When are we going back to school 2

[RaraRachael]

New thread as the last one was getting full. Feel free to discuss, moan, speculate on anything to do with Scottish schools and what may/not be happening.

BUt with community transmission SO low, who do you think you're going to catch it from? This virus is not going away, but must be managed just as schools manage norovirus or scarlet fever or whatever else is doing the rounds.

For lots of children remote schooling was a disaster - mine included. One week out of three in school for children due to do exams next May is just not good enough.

I am far from a Nicola fan but she didn't "cave" on this. She realised that given the figures, and where cases are occurring, there is zero justification for not sending schools back as normal.

Now if you want to discuss her inconsistencies regarding face masks, that's a different conversation.

@AudacityOfHope almost every European country hS been back to school with no significant outbreaks.

Hard evidence from the guinea pigs that went before.

Plenty of those schools are making children wear masks and maintaining smaller class sizes to allow for SD.

Here we just have 'nope, no need for any of that, off you go'.

I do know we're at very low transmission levels but it isn't really a rational thing is it, fear, and wanting to keep your family safe.

I am just a bit that none of the original safety plans needed to be kept. Just like that it was all scrapped. I don't believe it's that black and white; the 'science' can't have flipped 180 degrees overnight. The public pressure changed the approach, not the science.

I do know we're at very low transmission levels but it isn't really a rational thing is it, fear, and wanting to keep your family safe.

No, i understand the fear but fear shouldn't dictate what is appropriate and the actual risk.

Yes I do see that. But also, for example, how can it be appropriate that kids on public transport must wear masks, but not on school buses? That's the kind of thing that bothers me; it's basically easier to say 'kids will all be fine' because that opens the door to full time normal schooling and parents getting back to work. The inconsistencies seem to belie the facts when it's more convenient.

It's more that the other measures are not required imo. These are also stopping people getting back to work and fucking the economy, very little makes sense and you can't really apply logic as everything contradicts and doesn't work towards a defined strategy that we are being informed or advised about.

Is it just widely accepted that the net thing for these kids is full time school straight away? I’m not so sure. A gradual easing in maybe? I know plenty of mums who are worried about getting their little ones to school, instantly separating them for 6/7 hours a day 5 days a week. After such a long period of being home. I’m genuinely not sure how I feel about it from that perspective.

**best thing

Not net thing 🙄

but putting 30 people who are quite likely to be asymptomatic carriers (should they get it) into a room together seems mighty risky

But the prevalence of the virus means that is almost so impossibly unlikely to happen. A week ago, Nicola Sturgeon said that rates in Scotland were 28 in every 100,000 - 0.00028%. Rounding it up, 3 people in every 10,000 or a third of a person in every 1000. And remember that half or more of cases are in hospital or care homes, and that rates continue to fall. So the chances of ANY student having it is so, so remote.

Teachers are being advised to keep 2 metres from their students, and from other adult members of staff which will mitigate the teeny tiny risk of someone in a class having it.

Our children have missed out on so much and we just can't carry on as we have been. Not just because the ridiculous "blended learning" ideas were for as little as 33% of time in school was not providing sufficient education, but because all the chopping and changes of days makes it impossible for parents to work.

There are a LOT of inconsistencies around at the moment. Children under 11 can mix freely with friends without social distancing - but have to wear a mask in a shop. I can go to the pub with my friend, or sit in her house and drink Prosecco all night, but have to socially distance from her if she comes into the shop where i'm working.

Leaving all of that aside though, the main point is that rates are plummeting in the community and we just have to trust that the tracers are doing their jobs properly finding the contacts of people who test positive.

I find the Travelling Tabby site which has every graph and breakdown of figures you could ever wish for hugely reassuring.

www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

@Sassenach85 for primary children I can see the argument for easing them back over a couple of weeks. It's been a very long time as a proportion of their lives out of schooling.

But I have two senior school children hurtling towards exams next May -they have already missed about 6 weeks of formal teaching towards their exams as our school usually switches timetables mid-May. So they need to be straight back in, full time.

Oh and my last point (sorry, I will shut up after this), a freedom of information request looked at children who had been accommodated in hubs across Glasgow during the height of the pandemic in April/May.

I can't remember the exact figures but it was something like on average 1000 kids per day. Kids who had a higher than average chance of having Covid because of the jobs their parents were doing as keyworkers. Not a single case of transmission from child to child, or child to adult in those settings. Even at the peak of the pandemic.

The point is that I do not believe there is such a risk of having a lot of small and smaller children together.
There is very little evidence they either catch it or pass it on. Usually it is true the opposite. The very few cases of symptomatic children is children who caught it at home from their parents.
In the "usforthem Scotland" group they have collected a lot of evidence. For example, there is a study comparing Sweden (no lockdown and school open) and Finland (no schools) and found that the cases among children were pretty much in identical proportion. The schools didn't affect the outcome.
Then, that the advice give makes no sense, is a completely different kettle of fish, but we shouldn't be conflating the two issues; they are completely different.

As it has been said by PP, we MUST learn to live with the virus and accept a certain degree of cases. We must manage to learn to manage it, as we canNOT live cooped up until (literally) Kingdom come, because at this rate it will come sooner rather than later.

