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Re-opening Schools?

kebabking said:
I'm scared they'll turn into weirdos. They might be very happy weirdos while we're doing it, but I'm not convinced it will help them much when they go out into the big wide world.

I'd prefer it if the world was different, or if they wouldn't have to go out into it eventually - but one day we won't be around to look after them.
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I know someone who was homeschooled for a good few years and she is hideously normal and level headed. It's not like you're pulling them out of society is it? You could enrol them in swimming classes or scouts or whatever in the evenings to keep them used to that sort of larger group learning structure
 
littlebabyjesus said:
So who is being protected by social distancing at schools? The kids? They don't need protecting from the virus. The teachers? Unless they have underlying conditions, in which case surely they can be given the option to stay away and the all new testing regime can play a role, neither are they at a massive risk. The rest of us? Should young kids be physically distancing in even the medium term, with all the damage that brings, in order to keep adults safe due to the failings of adults?

I genuinely don't understand this process. It seems entirely irrational to me.
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Kids can and do die from c-19, including a 13 year old in our borough. Secondary school kids are of course up to 19 years old, and so not benefiting from being children in that sense.

Teachers cannot just stay home if vulnerable. The govt says not. And at any rate, schools don’t have “spare” teachers, any more than spare classrooms.

Teachers usually have people at home, and children always do. Those people may be vulnerable, but they also might be going out to work themselves. Without distancing, there are around 800 households crossing paths in my average sized secondary every day. The potential for schools to be hubs of infection is significant.

Tracing new infection outbreaks and isolating those in 15min+ contact is going to be important. Again, in a normal secondary school where students have different lessons with different staff in different rooms several times a day, that’s potentially a huge number of people having to isolate every time there’s a new case. Hence the bubbles, capacity issues and restricted timetables.

My school has five zones and kids will stay in their own zone for learning/loos/socialising. Three zones for y10, one for key workers and one for sixth form. They’ll do one day a week. School will close on Tuesdays and Thursdays to deep clean. No canteen except limited free school meal options, eaten in their zone. Must bring all own equipment and drinking water. Y10 will be core Eng/Maths/Sci for first two weeks. All kids will be temp checked on entry and supervised as they wash hands. Can wear own PPE and must wear masks if travelling by bus.

They are playing NO games.
 
spanglechick said:
Kids can and do die from c-19, including a 13 year old in our borough. Secondary school kids are of course up to 19 years old, and so not benefiting from being children in that sense.

Teachers cannot just stay home if vulnerable. The govt says not. And at any rate, schools don’t have “spare” teachers, any more than spare classrooms.

Teachers usually have people at home, and children always do. Those people may be vulnerable, but they also might be going out to work themselves. Without distancing, there are around 800 households crossing paths in my average sized secondary every day. The potential for schools to be hubs of infection is significant.

Tracing new infection outbreaks and isolating those in 15min+ contact is going to be important. Again, in a normal secondary school where students have different lessons with different staff in different rooms several times a day, that’s potentially a huge number of people having to isolate every time there’s a new case. Hence the bubbles, capacity issues and restricted timetables.

My school has five zones and kids will stay in their own zone for learning/loos/socialising. Three zones for y10, one for key workers and one for sixth form. They’ll do one day a week. School will close on Tuesdays and Thursdays to deep clean. No canteen except limited free school meal options, eaten in their zone. Must bring all own equipment and drinking water. Y10 will be core Eng/Maths/Sci for first two weeks. All kids will be temp checked on entry and supervised as they wash hands. Can wear own PPE and must wear masks if travelling by bus.

They are playing NO games.
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Which is a great plan for a short while, but how long can this go on for? a week? a month? a year? forever?
 
MickiQ said:
Which is a great plan for a short while, but how long can this go on for? a week? a month? a year? forever?
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It’s only the plan for five weeks. After that, I don’t know. Either we, culturally, say to ourselves “social distancing in workplaces is not worth the benefit to society” or we try to what we can safely. But what teachers and parents shouldn’t be asked to accept come September is “back to normal in schools, but it’s too dangerous to open theatres and cinemas, and keep distancing in your office job.”
 
We've had an email to say that school are not intending to bring any more year groups in before summer holiday (17th July), and that while autumn term starts on the 3rd September, the head thinks it unlikely that all 7 year groups, plus EY, will go back during September.

The curriculum at Dad School is therefore likely to be camping.

Fucking A.
 
It surprises me really, that schools in Wales still seem to be planning on re-opening (for some year groups at least) on Monday 29th June.

