Am I right in thinking that most boarding schools are only testing symptomatic pupils, not doing whole-population testing?

[Michaelah]

DS's school is testing all pupils regularly, which is causing chaos as it is finding lots of asymptomatic pupils, in turn causing cascades of boys sent home as contacts. Am curious if my understanding that this is an unusual approach is right - my impression is that most schools aren't doing this, instead just testing in line with NHS guidance.

Would love to hear how your DCs' schools are running their testing regimes.

In practice though, short of changing everyone's house so that each house only had one year group in it, I don't really see how house bubbles could work

Ours has done this. No cases so far.

95% boarding

[quote covidstuff]@Revengeofthepangolins there's a school in Hampshire that could offer a few lessons, I gather... W spent the first two weeks, at least, doing lessons on line from the houses, i.e. real house bubbles, not physically mixing with other houses at all, for, in effect, a quarantine period. That's what it takes, I'm afraid. Not sure how they're doing now, mind, but I was impressed by what I heard at the start of term. There is always, of course, a question about whether what you offer is good enough to be worth the risk of having people on site at all. That's obviously why E went the way it did, but I'm afraid it's looking to me as though it gambled and lost. Could still turn around I suppose.[/quote]
Yes W did take a very different course, but it does rely on not letting children out at all, whether for exeats or Sunday lunch etc (not sure where they came out on lunches), and I guess they will have to do it all over again after half term. So in effect the whole school will have twice had two weeks of online school, albeit from a sociable house rather than at home.
And of course, as they haven't tested, they may well have just the same degree of covid as our school - they just don't know about it.
Lord knows what the best thing to do is.

Well surely its clear, the answer is to allow boys into Tudors,but not let them sit down...covid solved..
W is a rather different school,not sure what theyve done would have gone down well at E,and of course as they arent testing ..who knows whats actually going on..mind you wouldnt be at all surprised if the next short leave and St Andrews day leave our cancelled

@Michaelah - interesting about PHE advice 🤔
From what I’d heard about W, it sounds so extreme that it must be quite hard for the boys to live with (particularly the new ones). There is surely a balance to be struck between taking C19 seriously and taking such severe measures that you may begin to endanger pupils’ mental health. At one of my DC’s schools they are ensuring that they sit next to others from their house in lessons and have adjusted streams etc to allow for this, which seems a reasonable middle way (and no blanket testing!)

Chatted to a fair few parents from E and they all are wondering about who is actually making the decisions is it the SLT or PHE and why exactly are PHE so involved?
W can act as they have because to be frank it appeals to children and parents who put academics above everything else,E have tried to keep as much sport,co curric going as they can,I would not send my boy back to school if all he was going to do was sit in his house doing zoom lessons..

Ours is most definitely not doing whole population testing. Anyone ill is quarantined in the san and gets tested. Their year group mini bubble isolates. So far a couple of false alarms but no cases.

Noone wants to know if kids have it asymptomatically!! As there have been no positive tests so far it is unlikely.

Why are PHE so involved? Positively because they are the body with the greatest relevant expertise. Negatively, I assume because, in practice, they can tell the school (any school) to close. So if the school doesn't want to close, they'd better work with PHE to agree other measures. I am not sure what the legal position is, but it doesn't matter - can you imagine the shitstorm if PHE advised E to close and it didn't?

Ours is not doing population wide testing, only symptomatic cases. 3 separate year groups currently have had Covid positive cases and are isolating at school or home (given the option). Interesting none occurred until after the first exeat where the whole school bar a few went home for a long w/e. School has done a pretty good job of ensuring no year group interacts even with some mixed age houses but they have a lot of space so could. All cases in the older pupils. School consulted with PHE on each case and was given detailed advice on what to do in terms of pupils / isolation. It's been different for each positive case interestingly.

Boarding school, with a small proportion of day girls of which my DD is one.

I'd personally prefer if they did regular testing as it's now well known many children are asymptomatic. They are silently spreading it around if not identified..

Dh works at a similar school, but more campus based. He doesn't think they are testing anyone. Boys are bubbled in year groups, within boarding houses. So in classes, they can only sit next to someone in their own House.

Saying that, the inter house singing competition is coming up - no idea how they're going to work that….