Place yer bets

[shouldistop]

When do you think schools and nurseries will actually re-open?

February

@ParkheadParadise beginning, middle or end?

You mean open to all pupils?

Not just key worker DC and the vulnerable and for the teachers and other staff who will still be working.

After the February break

After February mid term.

Middle @shouldistop

February break, then staggered return for all.

Senior years will be in Jan for prelims/assessment blocks..

As school nursery staff, I fear it will be oh it's just a few weeks to Feb break! Then oh it's Easter... and so on.

After February holidays

I wish they would hurry up and let us know. Ds's asn high school is opening as normal so he will be going back on 11th January. I could send him on the 6th but as I've taken annual leave next week he's just staying at home.

I dont know. I'm in early years and finding it an incredibly anxious time not knowing. I dont even know if my own child has a confirmed place at school and I go back to work on weds.

The parent half of me wants dc to be in school but the employee half of me is pretty terrified now numbers locally have increased 15 fold in the last week. It's impossible to social distance with the children and I'm therefore exposed to 25 other families germs each day.

@Lidlfix obviously that's what I mean ...

February or March. Definitely by the end of the Easter holidays.

So no one thinks it will be 18th January then so far.

I think February at least - perhaps reopening after the mid-term break.

It's too early to predict beyond that at the moment.

After February half term. Maybe earlier for nursery and primary if early research shows the new variant isn't spreading as quickly as they suspect among younger kids.

I’m going to skew the bets here slightly by saying, the 18th for primary and nursery with a staggered secondary return- for level 3 and under only. They will remain closed in L4 and that will be in place until after Feb break for the most populated areas (not necessarily those with most positive cases, but could have sudden ‘upgrades’ for a fortnight here and there).

Think it will be after Feb break at the earliest and the majority of us will stay in level 4 until then. Hope to I am wrong as don't want to be juggling home schooling and working again with a preschooler again. Neither of us are key workers so no childcare available as we use clubs and private nursery rather than a child minder.

I am hoping for some kind of blended (50% in 50%) at home to allow for distancing in areas of highest transmission rates. So that pupils are getting some in school teaching and can then be better placed for engagement with tasks at home.

But it will all depend on what the coming days and weeks bring.

I tried to squeeze any info or even gut feeling out of my SLT on the last day but they genuinely knew nothing and the announcement that had been made on the 19th Dec was a total shock.

Easter

But what about nurseries, they are childcare settings, not education settings where a blended learning model fits🤷‍♀️

Really don’t understand why they are closed and yet grandparents are allowed/will need to provide care if people are lucky to have GPS on the doorstep.

I think the two areas (childcare & education) need to be split out for closures. Are the key worker children receiving education or childcare?

If a child is only moving between their home and a grandparents’, they are much safer than they are in a room with 25 other children. It’s like six degrees of separation in reverse.

Are the key worker children receiving education or childcare?
We don’t know that either. We are also expecting more children to claim a place this time, which means that home learning provision can’t be as good.

I also think February at the earliest, possibly Easter.

My money's on the 1st of March 2021.

I don't have enough experience or knowledge of early years to know how/if blended learning can be applied in that setting.

Perhaps they should be treated separately once the impact of transmission rates of the new strain on that age group is known? And I hope that does not come across badly to Groovee and the other great early years posters on here.

Where I teach, we are having a Google Meet on the first day back to allow those in and out of school to participate, to plan for wc the 11th. My understanding (and this is from hasty conversations in the last week) is that because our pupils all have Chromebooks the pupils in school will be supported to work on the tasks, experiences, learning provided by their teachers on Google Classroom. Not set different learning.

So (not winning any plain English awards ) they will be educated by a remote teacher but in a cared for environment. And I can only speak for where I teach of course.