Back to school
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2020 2:46 pm
Conveniently it would now appear that children don't transmit covid.
I think unfortunately Israel is probably the most comparable case study. Although they at least started off with masks until a heat wave struck. I do also think they closed schools and then reopened them.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 3:15 pmI'm a bit out-of-touch with the evidence base on schools.
Has anywhere with community transmission roughly comparable to the UK kept schools open without disastrous outbreaks? I'm aware that the US has been having problems, and that most countries included schools in their lockdown.
I can't think of any reason, in terms of virus transmission, why schools should be different to other indoor activities like cinemas, restaurants or gyms (especially as students eat and exercise at school), and older kids at least can get it and pass it on to their families.
Yep. And of course, transmission via schools does not just include pupil to pupil transmission. Parents meeting each other at the school gate, etc, also a factor. As far as I can tell, evidence from Israel - which had initially done a good job of getting it under control before schools and other re-opening blew it up again - and the states is that schools are pretty damn dangerous. And from a perspective of trying to limit spread by breaking society up into little groups with limited opportunities to spread it between them, schools are a nightmare, as they link social groups that would otherwise have no link.mediocrity511 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 6:38 pmI think unfortunately Israel is probably the most comparable case study. Although they at least started off with masks until a heat wave struck. I do also think they closed schools and then reopened them.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 3:15 pmI'm a bit out-of-touch with the evidence base on schools.
Has anywhere with community transmission roughly comparable to the UK kept schools open without disastrous outbreaks? I'm aware that the US has been having problems, and that most countries included schools in their lockdown.
I can't think of any reason, in terms of virus transmission, why schools should be different to other indoor activities like cinemas, restaurants or gyms (especially as students eat and exercise at school), and older kids at least can get it and pass it on to their families.
That's a month and a half out of date. An eternity in the pandemic era.JQH wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 3:58 pmConveniently it would now appear that children don't transmit covid.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 100934.htm
Yes, I suspect education is the most costly thing out there, more costly than indoor nightlife.EACLucifer wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2020 1:06 pmYep. And of course, transmission via schools does not just include pupil to pupil transmission. Parents meeting each other at the school gate, etc, also a factor. As far as I can tell, evidence from Israel - which had initially done a good job of getting it under control before schools and other re-opening blew it up again - and the states is that schools are pretty damn dangerous. And from a perspective of trying to limit spread by breaking society up into little groups with limited opportunities to spread it between them, schools are a nightmare, as they link social groups that would otherwise have no link.mediocrity511 wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 6:38 pmI think unfortunately Israel is probably the most comparable case study. Although they at least started off with masks until a heat wave struck. I do also think they closed schools and then reopened them.Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2020 3:15 pmI'm a bit out-of-touch with the evidence base on schools.
Has anywhere with community transmission roughly comparable to the UK kept schools open without disastrous outbreaks? I'm aware that the US has been having problems, and that most countries included schools in their lockdown.
I can't think of any reason, in terms of virus transmission, why schools should be different to other indoor activities like cinemas, restaurants or gyms (especially as students eat and exercise at school), and older kids at least can get it and pass it on to their families.
Unfortunately, the government is very prone to saying stuff doesn't happen because they haven't seen it, having spent no effort whatsoever looking for it, and ignoring those countries that have both looked for and seen it.
Siblings are the issue. You have multiple primary schools each feeding several secondary schools, and secondary schools frrding colleges in different towns. For example my kids' old secondary school feeds schools in both Sheffield and Greater Manchester.AMS wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2020 4:44 pmWe got the first info on how our kids' school is planning it. (It's a separate infants/juniors, so years 3-6 only.) It's all very complicated with staggered start and end times, with the aim to keep class bubbles. But I have massive doubts about whether this can work, because all these bubbles are linked by siblings in different classes within the school and in the separate infants school and the local secondary.
I do actually trust the staff at the school to do as much as they can, but fundamentally, schools mix people from different households for prolonged periods indoors. I heard someone on the radio earlier say that part of the reason flu is seasonal may be the lack of school-based transmission over the summer.
I can just see that by half way through week 3 they'll be forced to focus on monochromatic art.
How big are their classrooms for them to even attempt 2m distancing?! Most classrooms can't even allow for 1m between kids.bagpuss wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 9:45 amWe've had no communication yet from the bagkitten's school since mid-July.
