Educated guesses when schools will reopen

[frasersmummy]

Just that really

What do you think might be a realistic re-opening date.
Am I being optimistic thinking after the February break
I know no one has a crystal ball just looking for people's thoughts

I don’t understand why they don’t look at resetting the school holidays

Teachers are paid for 195 days' work. We're all still at work so resetting the holidays would require us all to be paid additionally.

I'm thinking Easter - Easter is earlyish this year so schools (Edinburgh at least) break on the 1st April anyway. I'll be surprised if we are back before then with the way the numbers are just now, the downward slope is always slower than the upward one and it's not like we're even on the downward slope yet

@DollyMixtureLulus it would involve changing which days you were working and which ones you were on holiday? Not making you work more or less days?

I really don't understand why they insist on the same term dates during lockdown.

The last few weeks have been wonderful not having to worry about homeschooling. Many workplaces (my own included) are not being flexible to wfh parents this time. I can not wfh and homeeducate, I can not afford to take unpaid leave - I'm not unusual. My children can either be outside or on screens, I have to earn a living.

Having holidays just now would be pretty pants for students trying to achieve qualifications this year. They can't come back in in July to do the work; they need the results much earlier than that.

The tourist places need a decent trade this year. Last year they missed out on Easter trade and early summer trade.

Families need a decent break, and something to look forward too. Last summer was rotten many holidays cancelled, the autumn festivities didn't happen, Christmas was a non event.

People will crack up at schools being open all summer.

@DollyMixtureLulus
We aren’t on holiday now
Teachers and school staff are working incredibly hard
To prep for a new class in September takes weeks of work (during the summer hols) and we need some time to you know, have some form of break before the kids go back

The summer holiday is currently what makes teaching sustainable and it’s the same for the kids

Oh and it’s unpaid leave btw

I'd crack up if schools were open all summer FFS.

So we are off now for 6 weeks, when we can precisely nowhere...just like my 3dc did last Easter, summer and October holiday...then we are in all summer. I am assuming that life is more "normal" then and restrictions are lifted. So 1/3 of my class sod off for a fortnights holiday for the 1st two weeks, then then next 1/3 the middle two weeks and then the remainder the last two weeks - I'm still stuck in school and my dcs get precisely nowhere again. Meanwhile I'm in school still not teaching a full class. Then I assume we're just working what - Easter straight through to October?!

Sounds fab 🤦🏼‍♀️. I must be too old for this teaching game now because I'm on my knees and we haven't even had our first full week of term yet.

September and everyone repeats the year is my optimistic prediction. If they tighten up the school attendance rules.

No summer school. They'll want you spending money on holidays.

If they continue to allow schools to run at this close to full attendance then all bets are off. And normal school will not resume this year.

I can't see everyone repeating the year. Too many issues, where do you accommodate the extra year of kids?
Do you have two P1 year groups, if you have two lots of P1, how does that work when double the number of kids leave school looking for Uni places ? Do the P7s move up or repeat?, Do S6 repeat or move on, how do Unis cope without a new intake of students, do existing students get a years grant to cover a years extra cost?

Do you permanently raise the school leaving age? No where near as simple as repeat the year.

@Lockdownbear

I can't see everyone repeating the year. Too many issues, where do you accommodate the extra year of kids? Do you have two P1 year groups, if you have two lots of P1, how does that work when double the number of kids leave school looking for Uni places ? Do the P7s move up or repeat?, Do S6 repeat or move on, how do Unis cope without a new intake of students, do existing students get a years grant to cover a years extra cost?

Do you permanently raise the school leaving age? No where near as simple as repeat the year.

The other option is to make VIth form and Uni a year longer at the beginning to help kids get up to speed.

But yeah, of course there are issues.

So you add an extra year to the end of school. Are you permanently raising the leaving age?
Is it right to have 13yos in primary?
Do the new intake have extra year in nursery- how do you expand capacity for that year in the preschool sector?
How do Unis cope with a year of no intake?

It's easy to say repeat but for all kids to do it causes so many issues that has to result in permanent changes.

The most logical thing is for kids to move up but to have plenty of remedial teachers available to students.

They can’t make children repeat a year. It’s not realistic.

September and everyone repeats the year is my optimistic prediction. If they tighten up the school attendance rules.

And my S6 who has his UCAS application in? Just do S6 again and leave school when he's 19 and a half?

Don't be ridiculous.

Oh and @PrincessNutNuts you may not have noticed you're on the Scotsnet board.

Your talk of "September" and "6th Form" is completely irrelevant.

I think it needs to be an available and readily considered option on a child by child basis. Not whole years, but there are kids who will basically get no education while schools are closed and won't have the parental support available to help them make it up.

Repeating a year for early primary makes no sense even if we end up losing another term or more. And our school is full to bursting so where do these extra kids go? Much more sensible is to expand the provision of catch up tuition. We have one extra teacher this year for this and over 600 kids...

Maybe for school leavers and late secondary more needs to be done. I have no experience of how effective online learning is for say an S4.

I also think before we talk about repeating years we should talk about changing the school holidays. It would be an unpopular move but far less disruptive.

