Place yer bets

[shouldistop]

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

I honestly couldn’t say but keep hearing people saying that they are attending their own school/nursery because it’ll be a short closure this time instead of the hubs like last year

I hope early years and primary is back in person on 18th. So I'm betting 18th jan as alternatives are too depressing as a working parent. Both of my kids really need school routine.

@Lidlfix from what I've gleaned I think ours will be the same. Cared for I. The school environment with access to technology/WiFi but actual teaching & learning led by teachers remotely the same as those accessing from home. Not sure where we're going to get all the staff to manage it but suspect that pupil support staff & our nursery practitioners may be deployed across the school to cover the 'childcare' aspect.

After February break unless there is a significant improvement in the infection rate.

@Bytheloch

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?

Nurseries are o lived to provide both education & childcare - even those with very young babies still have a curriculum of experiences (of sorts) to follow. This was previously called birth to three but has now been absorbed into Realising the ambition. It's mostly society who sees them as separate and parents tend not to consider the 'education' side until children are around 3 so accessing their funded hours. That said most parents of younger children use nurseries for childcare not for education (even though the nurseries are still required to provide the education part) and even more difficult to work from home with a child under 5 than a primary school aged child. So difficult for parents and I k in some of our school staff are also in this position with partners who are not classed as keyworkers but still expected to be present in their workplaces rather than working from home.

@shouldistop

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

Nah, there’s no way they’re going to implement home learning for just 5 days!

Feb half term absolute earliest, more likely Easter I reckon. (But we'll still be strung along with the weekly 'will they won't they' routine until then).

I think Easter.

I railed against closures before, but am now resigned to it. Although concerned about DS

And I think they should just state their position, not the weekly get your hopes/fears up. I can’t live like that any more.

I think it's really hard to say at the moment since infection rates from Christmas are not accounted yet. But I'm not really optimistic judging by what is happening in and around London and the recent numbers for Scotland.
So hopefully we'll be back after the Feb half term, at least for primary and nursery.

And I think they should just state their position, not the weekly get your hopes/fears up. I can’t live like that any more.

I know, I hate the uncertainty. We both worked from home last time and looked after ds who was 3 at the time, it was awful. This time I'm on maternity leave at least but have a 4 week old baby so that has its own difficulties

Oh lord, @shouldistop I can’t even imagine how hard it is with such young children!

None of my family members will come into the house to help either - despite the fact that none of us go anywhere
The only people who have offered to visit the new baby are people who I know are socialising widely so wouldn't want them to come in. My mum expects me to stand at the back door with the newborn so she can look at him.
I had hoped to keep some sort of normality for DS1 as he's struggling a bit with the lack of undivided attention from me.

@shouldistop that’s really sad. And it must be exhausting.

It’s hard on parents but it’s the kids I feel awful for. I read the minutes on the Scottish government’s website for the last children’s and educations advisory meeting, which seems to state lockdowns are causing more harm to children than covid itself. Which is why it’s surprising they’ve decided what they have, but there does seem to be a lot of hysteria again and I guess the teachers won’t want to go back if cases are high, but I hope it’s before Easter. The difference in my ds after starting school was amazing, and I’m feeling real stress that he will be back to square one in terms of confidence and socialising with his peers. Kids have missed out on a lot, I think they get a hard time for being “super spreaders” but they’ve missed out on time with family, hobbies, seeing friends and it’s just not normal to keep telling them they can’t have people in the house. So I’m feeling for them.
Also, not much mention of mass testing in schools here either?
Maybe the focus is getting as many teachers in at risk groups vaccinated and schools will reopen after this?
I don’t know. Hope that some degree of normality returns for us all soon 😕

There is zero point in mass testing with lateral flow since it's so inaccurate. It's mostly to show 'something' is being done. I'm glad they are not wasting people's time with it.

Vaccination would be good. With the Oxford vaccine approved then hopefully in the next 2 months a decent % of pople can be vaccinated. I think teachers and other front line workers should get precedence over the general population.

The trouble is that if kids spread it then a lot of parents could get ill. And some will be over 50 if we include secondaries so it could still be bad. Not sure this experiment is worth the risk with general vaccination rollout that could start this summer.

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.

Well given how dire it was first time round, that’s hardly encouraging.

So (not winning any plain English awards blush) they will be educated by a remote teacher but in a cared for environment.

Just key worker children or all children. If the argument is that schools are unsafe for teachers, whose going to be providing the “cared for” environment and why is it safer for them to do so than for teachers?

I suspect schools will be closed until at least February break with all that entails for children and parents.

I think they’ll send them back on 18th jan

It’s teachers and school workers who will be providing in school care. Who else would be doing it? It’s ‘safer’ as social distancing is an awful lots easier when there aren’t 33 kids in a room.

My bets are on mid-February, then we'll go to 'blended' learning until Easter.

After Easter.

Yep Mondaywine in June my room was set up for a 33% then a 50% model for blended learning. The pupils could socially distance easily from each and from me.

Staggered breaks and lunches with these models in place had minimal unnecessary mixing and corridors would never be busy.

Having seen what contact tracing looks like in a standard full classroom it was more than 1/3 out for one positive case. With distancing in place that would be vastly reduced .

I would far rather see blended learning than no in school interactions.

I suppose the next few weeks are crucial.

The only way we can do blended learning is via the learning journals. But they are nowhere near the way we would observe a child's play and extend it. A lot of that in the moment learning will be lost. Plus some staff will be needed in the setting. Others will need to do the journals at home.

For me it's the unknown of what's happening and this is the governments fault.

Last time the hubs were childcare rather than a learning place to be.

After Easter, much as I wish it would be sooner.

Slightly more optimistically I would say after Feb mid term for primaries, or those not in level 4.

I check Sturgeon's Oracle's (Devi Sridhar) twitter now for an idea of next steps! Sridhar has advised schools should be closed for 2/3 weeks, so im going for either the 18th, as planned, or the 25th. I can see primary schools being back full time ahead of high schools though...