Mask refusal in schools by pupils

[Twinklingstarface]

Seems it is the pupils rebelling now rather than the parents
apple.news/A41bZE79jR9mZVAzmNVy4uQ

[quote Happypootler]**@DrWhoNowww* yes it is* a big deal to ask teenagers to wear masks for 5 hours a day. Teachers are vaxxed and could contract omicron anywhere!

And trumpeting 'compliance' as a virtue for teens! Seriously?? I teach sixth form and yes my subject is a talky subject, others would be less affected. But I promise your teens are talking less, participating less and engaging less in their learning whilst wearing masks. Some adults here appear blinkered or incredibly selfish.[/quote]
How about I promise they aren't?

Who is to be believed? Both of u? Just you? Just me? Neither of us?

@ThievesTemple

I can imagine the areas that have children refusing to wear masks and I am probably right in assuming they have issues with behaviour in general. A big part of this will be down to their parents’ views on masks. Thankfully our children attend a great school, excellent behaviour and compliance not a problem. Feel very sorry for vulnerable children in these other schools.

I find it so brilliant that people use any old covid policy to bring out their prejudices and snobbery and think they are the good guys

I can imagine the areas that have children refusing to wear masks and I am probably right in assuming they have issues with behaviour in general. A big part of this will be down to their parents’ views on masks

I can assure you that I am not against masks at all, but my dc hates having to wear one during their mock exams this week. They had to wear it over their mouth and nose while wearing glasses and doing a 3 hour exam. It was tough!

@puppetear

I get the point that mask wearing isn’t so hard, or at least I understand that some people feel the downsides for their children are small — everyone has right to an opinion, and to bring up your family accordingly, right?

I can also understand why some would rather the beeb were more circumspect.

But… problem is, looking at efficacy, we find things to be quite murky. It’s not a slam dunk on the stats.

Because of that, it is quite wrong to create the impression that the only possible approach is universal masking at school.

Yes, this.

And you have to add to that the fact that kids and teens are not at high risk from covid. There was an article from our local children's hospital recently say that they have not seen many children in the ER or ICU for covid, even since omicron came. They had actually had more in both from flu, and a lot more from RSV - like many places we've had a spike in RSV due to lack of exposure in the past year or so.

My kids saw that when no one is around to see, a lot of kids remove theirs, or wear them under their noses. A lot of them hang out together at their homes anyway so they tend to feel it's stupid on that account.

I don't blame them, I work 4 or 5 hour shifts and by the time I'm done, even in a paper mask, I often have a headache and I often leave with my nose all full of crusty boogers, which totally sucks. I also often can't hear the people I am supposed to be helping.

I work in a school.
Yr11 class yesterday - 13 students not wearing masks
Yr 8 class today - 5 with no masks, some of the rest wearing them under chins, playing with them.
Top set Yr9 - all students bar one SEN in masks.

It’s the students that would be trouble makers anyway. Just another thing they can push back on.

No Piggy I accept you have a different opinion. I teach a talky subject, and in a deprived area. Maybe not the most confident kids in the first place. So my view might be more pronounced. I am genuinely surprised though that any teacher could argue that there is zero impact on kids' learning. i guess evidence on that score will appear at some point.

@bizboz

Why is it that kids all over the world have been wearing masks for nearly two years, often at primary age, but kids in the UK can't manage it?

My Year 7 DC wears one, moans a little bit but just gets on with it because it's better than missing school through having Covid or having endless cover lessons because the staff are off with Covid. She finds the disposable ones more comfortable so I buy those.

YES YES YES My DCs have worn masks at school, all day, every day, pretty much since this whole shitshow began. (We are not in the UK.) There's no angst or refusal or hand-wringing. Kids have to wear them and so do adults. I keep seeing the news in the UK...loads of people saying they're 'exempt' and now school kids 'refusing' - why is the UK so different????

But you didn't make it sound like an opinion happy. You said I promise your kids.

I teach three talky subjects too btw!

So long as we accept there are no generalisations here.

*teens, not kids.

piggy no I do think I am generally correct, it's an opinion my teaching colleagues share and it's a big sixth form. I will be eagerly awaiting any research findings on masks and engagement with learning. But in the meantime I accept masks are not detrimental to learning in your experience.

And you have to add to that the fact that kids and teens are not at high risk from covid.

They’re not at high risk, but the problem is you can’t predict who will be affected. Healthy kids with no underlying conditions can get hit with a bad case of covid and/or PIMS and/or long covid. It’s eye opening to see how many people are willing to take that risk with their kids.

And, as a teacher, I’m not scared of covid. I don’t want them to wear masks to protect triple-vaxxed me. I hope they will wear masks to protect themselves, the kid they sit next to who has diabetes, the kids they sit next to from ethnic minorities who have been harder hit by covid. The kid who lost a grandparent to covid. The kid who worries about taking it home to a cv family member.

