clarity on primary class sizes

[oldwhyno]

DfE guidance has been updated again (yesterday), to clarify:

"Primary pupils do not and have not needed to be kept apart in the classroom, and we are encouraging primary heads to use the capacity they have and the flexibility we have given them to bring more groups of children back into school, if they can work within the protective measures’."

Many schools got this wrong. So many that the finger can only be pointed at the lack of clarity in the original DfE guidance.

SLT's around the country are tired. This term has probably been their toughest ever. But staff in education, governors, parents all need to come together now to offer the capacity that they're able to as quickly and safely as they can.

Our local authority has told schools to remain with the current provision and not increase the intake.

Why do you think that is @spanieleyes ?

Please don’t say “schools got this wrong”.

The original guidance said desks should be placed far apart and schools should maintain 2 metre distance where possible. The DfE produced numerous documents, posts and tweets that confirmed this.

The government are now trying to rewrite history with their new guidance and shift blame onto schools.

Because they don't believe it is safe to do so.

There can still only be a maximum of 15 in each bubble though. The maths is easy, if you go from one room and one teacher for 30 pupils, to one room and one teacher for 15, you need more rooms and more staff! Talk of using marquees and halls etc isn’t going to work if you don’t have the staff. Also, most schools have absent staff who are vulnerable or shielding. School staff want the children back just as much as the parents but we can’t achieve the impossible. Make sure you support your headteacher. They’ll be doing their very best in very challenging circumstances and yes you’re right, the DfE does keep changing the guidance!

@Pud2 absolutely, the 15 bubble maximum has not been changed.

It will, however, be changed to 30 IF the government are going to be able to follow through on their September ambition of getting all children back in. At which point it will be even clearer that social distancing individual separation guidelines in the wider community are more or less meaningless in a primary school.

There are those who claim this is the DfE changing their guidance. I don't believe that's an argumentworth having, except some in education will feel they have to so they don't have to admit they "got it wrong" (I don't blame heads for this, I think it was understandable).

The real crime was the ambiguity and I think that is bad enough on its own. Williamson should hold his hands up and apologise for the strife this has caused, and is now causing, in schools.

On this point, the DfE absolutely changed the guidance. It been shared many times amongst heads over the 24 hours. They also blatantly changed the guidance about the use of rotas early on. Ambiguity has also been an additional problem.

We await guidance for September. Let’s hope it’s one, solid, manageable document that remains static.

It definitely was changed. The original guidance said that social distancing would be difficult with younger children but older children should be taught to keep a 2metre distance. The extract below is from the original guidance which clearly states keeping pupils 2m away from each other where possible.

And they haven’t increased bubble size. So no, I can’t bring any more children back, much as I would love to.
They are softening us up and rolling back guidance ready for September.

The 2m distance is basically irrelevant in my son's school. All the classrooms (plus every other conceivable room) contains a bubble of 15. Every teacher and TA who can is teaching a group. They could only have more kids in if the bubble size was dropped.