Closing schools impact

[ooopsupsideyourhead]

An interesting article from the BBC. On the one hand as a teacher, I can see the effect this is having on our young people, I know they are stressed and confused BUT at the same time, isn’t preventing 2-4% of deaths justified?! This article feels like it implies not!

That and the fact that it makes only one line of reference about the danger to school staff!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52180783

You cannot social distance in my classroom! A portacabin with 32 pupils in it?! If everyone was 2m apart I’d only be able to teach about 4 of them at once!

In Hong Kong, for example, even restuarants are open, but schools are still closed from Jan. They have just re-closed pubs and bars. Everyone is already back at work for a while now.

How is everyone back at work if schools are closed? Because of the high numbers of cheap household labour?

People are always quick to say it wont work in eyfs, but they dont seem to understand how truly disgusting teenagers can be.

Issues we had last term:
Spitting on the floor.
Spitting on EACH OTHER.
Spitting on younger students as they walked past.
Pipes from the sink pulled out and toilet area flooded. Repeatedly.
Wee on the floor and walls in the toilets.
Every soap, solid bar and liquid, destroyed. Put down the toilet or ground into the floor.
Only cold water.
Coughing in each other’s faces.

The behaviour of these students intentionally puts others at risk. Christ knows what theyll be up to at home now.

@CalleighDoodle

That's dreadful and sounds as if your school has real problems with poor discipline. That is not normal teenage behaviour.

This news has really knocked me for six. I agree with what PPs have said about the impossibility of social distancing- at all age groups, unless school is literally turned into some completely different child care facility with tiny groups and complex time tabling... and no actual teaching. And lots of families I know wouldn’t understand why they need to stay at home if they can take children to school.
So many staff would not be able to come in because of vulnerable family members or self isolation, it would be chaotic.
Really pissed off with UCL- and it’s my alma mater!

This sounds to me like a number crunching exercise performed by an academic who has not set foot in a school since he / she was 18!
It does not reflect the address the issues of working in a school during a pandemic. The ones that come to mind are

• how do teachers and pupils travel to and from school whilst maintaining social distancing (Londoner here, so everyone goes by tube/bus)?
• what learning can realistically be achieved when there is no continuity in staff and pupil presence?
• do people now recognise that a teacher’s role, and load, is so much more than imparting curriculum knowledge? I am keen to get back in ASAP, ideally after half term, with split classes/ groups etc, but even with the best plans in place I only see this as a re-socialisation process, very little learning will happen, as so much fort will go in to staying on top of constantly changing parameters.

And I don't see how it can happen if we're still meant to socially distance. Kids meeting up to walk to school. Hanging out on the way home. Staff doing lots more cover to cover absent colleagues. Kids feeling like there's no real point in being there cos their mates are off or in x school down the road, only yr y are in. It was horrendous before we finally finished and in don't want to go back into that. Ffs, they were away from school for 2 weeks!

And yes, if it happens, I don't want an 'oh, you're all back in on Monday announcement.' Mainly cos my cm is shielding, so I have to find someone to get the dc to school.

I think using Scandinavia and Singapore as evidence bases is also deeply flawed : inn Singapore kids sit at single desks. In Scandinavia and Singapore, schools have standardised curriculums with national textbooks so the whole idea of remote learning - or even partial remote learning - hasn't caused the same difficulties. Thus, a staggered return is also easier because those students unable to attend would access the same work as those at school.

Various eras of education secretaries and Ofsted have put paid to the textbook.

cyber, lots of the crap about teaching comes out of UCL, too , sorry to say!!

lucy : yes it is. Well not normal but not isolated.

This report is bizarre.

When schools open, you are effectively ending social distancing. Schools bring together hundreds if not thousands of households-on the bus, on the train, walking along the pavement, in the classroom, in the canteen. Hundreds of parents in playgrounds taking their child in, thousands of cards clogging up the roads. Once that happens, people are ‘back to work’-trains are at capacity, people will see things are back to normal-social distancing is over. There won’t be any of the posts asking, ‘is it ok if I go to the park/walk my dog/speak to my neighbour?’ posts because you will already be mixing with everyone twice a day on the school run.

Apart from the return to normality (and the government need to be pretty sure they are not just sending everyone out to their deaths), they will need to tell all those school staff who are pregnant, with heath conditions, that although they’d said they must stay inside, now it’s FINE for them to go to work and mix very closely with large numbers of adults, children and teens. If the government don’t do that, and say they must continue to stay at home, the schools will be unable to safely staff them-we have so many people in that group, we were on the verge of shutting before the announcement was made.

The government would need to be pretty convinced this is a good move. The PM being in ICU isn’t a great starting point tbh.

This article really annoyed me. I'm sure teaching staff can remember that time a few weeks ago - on the Monday night Boris said high risk groups should isolate. Between the Tuesday and Friday staff then stayed at home if they were pregnant, asthmatic, immune issues, etc. So then for those four days the school was open with HALF the amount of children (because half had decided to self isolate). We could not manage to staff our schools even with half of the pupils in. Some local braver high schools closed before the week was over. The school I worked at stayed open for those 4 days - just - with less staff in different places than normal just to make things legal. It was a logistical nightmare. There are 70 staff in my school and yes, you DO have to consider the adults in the school because strangely there are not there in the background, they are leading and holding together the safety of the children together. You can't open a school and say it is not safe for vulnerable people to work at the same time. It won't work. Or ... the vulnerable people will come back to work reluctantly and will get very ill.

