Anyone spotted this new stumbling block?

[user1475086949]

On the whole, staff are raring to go and if we're told business as usual or close to it in September will get on with it, subject to risk assessments etc.

However, what with the summer being the one time teachers can get away, and having worked through the last two holidays, we have a very high number of staff already booked on holidays with return travel during the last week of the holidays and who therefore will, under current guidelines, be self isolating for the first 2 weeks of term.

Many staff are hoping their holidays will be cancelled, but if they're not, still plan to go, as they would lose the money if they don't.

I've asked today and roughly 25% of staff are booked to travel home during the week of 23 August or later.

So if all (or most) children are to be back in school from 3 September, the quarantine plan is going to have to go.

Nothing like a bit of joined up thinking

Obviously if you booked your holiday after March 22nd or when the 2 week post holiday quarantine was announced, then unfortunately it's tough as you knew the rules.

In case any of the more GFs haven't noticed this isn't AIBU or even Coronavirus, this is the Education Board so perfectly reasonable for those in education to discuss the consequences of pre booked holiday!!

Hey ho.

Has anyone actually done that tracy? Most holiday companies stopped taking new bookings.

I don't know Piggy
However I do know that my 3 teacher friends booked their 2020 Summer holidays last year & beginning of January, well before Covid was either known about or the information about it was global.
I also know plenty of other people who booked holidays around the same timeframes or even earlier.
As they're not clairvoyants they should not be disciplined /unpaid/miss out.

I also hate it too that some people think teachers do naff all & have it easy as I see how hard my friends work. It's a very annualised hours job & I think those that moan don't realise that because they just look at the kids being in school 9am - 3pm & the school holidays & blithely assume that's what the teachers do too - er no!

chloedecker no. Because I can't take 2 weeks off for quarantine I am unable to go abroad this year despite our holiday being booked way before lockdown.

Because what you do is rearrange the holiday for next year so no need to lose money.

Ok ok! I was only asking! Was actually just interested if you got a refund. This isn’t AIBU or the Coronavirus board you know!

You do seem very angry about it and I would just like you to point out that plenty of teachers have worked through their Easter holidays and May Half Term for free/unpaid (missing their holidays too just like you), just so that children of keyworkers in the NHS for example, can have their children looked after for free.

We’re not the enemy you know!

I think quarantine will only be for some countries not all by then (but probably the US is their numbers stay high). So a holiday to Spain or Greece will likely be all fine by then, but a trip to Disney less so.

I did point out chloe to the PP that I can neither move my holiday or get the money back. Some people seem to think you can do that if you cancel yourself and you can't... only if the company or airline does.

Why can't they just be tested immediately they arrive back. Results could be available straight away and then if neg no.need for quarantine

Because the incubation period is 14 days. A negative test when you could still be incubating is useless, as you couid be positive the next day but not symptomatic until 2 or 3 days after that.

You either need to do quarantine properly or not at all.

That holidays plans become impossible because of quarantine and impact on working life is far from unique to teachers. Ditto the desirability of having a holiday; or finding that your plans for holidays which were perfectly workable when booked are now in tatters.

@scaevola - that's not right, see here:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53116372

That BBC article e is referring to hopes from the industry for a change. Not government policy at all:

"If they [the passenger] were Covid-negative we would ask the government to consider them to be free from the quarantine and they would have 13 days plus avoiding the quarantine."

And from a disease control POV it is so flawed that we may as well not quarantine at all as do this. Which of course wouid be an outcome wholly pleasing to the purveyors of this proposal

Blimey - we have a work trip away at half term.

Admittedly it's not until October so quarantine requirements may well have all blown over by then - if they haven't been reintroduced.

But I can't quite imagine what my boss will make if I tell him the secretary, 3 TAs and 2 teachers will all have to isolate after the break.

My employers (not school) have said if we can’t cancel because of the cost then we take unpaid leave, make the time up, use future leave or in rare circumstances ie not frontline service then we work from home.

As a priority worker I’ve not had a days leave since February and it’s looking like I will have to use more leave to cover the quarantine period I will explode if my child is unable to attend school in September because teachers are not at school.

@Coffeeandbeans

My employers (not school) have said if we can’t cancel because of the cost then we take unpaid leave, make the time up, use future leave or in rare circumstances ie not frontline service then we work from home.

As a priority worker I’ve not had a days leave since February and it’s looking like I will have to use more leave to cover the quarantine period I will explode if my child is unable to attend school in September because teachers are not at school.

Fair enough that you feel that way.

You have been given 4 options by your employer, even though you are a priority worker. It’s only fair enough that teachers are afforded the same rights, though no? I mean some of them have not had a holiday since February either and have ensured priority/keyworker children are looked after for you in that time too.
Baring in mind that teachers can’t choose when they have their holidays, they have to book very far in advance to have a hope of affording that holiday. Posters are talking about losing thousands and thousands here. Can we not even discuss this in the Education forum without comments like this and others?