Whereas England has kicked the school re-opening plans further down the road :confused:

The Welsh Government has generally been a lot more cautious about a fair bit of other stuff.

Any thoughts planetgeli /others??
 
William of Walworth said:
It surprises me really, that schools in Wales still seem to be planning on re-opening (for some year groups at least) on Monday 29th June.

Whereas England has kicked the school re-opening plans further down the road :confused:

The Welsh Government has generally been a lot more cautious about a fair bit of other stuff.

Any thoughts planetgeli /others??
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English schools are already open/can be open for nursery, Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 and from Monday Year 10 & 12.
The main difference in plans was that the Govt said English primary schools should open full time to those years and prioritise getting the younger children in full time over opening to all possible years, whereas the Welsh Govt are planning on part time for all.

In practice though, lots of English schools either haven't opened, have opened only to older children or have offered part time - for example my middle child's school has not allowed nursery back and has only offered R/year 1 two days a week.
 
William of Walworth said:
Thanks Thora -- I need to re-read the DoE's recent statement then, I might have misunderstood it :oops:
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The Govt. did initially say they wanted all other years back before the summer holidays and that's what they've now given up on.
It was always completely unworkable though - the guidance has classes capped at 15 instead of the normal 30-32 so would have needed twice as many classrooms and teachers which clearly Govt. won't provide.
 
William of Walworth said:
It surprises me really, that schools in Wales still seem to be planning on re-opening (for some year groups at least) on Monday 29th June.

Whereas England has kicked the school re-opening plans further down the road :confused:

The Welsh Government has generally been a lot more cautious about a fair bit of other stuff.

Any thoughts planetgeli /others??
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My view is that it is a surprise, it is a farce, and it's most likely the Welsh government playing one-up politics in a misguided attempt to appeal to popularism, thinking that they will get more people onside because there has been some clamour of "but what about the children?"

We're talking the last four weeks (and more of that 'four' in a moment) of a summer term where every pupil and teacher knows that even in mainstream this time is usually given over to end of term trips and incessant bloody videos/films. Having set aside 3 months of schooling I can guarantee that the vast majority of parents/carers and kids will see no point in returning for this period - and won't return. What would have been better would have been those in authority using this time to come up with proper plans for a structured return in September. Instead they are hoping the focus falls on some sort of normality being attempted, whereas in reality it will be a farcical failure.

I had a Teams meeting this afternoon with all staff and it was apparent from our management that there is no real structure or guidance being given to these weeks. We were directly told by our management that we may as well use this time for "experimentation" - do what we like. It will be childcare only, which for us is actually sort of part of our remit. But for mainstream? God help them. Videos for classes of six children overseen by a bored teacher.

Oh yeah, the "four" weeks. That's an extra week added on taking a week out of the summer holidays. Why? A) This wasn't negotiated or agreed with unions and B) that week will be given back in a 2 week half term in October. Much of the debate, from the impression we were given, has been about when this week's holiday is added i.e before or after the actual half term week. Vote seems to come down on before by the way. But the fact this has been a main part of the debate in the upper echelons of L.A education departments show what a farce this is. A random decision to give a week's childcare in the summer has taken precedence over actual necessary decisions about how things will attempt to run in the new normal in September.

I don't know how mainstream school transport is going to work (buses of 30 kids). Our kids all arrive in taxis (1-3 children) or mini buses (8-10). Risk assessments have already been done and deemed taxis can only carry one pupil and mini-buses two pupils. And I assure you the L.A aren't going to be paying out for extra transport.

They should have left well alone and planned properly for September. I get the impression the authorities are not happy with the Welsh government.
 
MickiQ said:
Which is a great plan for a short while, but how long can this go on for? a week? a month? a year? forever?
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Schools can reopen more widely when the number of people infected is well down and rest/trace/isolate is working properly (or until a vaccine turns up), same as reopening the rest of society. If the government put all their efforts into driving the numbers down and keeping them down instead of focusing on helping businesses make money again then I'm sure we'd be able to open everything up again sooner. It's their determination to lift lockdown before they should, because it's inconvenient, that's going to keep the infection numbers up and mean that schools have to put all these measures in place that stop them opening properly. Their mindset and approach is counterproductive.

Johnson has made getting kids back to school more of an issue than it should've been by announcing it too soon and setting an unrealistically early date. If he'd bothered to consult the DoE or teachers unions then he'd have been told his plans were unworkable. But having announced it he's felt the need to plough on, creating chaos and confusion and achieving nothing, especially not his main aim of freeing up parents to go back to work. And having fucked it all up he's going to find it hard to gain trust when it is safe to open schools again.