So far, all I know is that they plan to:
Stagger start/finish times but only by 10 minutes and with 2 groups of half the school each - which is frankly pointless as it's impossible to plan your arrival down to the minute, especially when getting small kids out of the door is involved. And even if you could, it takes at least 3 or 4 minutes to get in and out of the bottleneck that is the school site (one way in and out, 3 schools, 2 pre-schools, one nursery, all on the same site with a single entrance from the road) so you're going to get people going out at the same time as others are going in and it's all going to be one big crowded mess anyway. Even without that, half the school is 6 classes, so 180 kids. And of course plenty of parents will have kids in both halves of the school so will have to hang around for both drop offs anyway. And some will have kids in both infant and junior schools so they'll have to span those staggered starts too...
Re-arrange classrooms so that the kids are all facing the front, rather than being at grouped tables.
Eat lunch in their classrooms so no hot meals. Packed lunches provided for free school meal kids, the rest of us have to send them in.
Kids will each be given their own allocated equipment (pens, pencils, etc) which will not be shared.
Plus year group "bubbles" (so, yeah, ~90 kids, that's not what I call a bubble, especially as between them they'll have siblings in every other "bubble" plus every other local school plus parents working in most of the local high risk locations - hospitals, health centres, etc); 2m distancing (good luck enforcing that - I gave up trying to enforce it with the bagkitten playing with the next door neighbour - each reminder is good for about 30 seconds); extra cleaning; yada yada yada.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see that there's much else they can do with zero help from the government and no money to spend on spreading out across other venues (if enough venues could even be found - there's not a lot of choices where I live). And the kids need to go back to school. But it really doesn't feel like there's been any proper planning or advice or research from government to make this happen as safely as possible. They really just seem to be relying on the "kids won't spread it much" theory with a side helping of lots of crossed fingers. I'm suddenly very much feeling my age and my status as a no-longer-protected-by-oestrogen overweight 50 year old woman. Hopefully my longer runs of late will have improved my fitness enough to help a bit. And Mr Bagpuss, though not overweight, is a not-very-fit 50 year old man. So we could be a bit stuffed.
Not sure about the Y5 classrooms but they'd certainly have struggled in either of the classrooms the bagkitten has been in in the last 2 years. Just re-read it all again and they're talking about working together in pairs rather than in groups so I'm assuming that when they talk about 2m distancing they don't mean in the actual classrooms but when walking around the school, etc.mediocrity511 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:32 pmHow big are their classrooms for them to even attempt 2m distancing?! Most classrooms can't even allow for 1m between kids.bagpuss wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 9:45 amWe've had no communication yet from the bagkitten's school since mid-July.
So far, all I know is that they plan to:
Stagger start/finish times but only by 10 minutes and with 2 groups of half the school each - which is frankly pointless as it's impossible to plan your arrival down to the minute, especially when getting small kids out of the door is involved. And even if you could, it takes at least 3 or 4 minutes to get in and out of the bottleneck that is the school site (one way in and out, 3 schools, 2 pre-schools, one nursery, all on the same site with a single entrance from the road) so you're going to get people going out at the same time as others are going in and it's all going to be one big crowded mess anyway. Even without that, half the school is 6 classes, so 180 kids. And of course plenty of parents will have kids in both halves of the school so will have to hang around for both drop offs anyway. And some will have kids in both infant and junior schools so they'll have to span those staggered starts too...
Re-arrange classrooms so that the kids are all facing the front, rather than being at grouped tables.
Eat lunch in their classrooms so no hot meals. Packed lunches provided for free school meal kids, the rest of us have to send them in.
Kids will each be given their own allocated equipment (pens, pencils, etc) which will not be shared.
Plus year group "bubbles" (so, yeah, ~90 kids, that's not what I call a bubble, especially as between them they'll have siblings in every other "bubble" plus every other local school plus parents working in most of the local high risk locations - hospitals, health centres, etc); 2m distancing (good luck enforcing that - I gave up trying to enforce it with the bagkitten playing with the next door neighbour - each reminder is good for about 30 seconds); extra cleaning; yada yada yada.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see that there's much else they can do with zero help from the government and no money to spend on spreading out across other venues (if enough venues could even be found - there's not a lot of choices where I live). And the kids need to go back to school. But it really doesn't feel like there's been any proper planning or advice or research from government to make this happen as safely as possible. They really just seem to be relying on the "kids won't spread it much" theory with a side helping of lots of crossed fingers. I'm suddenly very much feeling my age and my status as a no-longer-protected-by-oestrogen overweight 50 year old woman. Hopefully my longer runs of late will have improved my fitness enough to help a bit. And Mr Bagpuss, though not overweight, is a not-very-fit 50 year old man. So we could be a bit stuffed.
Ours is similar, but no distancing, basically just attempting to get the kids not to touch each other. And she needs a fresh set of uniform every day.