For current S5 if they were intending to go to Scottish Uni there should be scope to cover off gaps during S6 because of the 4 year degree structure. U1 is designed to bring students up to speed if they didn't do Advanced Higher in the relevant structure. Most S6 don't have a full academic curriculum so have space for someone to do Advanced Higher alongside repeating elements missed in Higher. (for reference my DD1 did 3 Advanced Highers plus a crash Higher and 2nd year direct entry to Uni for a science based degree - she missed most of S6 school up to October due to illness)

For current S6 they did all of the Higher curriculum before missing out on exams. They should be able to cope with U1 with this plus whatever work they got under their belt before Christmas. I think that is a much better option than leaving them trapped in neverending catch up with threat of further disruption next winter (my DD2 is currently U1. Her Uni added a suite of exams throughout term1 to make sure everyone had covered the pre-entry assumed knowledge. There was additional tuition available for anyone with gaps).

The real problem year may be current S4. However forward thinking on how to manage S5/6 effectively would mitigate this.

Strategic thinking from Govt is needed now and very little evidence it is happening.

I have less experience with non-Uni sector but I think my comments could be applied more broadly especially by beefing up the college sector?

They could change the school starting age to delay some of the cohort starting p1. Eg giving September- February birthday dcs a funded year of 30 hour nursery. (Recruit/train new early years staff, which shouldn’t be hard given the employment situation). That should free up class space for some dcs to repeat a year. Not everyone will need to- a flexible approach could be taken eg giving priority to vulnerable dcs.
17/18 year olds who were due to leave school could be given more access to college to do highers/advanced highers there.

They should just get kids back to school ASAP and try and mitigate any damage. There’s more evidence that kids should be in school, and very little evidence that shutting schools will have any impact on hospitalisations. I get it if they want to assess the risk of the new strain, make sure that there wasn’t going to be huge transmission after Christmas, fine. But if this goes on until Easter then they are really just throwing away children’s education/ future social skills for no reason other than media hysteria.

@iquitelikenormalityafterall

They should just get kids back to school ASAP and try and mitigate any damage. There’s more evidence that kids should be in school, and very little evidence that shutting schools will have any impact on hospitalisations. I get it if they want to assess the risk of the new strain, make sure that there wasn’t going to be huge transmission after Christmas, fine. But if this goes on until Easter then they are really just throwing away children’s education/ future social skills for no reason other than media hysteria.

Yes to this

The new P1s are getting registered in the next couple of weeks.

Where do you house that extra 6 months worth of kids? Does the preschool / nursery / childminder sector have capacity to cope with an extra 6 months of kids and a lockdown baby boom ?

Deferring a September birthday means they'll be almost 6 starting P1 in 2022.

In that 2022 intake do you permanently the complete cut-off to September or do you keep the February date. Huge difference between a 4.5 February child and almost 6 September child.

I have a child who's one of the oldest in his year and some times the teaching material seems far too young for him although its academically the right level.

Actually the P1/2 have plenty of time to make up for their lost learning. The issues are more higher up the schools. I'd be focusing my effort at getting extra support for the P6/7 and the secondary kids.

It could be that a small percentage of kids repeat the year but that risks them hitting school leaving age prior to them sitting any exams.

The main problem seems to be that none of us - parents, teachers, universities and colleges have any confidence that the government has the strategic ability to help our children or young people.

They don’t seem to give a shit to be frank.

It will be left to individual teachers and schools to try and support kids within current resources.

My children were significantly behind going into their New Years this summer. They will be further behind again.

We only just got speech therapy restarted for one of my children, this has stopped again. They were getting daily speech therapy.

I utterly despair for or children.

I’m anxious and worried about how I’m going to cope with getting them through this. What detrimental impact I am going to have on their learning as I can’t focus on them.

And to answer the question, schools will be closed until at least Easter/Spring holidays. Perhaps then they’ll look at reopening on a local authority/health board basis.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the failure to get the Glasgow/central belt outbreaks under control has fucked the country.

Agree I understand the reason for school closures at the moment but they absolutely must not go on as long as in the summer. The evidence they actually save lives is minimal and the evidence of harm is huge. We should be doing blended learning as a minimum after Feb break and nurseries should be back. Vulnerable teachers should be allowed to shield and prioritised for vaccination.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the failure to get the Glasgow/central belt outbreaks under control has fucked the country.

Actually half the issue now is Glasgow had such limited relief from restrictions in summer, lockdown restrictions should have been lifted far quicker in May instead of the unicorn zero covid nonsense, nobody been allowed visitors in houses since September, people have run out of steam, MH is so low, nobody believes a word they say anymore, 3 week circuit breaker, teirs 4, more and more tighter restrictions.

People are at the end of their rope!
And I hope SG will be held accountable for the increase in suicides when the numbers are eventually published. It will end up like the drug deaths far worse than every other country in Europe.

Yes, your right @Lockdownbear it doesn’t bare thinking about.

I doubt anyone in government is looking at bringing back bursaries etc. to try and increase the number of people training to do mental health jobs. Whereas everyone in Mumsnet could tell you it’s a ticking time bomb that needs more staff.

What a disaster we’re walking into, on so many levels.

I can’t even scatter my mums ashes as they are in a different authority and Teir to me!