Anyway, next thing to look out for is his big plan for a 'massive catch up operation' for pupils which he announced yesterday, but nobody noticed because of his social bubble announcement at the same time. Details to follow next week. Will it be a big load of nothing or will it be a cause of further mayhem? I'm assuming it'll be nothing useful. Anyone got any ideas about it?
 
It was a short and sweet return to school for my daughter (year 6). Now that the rest of the school is returning she can no longer go. So she won't see the inside of a classroom until she starts secondary. Yikes.
 
Poot said:
It was a short and sweet return to school for my daughter (year 6). Now that the rest of the school is returning she can no longer go. So she won't see the inside of a classroom until she starts secondary. Yikes.
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What are her school doing - not having Year 6 in but bringing in years that aren't due back yet?
 
Spandex said:
Anyway, next thing to look out for is his big plan for a 'massive catch up operation' for pupils which he announced yesterday, but nobody noticed because of his social bubble announcement at the same time. Details to follow next week. Will it be a big load of nothing or will it be a cause of further mayhem? I'm assuming it'll be nothing useful. Anyone got any ideas about it?
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Boris will call on an army of volunteers to run summer schools. There will be a huge backlog on DBS checks and none of the volunteers will be cleared until November. Government will have forgotten that they need to employ cleaners and caretakers to run school buildings.
 
Thora said:
Boris will call on an army of volunteers to run summer schools. There will be a huge backlog on DBS checks and none of the volunteers will be cleared until November. Government will have forgotten that they need to employ cleaners and caretakers to run school buildings.
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But Serco dividends to shareholders hold up.
 
Thora said:
What are her school doing - not having Year 6 in but bringing in years that aren't due back yet?
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Yeah. It wasn't a complaint btw, the other children need a shot at socially distanced school, too. I always thought it was odd that it was only year 6 and littlies.

I have a lot to say about 'school volunteers' and feminism, everyone will be astonished to hear. But here is not the place. You can imagine that particular rant.
 
For the avoidance of doubt (sorry), the rant starts off about how nobody is asking for volunteer electricians/engineers/binmen. But I won't bore you all with the rest of it, which is mainly about how much other 'volunteer' work has been done since lockdown started. There might be a vague tangent about PPE not fitting and then back to the main event about how fucking clueless Tories once again don't understand anyfuckingthing about what actually goes on in places like hospitals, schools and care homes, never mind looking after the home schooling and feeding a family and keeping everyone clean and germ-free (which are obviously nowhere near as important as things like hedge funds and futures trading and talking shit for a living so PLEASE don't bother to pay us the going rate.)

But I won't bore you with it.
 
Poot said:
For the avoidance of doubt (sorry), the rant starts off about how nobody is asking for volunteer electricians/engineers/binmen. But I won't bore you all with the rest of it, which is mainly about how much other 'volunteer' work has been done since lockdown started. There might be a vague tangent about PPE not fitting and then back to the main event about how fucking clueless Tories once again don't understand anyfuckingthing about what actually goes on in places like hospitals, schools and care homes, never mind looking after the home schooling and feeding a family and keeping everyone clean and germ-free (which are obviously nowhere near as important as things like hedge funds and futures trading and talking shit for a living so PLEASE don't bother to pay us the going rate.)

But I won't bore you with it.
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Please do bore us with it.
 
weepiper said:
Please do bore us with it.
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I second that emotion, Poot. I'm so fucking mightily sick of people saying 'but won't somebody think of the children?' What the blistering fuck do you think we've been doing since this shitshow started?

I look forward to seeing how we ensure every member of this volunteer army has a current enhanced DBS, has some sort of subject knowledge bla bla bla.
 
kebabking said:
I'm scared they'll turn into weirdos. They might be very happy weirdos while we're doing it, but I'm not convinced it will help them much when they go out into the big wide world.

I'd prefer it if the world was different, or if they wouldn't have to go out into it eventually - but one day we won't be around to look after them.
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How old are they? Send them back for A Levels so they can learn to smoke and take drugs
 
Could kill a few birds with one stone - get furloughed hospitality/travel workers to "retrain" as teachers with a 6 week, fast track, hands on apprenticeship running the summer schools.
 
I'm due to start teacher training in September. I'm not supposed to be starting placements until January but if they do end up scraping around for anyone with a DBS check I might get sent to the coalface sooner than that I suppose...

e2a: I wonder if I'll get my £9,000 tuition fees back if I end up not getting any tuition :hmm:
 
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