@PotteringAlong yes, almost everyone has a nanny.

CatRescue
I work in a school and I have a condition which is on the vulnerable list. No way would I be prepared to go back to work. Maybe in a month or so when we have reached a peak.

But i do not feel confident that going into a large crowded secondary school as it stands is good for my Heath

Don't forget the government has shrunk its vulnerable list since then. My DH's no bedside manner heart consultant said that if schools reopened he'd be expected to work because he is 'highly vulnerable' but not 'extremely vulnerable'.

It seems people are operating on different definitions.

What this brings home is that people have articles to write and they’ll write any old shit if it fills some space.

Remember the clamour to get schools closed? Why aren’t they closed when everyone else has them closed? Woe! Woe!

Will those same people be clamouring to get them back open? I’m not convinced. And there were people already keeping their kids at home before they closed, will they be happy to send them back? It would be a complete mess as to who actually turned up. Including teachers.

And the idea that we could open schools and implement social distancing is just ludicrous.

What we also need to be mindful of is the task facing teachers when we do go back. It won’t be the same kids that we shut the doors on. Some will be bereaved. Some will have seen that increase in domestic violence we’ve heard about. Some will have mental health issues from isolation. Some will have extreme health anxiety.

And if we go back as early as this is suggesting, people will still be spreading it, we’ll have to worry about every cough. That last week before we closed was just awful.

@Piggy hoho, yes- but this isn’t the IOE! (And actually did my BA at UCL which felt like UCL proper and I had more faith in, rather than the IOE which I much later went to..)

This article really annoyed me. I'm sure teaching staff can remember that time a few weeks ago - on the Monday night Boris said high risk groups should isolate. Between the Tuesday and Friday staff then stayed at home if they were pregnant, asthmatic, immune issues, etc. So then for those four days the school was open with HALF the amount of children (because half had decided to self isolate). We could not manage to staff our schools even with half of the pupils in. Some local braver high schools closed before the week was over. The school I worked at stayed open for those 4 days-with less staff in different places than normal just to make things legal. It was a logistical nightmare

It was exactly the same in my school-we were covering classes on a day by day basis-it was incredibly stressful. The head, deputy and senco were all teaching (so nothing else was getting done), half the classes were being ‘taught’ by teaching assistants-there were no supply teachers to be found at any agency-it was carnage.

Until those vulnerable people are told they are not at risk any more, schools can’t safely open.

You also can’t have teachers in school teaching classes and simultaneously setting virtual work. If everyone was working off textbooks like the good old days, this would have been possible-but the work we set has to be something they can access from home, it won’t be what we would teach a normal class.

I wonder how seriously the government will take this.

I thought I could do school stress. Co u unless ofsteds/change etc, but those 2 weeks before we finished (1/2 dept off in the end and 'sort out who's covering your own frog's) were ridiculous. A few of us thought we might have cv cos we couldn't breathe, but funnily enough, wfh sorted that out. The thought of walking into that...

Gin, the same here. I'm also vulnerable due a condition / the medication I'm on. When I read about research like this I really worry that it will affect policy. I wouldn't dare to go back to work at school yet. I know what it's like when you can't breathe. There will be many of us the same but I worry about guilt. I can imagine vulnerable staff including myself eventually going into school reluctantly. Additionally, the article doesn't take adult to adult interactions at school. Everyday in work I talk to parents. They come up close to me to tell me confidential information. I speak with other staff about all sorts, several times a day. This article is written with one image in mind - single tables facing the front of a class. The article doesn't show the high school corridors, the changing of early years children's wet pants, helping children who can't blow their nose, the cleaner who doesn't want to clean properly in case she catches something - so the teacher does it, the parent who doesn't social distance when speaking to a teacher, the ill snotty child who needs a cuddle, the so called friend who thinks it's funny to sneeze on somebody on purpose.

Basically 2-4% of teachers dead is fine.

Basically 2-4% of teachers dead is fine.

Why thank you, @Dacincitoad and are you going to choose which ones?

I feel my sarcasm wasn’t maybe evident there @MyOtherProfile

The line from the government or whoever that stupid report was from said it ONLY made a difference of 2-4% deaths. As if that made it ok.

That last week before we closed was just awful.

Absolutely.
So many staff off sick
50 kids in a classroom with 1 teacher - became quite standard.
95 kids in the canteen with one teacher - kid asking for pen then refusing to take it because he didn't want to catch corona.
60 Y7s watching Mama Mia DVD because no drama staff.
Tears, hugging, kissing throughout Y11 year cut short.
And yes the spitting and coughing on each other - OK a very few kids but none sent home!

It honestly fills me with dread going back to what we left - teaching? Minimal in the last week. Baby sitting & crowd control.