Fears For Tiers

[Bytheloch]

Thread #567 Still here, getting through each day one 2M step away at a time. November into December 2020 here we go...

Did she say the spread in schools was tiny?

Eyes mushrooming collection of Christmas/woodland/pine/starry night themed candles evoking snow filled magical Christmas memories.

Does not contemplate grey drizzle filled skies out of the window!

I'm not sure wouldbegood but she did talk about not wanting "closing schools and moving to blended learning" which showed some ignorance since blended learning would require schools to be open full time and pupils in them part time!
I despair

Re: schools, this is what has been reported on the BBC website;

Fewer than one quarter of schools had any cases of Covid and half of those had just one single case in that period . A total of 78% of schools had no Covid cases at all
Measures to keep schools safe in the pandemic will be debated by MSPs later at Holyrood - you can watch the debate here with us on this live page
Scotland's Interim Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Dave Caesar insists schools are not driving community Covid infections up

It really depends on how you look at the stats - if you do cases per 100k over 7 days by age group you get a very different picture - see attached (hopefully)

sorry per million not per 100k

I think she said 1600 positive cases. In schools

But didn’t break it down and that was only for 1st term

We've had some Christmas plans cancelled for mid December after the 3 week tier 4 lockdown. Not much else to do to be honest but cant bring myself to put up a tree yet.

Toddler bouncing off walls for 6 weeks. NO THANKS! Ho ho ho...

There has not been a single case at my DD school since August, there has been case at village school in next village but definitely linked to social event not school

Waxon, how manipulative is that graph or am I missing something?

The first bar 0-4 has 5 years in it.
The next one, up to 14, has l 10 years in it.
The next two up to 19 & 24 have 5 years.
The next two 44 & 64 have 20 years.
Then the next two, 74 & 84 drop to 10 years
Then 84 +

I makes it look more even than the spead probably is. Or am I missing something

In theory it shouldn't matter as the graph is per million - so the size of the populations won't matter. But the groupings could be significant in that they can be hiding issues - so 15-19 covers both school age and university/young adults who could potentially have vastly different levels.

Biking bear, that's the graph manipulated to show actual spread per 1m which is showing where the proportion of the infection is rather than the normal unadjusted figure that everyone looks at that does, as you point out, have varying sizes of age ranges so it looks different. Go onto travelling tabby and play with some of the options, I'm just trying to show that yes, numbers in children's age ranges might be lower, but as a proportion of the population they are higher than is generally represented. or try adding them together into a group that is the same representative size.

I don't know of any secondaries in my area that hasn't had a case - usually far more. It's not just cases though that cause disruption to education it is waiting for tests and isolation periods - not to mention the day to day disruption caused by all the measures in schools.

I don't think looking at schools wholesale makes much sense. There will be many with hardly a case and then a few with lots of cases. If a school has so many cases and absences it disrupts their teaching then I think closing and online lessons makes more sense than limping on and delivering a substandard education.

You don't have to have a single case to have absences though. People isolate because their parents, siblings, children have symptoms (or they themselves) this might not result in a positive case but you still have to be off till it's done. Running practical classes is almost impossible, those subjects are experiencing a lot of difficulty delivering their curriculum. In a "normal classroom" type subject, there is still the issue of constant cleaning, cold rooms, not being able to work with pupils face to face, staying at the front etc. There is disruption all over - hardly surprising in a pandemic.

If a school has so many cases and absences it disrupts their teaching then I think closing and online lessons makes more sense than limping on and delivering a substandard education.

This is very much the thinking from frustrated parents here (not me personally as I have Uni and primary DC and so have sidestepped the issue in secondaries)

The problem with the current situation is that close to 80% of schools, if I read the BBC catch up correctly, have no cases at all but the other 20% - I would guess in relatively deprived areas in the Central Belt with lots of key worker parents - have lots of self-isolation driven by repeated small actual cases. This inevitably widens the educational divide unless Holyrood come up with a decent mitigation strategy for the current S5 and a catch up strategy for the years below.

I don't see how "blended learning" in higher incidence areas would actually address this although it would provide a more settled environment.

The Briefing presented very much the view that moving to on-line (not even part-time reduced classes) would make very little difference to transmission which is mirroring the wider community - hence why it is mostly schools in high incidence areas which are repeatedly affected.

That’s good news for schools, and teachers, then on the infection rates.

DS reports near normal classes, including home ec. Though they have to go back to outdoor PE now. .

Don't think ds would have got his outdoor PE today as it was pissing down and windy. Havent had an email about a case in almost 2 weeks now

How can "blended learning" help at all? The plus side of it really escapes me. If you happen to be in a class where someone is positive (or whatever) how does it help "being more settled"? Instead what they need is a way to keep children who have to be absent for 2 weeks engaged and make sure they keep up. How do do it, I am not sure, but that would be a step in the the right direction.

They need proper efficient testing and quick results then, it sounds like

Really sorry I’m at work and haven’t managed to read everything but has anyone addressed the elephant in the room that most children and young people will be a symptomatic and not eligible for tests ?

@RJnomore1 no, have a read of the stuff above when you get time. It’s interesting

Would argue the opposite RJnomore1. Know lots of children who had all sorts of normal sniffles in Aug/Sep and were given a test "just to be on the safe side". Adults don't get so many "could be" type symptoms.

How can "blended learning" help at all? The plus side of it really escapes me
The plus side is fairly clear - it would allow for social distancing in classes, in the same way we distance everywhere else at the moment except in schools.
We send home pupils who have sat within 2m of a positive case. If no one sat within 2m of each other no one would need to isolate! (Unless we were following Boris-style-isolation rules)

I've been watching bbc Scotland but nothing regarding a debate in the Scottish Parliament