I don't think teachers' holiday plans are in tatters. They will be going if they're already booked and the trips aren't cancelled by the company, so it's the return in Sept that's "in tatters" (unless the quarantine is scrapped)

The travel companies have also said they won't cancel a holiday because of the 2 week quarantine rule, so they have thrown the problem back at the consumer.

The only think they seem to be bowing to is the FCO advice.

I think all teachers would work the time back if we could, but teaching doesn't work that way!

It's not just teachers who wont be able to go on holiday due to quarantine. People cant take 4 weeks off work for one holiday, that would use most of their holiday entitlement for that year. So if you choose to go on holiday leaving yourself unavailable to start back at work then you shouldn't get paid and disciplinary action should be taken. Lots of people will lose money on holidays as they also will be unable to take the extra time off work.

I work in a school and have had a holiday to Spain booked for the last week of the holidays since January. I've accepted that if there is a quarantine period is in place I won't be able to go as I need to be in school.
However, it's ok for me to feel disappointed about that. Some people on here seem to think we shouldn't be bothered by anything as we get 'really long holidays'....

Key workers aren't exempt from quarantine, only people travelling here to work in essential services. Currently the FCO are only recommending essential travel, holidays aren't essential therefore travel insurance should cover that surely?

I'm due to return on 27th.

I started a thread a few weeks ago asking if anyone knew about whether we could cancel and refund due to quarantine and work etc.

I got the usual MN reply saying I should just cancel and lose my money as it's my duty and I should care about the kids! I was told I wasn't losing money because I've already paid!

I actually think only about 30/40% of holidays are going ahead so it's hits and miss if you will go and that we will have air bridges by then anyway - so no quarantine.

Every single key worker with a foreign holiday booked is facing this.
Possibly every single worker

And it is shit

But teachers are not unique in facing this, and losing their originally planned holidays

Do what everyone else is doing, and rebook for a UK holiday

Yes, that might mean a financial loss and it really, really sucks for those people affected

But if you cannot add 2 weeks to your holiday, then you cannot go

Lots of families are affected by this.

If teachers really think that they, uniquely, should be somehow insulated from this, it that they are more deserving of the additional fortnight (regardless of impact on a critical service) then they will start to lose all public sympathy

Read some of the accounts of what life has been like for front line staff in other critical sectors, realise that they are uncomplainingly altering leave plans, and then see if this really is something to make a song and dance about

I expect you’ll just write this off as ‘teacher bashing’ and ‘there should be no race to the bottom’ though

It’s as if you really cannot see how this comes across

I'd quite like teachers to be quarantined if they've been abroad. And no, we're not enjoying home schooling. I'm trying to work and the dc's are either not doing it or having huge tantrums.

I want this thing over with sooner than later. Leaving great big bloody loop holes in the system isn't going to help the autumn.

I'm a teacher in FE and we've recently had an email about holidays and those booked in good faith before 1st June although we always have to be back at work week beginning around 20th August and don't start teaching til beginning September so there's time to quarantine.

DH's school has had a policy in place since February half term of no holidays to affected areas, which was upgraded in March to no leaving the country at all so they would be available to work when schools did go back. When they announced this policy they asked who had foreign travel already booked and asked anyone who had travel booked to return within two weeks of the start of term to change the dates. This was long before the official quarantine was even announced.

We have had frontline workers living with us in our school throughout this crisis to protect their shielding families and we all know they have faced a much more significant risk of catching covid19 every day throughout this pandemic. The students coming back pose us a very small risk compared to the risks the HCPs, police, paramedics etc that we've had here throughout have faced. We are a boarding school so we live with the students so forget about staying at the front of a class and wearing PPE, no chance at all for that when they are living in your house with your spouse and children too.

If teachers really think that they, uniquely, should be somehow insulated from this, it that they are more deserving of the additional fortnight (regardless of impact on a critical service) then they will start to lose all public sympathy

Who has said this? I really wish some people would stop projecting their already negative opinions onto teachers and claim they have said things when they haven’t.
Again, are teachers not allowed to discuss it on the Education forum of MN?
I say this as someone who hasn’t booked a holiday for this August but does feel that all people from all jobs should be given the choice of re-booking their holiday or a refund, rather than lose thousands of pounds through no fault of their own.

I took the whole tone of the thread to be about this being uniquely difficult for teachers tbh.

Because the opening post didn't even pay lip service to this being a common problem which frontline workers of every stripe are having tomface.

Instead it read as if this was some new factor that that only mattered for teachers, not for every single key worker.

I don't see iVampire's post as teacher bashing. She's pointing it that it's not something that is worse for teacher than for anyone else. She doesn't dismiss the impact on teachers in the slightest. Just doesn't rank it higher for them than for anyone else

I think her last two paragraphs were prescient and accurate