I understand the argument that schools should handle it the same as regular flu, norovirus etc. HOWEVER we didn't have to distance everywhere and wear masks to protect ourselves and others from these illnesses everywhere we go but now we do. Why are schools somewhere that don't require the same levels of caution and protection as anywhere else. Either the distancing, perspex screens, masks and booking of everywhere you go is a huge over reaction or this plan for schools is reckless. They both can't be logical.

In regards to children not catching it or spreading it, until very recently we were only testing people who were admitted to hospital. Perhaps children don't get it as bad as others but still get it? In Leicester there was an "unusually high rate of infection" in children www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-leicester-lockdown-news-children-high-infection-rate-schools-a9593581.html is it possible that this rate of infection isn't unusually high but because we're now testing more people we're now catching mild cases too?

They spoke a lot about viral load and how being exposed to a high viral load increases the chance of developing a stronger case of covid. If in a poorly ventilated room for 5 hours with someone who does have the virus, even if asymptomatic, would result in a fairly high viral load I'd guess.

Like I said I want to get back to work normally and so does every teacher I know. I appreciate many people had a poor experience of home learning but I know my school provided a good experience. My colleagues and I have honestly not worked so hard or so relentlessly in our working lives. Surely the solution is not to put people at risk but to make sure those schools falling short are up to scratch?

I don't want to be a guinea pig in this experiment and I don't want my class to be guinea pigs either.

@Onebabyandamadcat, there have already been plenty of Guinea pigs around Europe and the answer is pretty much always the same.
Join the usforthem Scotland FB group and read what they publish coming from abroad.
Also there is the advice supplied (about time too) by the SG.
What I would say is that the SG has been playing the terrorism card extensively, so it is not unexpected that people are confused.

I never really saw Us For Them as a very balanced group, certainly I didn't share their view of opening schools so quickly. I am not sure reading their FB page would deliver a balanced and impartial view. (Not to mention I deleted FB recently )

Children and young people do catch it - my DD who is 16 had it ‘mildly’ for two weeks at the end of March - she is still suffering fatigue and has Costochondritis, she also cannot ride her bike. My son who is primary age had fever, sore throat and diarrhoea which we presume was covid 19, based on clinical advice. He had gastric issues for about nine weeks.

I am not a key worker, and I had not been in my office for the two weeks before we became ill. The schools were open and both children were in. Of course I could have picked it up at the supermarket.

The point is that we simply do not know as much about this disease as other illnesses. The education recovery group itself says the evidence for secondary school is less clear. These decisions are being made on economic grounds, and there maybe an argument for this definitely - but I think it is helpful to be clear about this and not to dismiss valid concerns.

I had a look at usforthem a few weeks ago. Very one sided and biased. Also teachers raising concerns on it have been blocked

I have not looked at UsforThem but I think they are the FB group that campaigned and forced the u-turn on blended learning. If so, my view is that they hitched their cart to the wrong pony - it would have been better to press for proper investment in preparation for blended learning, more space in the school estate to support the bubble model and additional hubs for key worker and vulnerable children. But they whipped up a storm in a very short space of time and Swinney caved, whilst arguing that blended learning was only ever the contingency.

I hope they are correct with their views that a return to full-time school is low risk and safe, because if they are not, it is on their heads. We risk ending up with the worst of both worlds, which is local lockdowns (ie periods of no school at all) and no additional preparation for returning to the blended or online model.

Yes! @katysun

For me the best option would have been to have invested in a national, quality, distance learning programme.

Not back to school and it'll maybe be ok 🤷🏻‍♀️

The whole ethos behind Us For Them is/was a return to full time schooling. That's clearly stated as the aims of the group and it's a place for people who all want the same thing for their kids. Of course it's one-sided.

I'm sure there are other groups campaigning for different things and that's fine too - these sorts of groups don't have to allow opposing views if they don't want to.

I'm not saying they do, I was saying I don't really want to go to them for information as it will be so heavily biased it won't be useful to me.

the increase in cases in USA has been attributed to young people. Students rather than children, although as a PP pointed, out the leicester outbreak mentioned children.

And now the UK death and cases chart is being 'paused' in its daily publication which makes me concerned we won't know (for how long?) if things are getting worse or better. Very convenient I think.

@AudacityOfHope, you have to read the articles they share in the "files" section and then do with them what you like.
Isn't this what "listening to other opinions" is supposed to be like?
In all likelihood there WILL be local restrictions imposed, but that is fine. The narrative the SG imposes is not. Eradicating should NEVER be the goal, simply because you cannot eradicate it, unless the virus simply goes. The goal is managing.
IMHO, part time schooling should never be an option as it just doesn't work and it is too disruptive to society.
The SG (and others) said that making the "school estate" bigger is not an option as there is not enough money (or estate).
Again, the plans from the SG were I'll conceived from the start. They banked everything on fear (you should hear what my local priest says you should do if you want to go to church... Talking about putting off people...), rather than managing an acceptable outcome.

The acceptance that local restrictions will be imposed is surely an argument to augment the distance learning offering. As is what will surely happen repeatedly - kids will get a temperature or sore throat and the entire class will have to quarantine until they test negative, or for the full 14 days if it's positive. That's also going to be very disruptive for working parents.

How is this going to work with the early years primary? They need so much hands on support. It's not like the teachers can lecture them from the front of the room. I think the whole response to Covid is disproportionate now and no one is thinking about the effect of this on children's mental health long term