Very lax uniform policy though, so nothing needs to be logoed and basically anything goes if it's in school colours. But yeah, we've bought extra as miniocrity has a medical condition that frequently results in her needing to change at some point during the day. So realistically I'm going to be washing 1.5 sets of uniform a day, as opposed to the current 1 set.bagpuss wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:59 pmNot sure about the Y5 classrooms but they'd certainly have struggled in either of the classrooms the bagkitten has been in in the last 2 years. Just re-read it all again and they're talking about working together in pairs rather than in groups so I'm assuming that when they talk about 2m distancing they don't mean in the actual classrooms but when walking around the school, etc.mediocrity511 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:32 pmHow big are their classrooms for them to even attempt 2m distancing?! Most classrooms can't even allow for 1m between kids.bagpuss wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 9:45 amWe've had no communication yet from the bagkitten's school since mid-July.
So far, all I know is that they plan to:
Stagger start/finish times but only by 10 minutes and with 2 groups of half the school each - which is frankly pointless as it's impossible to plan your arrival down to the minute, especially when getting small kids out of the door is involved. And even if you could, it takes at least 3 or 4 minutes to get in and out of the bottleneck that is the school site (one way in and out, 3 schools, 2 pre-schools, one nursery, all on the same site with a single entrance from the road) so you're going to get people going out at the same time as others are going in and it's all going to be one big crowded mess anyway. Even without that, half the school is 6 classes, so 180 kids. And of course plenty of parents will have kids in both halves of the school so will have to hang around for both drop offs anyway. And some will have kids in both infant and junior schools so they'll have to span those staggered starts too...
Re-arrange classrooms so that the kids are all facing the front, rather than being at grouped tables.
Eat lunch in their classrooms so no hot meals. Packed lunches provided for free school meal kids, the rest of us have to send them in.
Kids will each be given their own allocated equipment (pens, pencils, etc) which will not be shared.
Plus year group "bubbles" (so, yeah, ~90 kids, that's not what I call a bubble, especially as between them they'll have siblings in every other "bubble" plus every other local school plus parents working in most of the local high risk locations - hospitals, health centres, etc); 2m distancing (good luck enforcing that - I gave up trying to enforce it with the bagkitten playing with the next door neighbour - each reminder is good for about 30 seconds); extra cleaning; yada yada yada.
Don't get me wrong, I don't see that there's much else they can do with zero help from the government and no money to spend on spreading out across other venues (if enough venues could even be found - there's not a lot of choices where I live). And the kids need to go back to school. But it really doesn't feel like there's been any proper planning or advice or research from government to make this happen as safely as possible. They really just seem to be relying on the "kids won't spread it much" theory with a side helping of lots of crossed fingers. I'm suddenly very much feeling my age and my status as a no-longer-protected-by-oestrogen overweight 50 year old woman. Hopefully my longer runs of late will have improved my fitness enough to help a bit. And Mr Bagpuss, though not overweight, is a not-very-fit 50 year old man. So we could be a bit stuffed.
Ours is similar, but no distancing, basically just attempting to get the kids not to touch each other. And she needs a fresh set of uniform every day.
Edit: I'm hoping that the bagkitten is paired with her best friend because she's also an only child and we know their family and know they've been really careful all the way through.
Edit again: Fresh set of uniform every day is going to be hard for some families, I would think? Either have to spend a lot more or be constantly washing. We've always done that anyway, except cardigans, as the bagkitten is a very messy eater so it's easiest just to assume that she'll need clean uniform every day and buy enough for that, with a big wash every week.
That sounds far from idealmediocrity511 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 1:33 pmWe don't even know miniocrity's teacher yet. All we know is that they're dividing the 2 forms where one is the kids who went back before the summer and one is the kids who didn't. Unfortunately this means she won't be with the majority of her friends and her class has disproportionately more of the challenging children.
Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. I know they had massive problems with families going totally off the radar and not submitting any work, so I imagine they feel that this way will allow those kids who need to catch up the opportunity to do that. However, it just doesn't apply to Miniocrity and if anything lockdown allowed us to set her more challenging work and extension tasks on what her teacher gave. For example, she wasn't engaging with the maths work set because it was too easy, so we just did the stuff set for the year above.bagpuss wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 1:43 pmThat sounds far from idealmediocrity511 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2020 1:33 pmWe don't even know miniocrity's teacher yet. All we know is that they're dividing the 2 forms where one is the kids who went back before the summer and one is the kids who didn't. Unfortunately this means she won't be with the majority of her friends and her class has disproportionately more of the challenging children.
And rubbish that you don't know who her teacher is yet. The fact that the bagkitten has got lucky again and has bagged the best teacher in the year for the 3rd year in a row, is really helping us with her anxieties about going back to school. She's still in mourning, really, for the missed term with her Y4 teacher - who was truly an excellent teacher in person but nothing special via remote learning.