I don’t know though, sometimes mumsnet makes me feel like a fucking freak for caring about other people’s kids

Not at high risk but I’d imagine it sucks to be one of these 20,000 or one of those 12,000.

@BewareTheLibrarians
But this presupposes that if children just wear masks they will never get covid or that if they just wear them for long enough covid will disappear. I don’t think it’s that people don’t care about their children. Just that the effect of children wearing a mask might be that they catch covid 10% later than they would have done. So yes there is a chance that healthy children are badly affected by covid but, given that omicron is so infectious that all children are likely to get it, masks or not, masks are at best a (slight) delaying measure and not a protection measure. If a child is going to get long covid they will get it unless they are completely hidden away from the world indefinitely. There’s no point in delaying when you get covid unless possibly something significant will happen in the meantime like getting vaccinated.

I don’t see covid mitigation measures as protecting my child at all. They were never intended to. They were intended to spread out covid cases to protect the health service. I think the measures have been severely damaging for DS for no benefit to him.

But this presupposes that if children just wear masks they will never get covid or that if they just wear them for long enough covid will disappear

No it doesn't and BewaretheLibrarian didn't say that.

If a child is going to get long covid they will get it unless they are completely hidden away from the world indefinitely

What on earth makes you think that? That there's a long covid type?

There’s no point in delaying when you get covid unless possibly something significant will happen in the meantime like getting vaccinated

There is every point in delaying getting covid:

www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/08/should-australians-be-resigned-to-getting-omicron-absolutely-not

I don’t see covid mitigation measures as protecting my child at all

Well they do. Every little bit helps.

I can see you haven't been on MN for long, mikelondon55. so possibly you are unaware of their guidelines for posting.

@echt I’ve no idea if there is a long covid type but I just meant that if all children will get covid eventually some (hopefully small) percentage of them will get long covid. Delaying when they get covid is unlikely to change that. It’s really shifting the goalposts for the justification for measures like masks to now be delaying when some children get covid by a month or so.

That article is about spreading out cases and getting booster shots. As I said, if there is some significant event like getting vaccinated and you manage to delay getting covid until after it then there is some benefit to the delay. Otherwise I can’t see much benefit to a small delay in a child getting covid. It’s estimated that 50% of children had covid between September and November last year. Perhaps masks could have delayed 5% of them getting it until December or January but that seems of very marginal benefit to me.

My DS is 18m and has had covid with zero I’ll effects so I think it’s right to say that covid mitigation measures have done nothing but damage him to no benefit. If I made a list of all the risks to him I could think of covid might be at number 1000.

[quote Chessie678]@echt I’ve no idea if there is a long covid type but I just meant that if all children will get covid eventually some (hopefully small) percentage of them will get long covid. Delaying when they get covid is unlikely to change that. It’s really shifting the goalposts for the justification for measures like masks to now be delaying when some children get covid by a month or so.

That article is about spreading out cases and getting booster shots. As I said, if there is some significant event like getting vaccinated and you manage to delay getting covid until after it then there is some benefit to the delay. Otherwise I can’t see much benefit to a small delay in a child getting covid. It’s estimated that 50% of children had covid between September and November last year. Perhaps masks could have delayed 5% of them getting it until December or January but that seems of very marginal benefit to me.

My DS is 18m and has had covid with zero I’ll effects so I think it’s right to say that covid mitigation measures have done nothing but damage him to no benefit. If I made a list of all the risks to him I could think of covid might be at number 1000.[/quote]
Part of the article is about the value of delay.

This thread is about masks in schools, so what does your 18m child have to do with it?

@Happypootler

piggy no I do think I am generally correct, it's an opinion my teaching colleagues share and it's a big sixth form. I will be eagerly awaiting any research findings on masks and engagement with learning. But in the meantime I accept masks are not detrimental to learning in your experience.

I genuinely don't have time during the day to discuss mask wearing with all my other colleagues, I must say. I won't hold my breath for studies of older children as this is not a quantifiable debate. Any evidence I have seen focuses on the development of speech and language which is why young children aren't wearing them.

Any evidence I have seen focuses on the development of speech and language which is why young children aren't wearing them

What evidence have you seen?

In the DfE so called evidence about masks echt there is some suggestion that this has influenced the decision about younger children. It's one of the bits of evidence they cite.

There's every reason to delay anyone catching covid now.
The new vaccine, meds are being developed. Not all the children had vaccine x2 yet. According to Zoe study, vaccine reduces chance of long covid by half.
If you get it when it's in its peak, there could be a chance of delayed or insufficient treatment due to limited capacity of nhs.
Just because most will/might get it soon or later, it doesn't need to be now.