If you don't think schools should reopen now, why do you think things will be better in September?

[IntolerableCruelty]

I'm school leadership and as you can imagine, my colleagues and I have been talking round in circles over this for the last few days.

We're completely conflicted, we want to be able to educate and safeguard students properly again but we also want to care for staff properly. We know we have a number of very anxious and/or vulnerable staff who will find it very difficult return regardless of what the "requirements" are.

So far, we have only managed to get to a point where we can "re-open" for very small numbers of children, not really offering much different to we're doing currently. ("Re-open" because we never actually closed)

However, we also can't see that we'll be able to do anything differently if it's all postponed until September.

Or maybe people who are resisting it think we should never go back? Obviously not, but we have intelligent (honest!) people working on this and haven't yet managed to find a way.

Great post hopsalong

What hopsalong said. It’s scary going back, breaking our bubbles, but we have to do it sometime and doing it well before the winter seems sensible. It’s kids that are paying the price for this lockdown; mentally, educational y; with their future taxes. They are doing it largely to protect the over 70s. My parents are over 70 and they are allowed to play golf again - it seems bonkers that they can do that but I’m still remote teaching and dcs are stuck at home. I know golf is outside etc but it just seems a bit unfair!

My assumption was that the idea of opening in June was to get teachers to contract the virus, recover over summer and be able to start school with full capacity in September

That guidance answers quite a few questions I had.

I do hugely sympathise with head teachers, because the delay on releasing this kind of information after they make announcements is totally unacceptable. It's bad enough schools don't get warned in advance. 4 days later?? A good head would already have mostly decided how they were going to approach reopening, and now those plans will need to be changed.

Anyway, to the OP, I think people imagine more will be known by September, but I'm not convinced that is true.

I'm only playing devil's advocate here.. but lets say for the sake of it (I have no data) 0.05% children who catch Covid die and 0.05% of deaths in adults are causally related to missing part of their EYFS/KS1 education.

Hopsalong has interpreted that as:
a) child almost certainly won't die of corona
b) if child misses education they will almost certainly have poor outcomes

How have Sweden got teachers to risk assess and decide to keep teaching I wonder?

@Meercatmama I have a yr 1 child and that is exactly why I have decided to keep him at home. We’ve been exposed to the virus already but DS is a bit of a worrier and I think trying to comply with the new rules would have a hugely negative affect on his mental heath. I’ve spoken to his Headteacher and she is happy that I’m making a good decision for him. In the week before they broke up he was bordering on OCD with hand washing and his hands were raw.

The government has simply suggested teachers to assess and take risks in reopening schools. However they don’t give teachers the right tools (data) to assess the risks, which they’ve always been asked to do in everyday’s decisions involving the children. Teachers don’t join the profession to take risks. That’s the job of corporations and entrepreneurs who take risks with limited data at hand but with expectation of quantifiable profits.

Even though I’m suffering terribly as a WFH parent with two primary aged DC I have every respect for teachers who I believe should not be forced to take unnecessary risks for themselves and their families. At the same side, the education of disadvantaged children should be addressed. That can be done by local hubs / groups where small groups of children come a few days a weeks, even throughout the summer, to catch up with core subjects such as numeracy and English.

I’m a teacher. I think schools could open up to allow more children in, in terms of childcare to support parents who need to work or who are particularly struggling with them at home.

I think September would be massively different to 1st June. If numbers can be kept down, the issues around testing resolved and track and trace set up and working then much safer to open knowing flare ups could be contained more easily. It would give schools time to plan how to operate if we are still trying to work around some form of social distancing/hygiene/travel to and from school etc...

I find it mind-boggling that people can’t see it could be massively different to wait a little longer.

Excellent post by @Meercatmama. The facts clearly show that children have a vanishingly small risk of a bad outcome from coronavirus. As far as sending my child to school goes, I do not have any worries related to the virus itself and any illness that it might cause.

