, bowel screening, antenatal scanning, post-birth testing, smear tests...

That's a very interesting international focus marsha and I agree with all it says. No one doubts the social harms of lockdown. However, in its first sentence it notes that these harms, particularly of DA are longstanding. Lockdown perhaps threw them into relief for many.

Women's mental health took a battering during covid - women who WFH or SAHM, women in workplaces (surveys of nurse and teachers wo huge declines in mental wellbeing).

These are definite issues. Schools remaining open safely for the children and the workforce is part of the solution. School closures is part of the problem.

Thsi sentence for example resonates

All too often, governments, health systems, and other institutions are slow to recognise and address violence, and services are not available or have limited capacity.

It doesn't actually mention schools at all throughout (I accept other institutions may be an oblique reference) - the finger is pointed more firmly at institutional bias against women and children's needs.

The limited capacity of services existed before lockdown in the UK. Austerity bites.

@Piggywaspushed

That's a very interesting international focus marsha and I agree with all it says. No one doubts the social harms of lockdown. However, in its first sentence it notes that these harms, particularly of DA are longstanding. Lockdown perhaps threw them into relief for many.

Women's mental health took a battering during covid - women who WFH or SAHM, women in workplaces (surveys of nurse and teachers wo huge declines in mental wellbeing).

These are definite issues. Schools remaining open safely for the children and the workforce is part of the solution. School closures is part of the problem.

Yes I agree and I’m glad you can see it too because I feel quite saddened at the extra damage some sections of society have dealt with - and whilst I understand why Covid has been the forefront (for compliance mostly) it makes me sad that we haven’t acknowledged the harms enough.

We’re not talking about it enough because it would be counterproductive for Covid numbers - but for women, and I include children, it hasn’t been good. But there is silent, or shadow pandemic as they call it, and damage.

Another raised extra child admissions to hospital in July 2020 due to head injury I can’t find it but did find this one adc.bmj.com/content/106/3/e14

There’s countless articles, but it hasn’t been raised much due to above media focus.

@blameitonthecaffeine

TerfetyTerf that's exactly what I'm trying to do, thanks. I just can't think of anything more likely to put that in jeopardy than getting together with 300 other staff from 3 different schools the day before the children come back? Do you really think that's the way to ensure high attendance for the first 2 weeks of term? I would happily avoid all my colleagues all term if it means I can have a full term of teaching children.

It's ensuring face to face teaching that is important, not sitting in education conferences. Would you disagree with that?

If an education conference is important then yes it's needs to go ahead, surely all staff are triple jabbed?