But for young reception and Y1 kids who are still forming their general view of the world and their place within it, I am extremely worried about the effect all these extreme social distancing and hygiene measures might have upon their developing sense of how society normally functions and how they should related to other people.

If no one is allowed near them, or them to each other and they are physically isolated from the simple joy and reassurance of human touch, along with a whole host of other "odd" things required at this time, then I worry a great deal about how this might affect them in the future once (if!) the virus has subsided.

As adult we are able to logically understand why these things are being done. We knew the life before the virus. Children may start to internalise some of these extraordinary messages they are being given and grow up with a damaged view of the social bonds we all need to be happy and healthy.

That's why I'm minded to keep my Y1 child off for the moment, and wait and see how they plan to implement social distancing within the classroom for very young children. It's going to be extremely difficult.

Fecking app, there were paragraphs in that before I posted...

By September the R number may be proven to be under control. Schools shouldn't be the testing zone for that.

If it is not safe for office workers, or non food stores to open why is it safe for schools?

By Sept, hopefully we will have seen the results of easing restrictions and will be keeping within NHS capacity. Track, trace, isolating hopefully working and closer to a treatment/vaccine.

Primary schools cannot practice social distancing so should be last to go back. Possibly older exam year students could manage but little ones can't.

More people will have already been infected.

Schools will also have had some chance to put things in place.

The exam boards are encouraging a big push to get kids back is so that exam classes in Year 10 and Year 12 (going into Year 11 and Year 13 respectively) cannot use extended COVID absence for their later exam performance. Teachings grade terminal exams in Scandanavian countries with the same proportion of grades given as when they used external markers.

This is a weak reason to push teachers back.

If it is not safe for office workers, or non food stores to open why is it safe for schools?

Because the risk of harm from the isolation is not mitigated by opening shops or going to the office (well the office one may help for some, but the meeting adult friends in the park provides them with the same mitigation)

Other mitigations for the isolation could be provided - opening kids social and sports clubs, opening playgrounds and encouraging socialising there, to aid isolation but those are not government funded - so it would only mitigate for the advantaged wealthy kids families, or are higher risk - such as the sports clubs.

Isolating kids from their peers is not "safe".

Current new case rate as I write is about three times what it was when lockdown started. While there is a lag to that info and the trend is hopefully down rather than up, it
seems premature to me to go back. In our case we are fortunate to live in the country where there are very few cases and no deaths in our immediate area, and our kids to school in w town which is a bit of a hotspot. We are not rushing back.

I work in a school that has been open for key workers and vulnerable children throughout. Have been in every day. School is smack bang in the middle of a sink estate with lots of families living on top of each other. Deprivation is extremely high, most homeschooling packs have been provided on paper due to lack of internet/laptops etc (We broke our paper budget for the rest of the academic year by mid April!). Just over 40 % of children qualify for FSM and I’ve issued more food bank vouchers in the last couple of months than in the rest of the year.

The estate has been pretty amazing throughout. Hardly any children/families on the streets, a lot of engagement with school, fund raising and rallying around of the most vulnerable and calls to school/authorities from parents worried about other parents/children. There have been a lot of issues with the more anti-social elements (drug users/disaffected teens/vandalism etc) but those are generally not our families and par for the course on this estate.

We canvassed our parents last week and will have only 48 children in school from 1 June from a possible 118 (including nursery) and including the children that have attended throughout (16). Most parents who gave a reason have said that they don’t want to send their children back until 1) The death rate falls below 50/100 (quite an even spread) or 2) the new infections rate falls below 100. They think this will be in the summer/September.

I can understand their thinking. They know that school isn’t going to be able to Social distance the kids. They know that we have a high proportion of kids with SEN and other issues that mean we won’t be able to ‘control’ them, so to them it makes sense to wait until the ‘risk’ is lower before putting their kids in the firing line.

I have no skin in the game as such, like I said I’ve been in daily throughout so it makes no odds to me, but if I had a primary child and had the choice, I wouldn’t be returning them either. I simply don’t see the point for 6 weeks before having another 6 weeks off.