Scrutable

Shut down the schools and vaccinate every adult involved. Test the students until cases go to zero. Then you can re-open, fully masked, of course.

Soooooo.....

Unmasking in schools went well...

In my kids' school, whilst Year 11 have finished, next week Years 7, 8, 9, 12 and 13 will all be home-schooled due to the number of COVID outbreaks in those years. Year 10, which includes my daughter, will have a very quiet week in school.

Also, the school has its suffering compounded as it turns out that a bunch of teachers had a party. Then one of them was COVID positive and they've all got to self-isolate..

Bit of a perfect storm for them.

Are you able to say roughly what area you are in FF?

South glos

ETA, just looked at the local council dashboard. The rates per 100,000 have gone from 9.5 on 31st May to 36.8 reported on the 8th June.

Aaaaaannnnnd there goes the remaining year group with 2 confirmed cases. So the entire school is out for at least a week. Hardly surprising considering how many siblings there are across year different years.

Wow. I've heard of schools around Bristol suffering a bit at the moment. I'm assuming similar will reach us (S Wales) before long.

10 cases in year 8 at one of the schools here. In the space of days. No school buses at that school either so those kids have been merrily using public transport with various levels of mask wearing. Especially worrying since Stagecoach have abandoned all social distancing and are allowing total strangers to sit less than 1m away from each.

Year groups and school bus routes closing all over the place here and I don't think we even have particularly high rates. It's pretty much Autumn 2 all over again.

Meanwhile the government has chosen a Friday afternoon when there's some football match or other going on to release a new contingency framework for managing covid in schools. Including the reintroduction of masks and preparing for online learning. I think they're hoping Us4Covid won't notice.

There's a good chance this might go the way of the tier system (not the lockdown tier system) from last autumn and be ditched before they use. it.

At FairyTiny's nursery some of the older pre-schoolers are doing settling in sessions at the primary school. The nursery have now said they're not allowed back in to nursery on the same day unless they've gone through decontamination - full wash, change of clothes etc. Seems like they're not to happy at the cases in Bristol/South Glos schools either!

FairySmall wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 12:23 pm

At FairyTiny's nursery some of the older pre-schoolers are doing settling in sessions at the primary school. The nursery have now said they're not allowed back in to nursery on the same day unless they've gone through decontamination - full wash, change of clothes etc. Seems like they're not to happy at the cases in Bristol/South Glos schools either!

That feels a bit like doing something for the sake of doing something. Really the risk comes 7-10 days down the line when any infection picked up would become apparent. I'm surprised settling in sessions are going on though, most around here have been cancelled or postponed until September.

mediocrity511 wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 3:19 pm

That feels a bit like doing something for the sake of doing something.

That's about on par with many local policies and processes I've seen across a number of organisations! I've lost the will to query so I tend to shrug and get on with it.

I'm surprised settling in sessions are going on though, most around here have been cancelled or postponed until September.

I didn't even know this was a thing until the email from the nursery. I can only guess that it's something they like to do before the holidays as part of getting the kids school ready. And because the local primary school is literally next door.

Most schools do it these days, but I’m surprised they are still going ahead this year. I think they’ve mostly been cancelled around here too.

I’ve heard of a couple of secondaries who are moving induction to the middle of the summer holidays. And one or two trying to attempt it while not mixing different year 6s from different schools.

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:45 pm

Year groups and school bus routes closing all over the place here and I don't think we even have particularly high rates.

That's easily fixed

shpalman wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 28, 2021 9:00 pm

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 18, 2021 9:45 pm

Year groups and school bus routes closing all over the place here and I don't think we even have particularly high rates.

That's easily fixed

Isn't it traditional to finish the pilot into testing instead of isolating before you announce the policy?

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 20, 2021 7:41 pm

Most schools do it these days, but I’m surprised they are still going ahead this year. I think they’ve mostly been cancelled around here too.

I’ve heard of a couple of secondaries who are moving induction to the middle of the summer holidays. And one or two trying to attempt it while not mixing different year 6s from different schools.

Induction has been cancelled altogether for my daughter.

A school in Cambs has just cancelled one of our outdoor theatre shows as they've had to send every pupil and staff member home to isolate following multiple Covid cases.

Enterprising schoolkids are reducing infection risk: https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/tik ... ls-1079693

Brightonian wrote: ↑

Fri Jul 02, 2021 11:31 am

Enterprising schoolkids are reducing infection risk: https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/tik ... ls-1079693

While the usual suspects claim that children must be allowed back to school to prevent them developing mental illness from the stress of staying away.

Parents are angry and confused by the government’s shifting messages over how schools deal with Covid outbreaks among pupils, according to a headteachers’ leader

I don't know why they're illustrating it with a photo of a smirking sixth-former.

This looks like it will go well

I'm sure T&T are thrilled that from Monday they'll be having to ask 4 year old Johnny who he was in close contact with. Interpreting the answers and getting a contact phone number could be slightly trickier. Only for the last week of term though. From the start of next term we're not going to isolate children at all. Or vaccinate them as far as I can see.

Apologies to anyone with CEV children or CEV adults in their household. People working in schools do know this is batshit and risky but their hands are tied by a government which appears to think that if you don't count cases they don't exist.

Anecdotal but most of the people I know who have had Covid actually have it at the moment. And several are in families with kids. Including one who is on chemotherapy

I've been hearing suggestions that vaccination will be obligatory for teachers in Italy. Well, fair enough, we* did get fast-tracked for vaccination even if it was initially because we couldn't give the AstraZeneca to older people.

* - University staff were included in this, but I don't have any news about whether it will be obligatory for us. I hope it will be.

Whether a Green Pass would be obligatory for the students, that's a different matter, but the target is still to have everyone** 12 and over vaccinated by the end of September.

** - everyone who can be, anyway. And of course there will always be those against vaccination, but I think it's a minority which makes a lot of noise so that it sounds like there's more of them than there really are.

I think a Green Pass will be obligatory for anyone who wants to come on campus after the first of September but there haven't been instructions on how this will be implemented.

Meanwhile the DfE suggests that England employ a strategy of deliberately infecting children and teachers.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... -outbreaks

The instructions are to keep the stable door open until you are sure that the horse is well into the next field.

shpalman wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 20, 2021 6:05 pm

I think a Green Pass will be obligatory for anyone who wants to come on campus after the first of September but there haven't been instructions on how this will be implemented.

Meanwhile the DfE suggests that England employ a strategy of deliberately infecting children and teachers.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2 ... -outbreaks

The instructions are to keep the stable door open until you are sure that the horse is well into the next field.

I think it's the teachers and children that are supposed to be on the school field. Which is a rather novel approach to improving ventilation in schools. Might not be too bad in Sept and possibly October. I'd anticipate quite a few parent complaints by mid November though.

OffTheRock wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 20, 2021 9:01 pm

I think it's the teachers and children that are supposed to be on the school field.

And they won't be given chairs, to ensure the next Ofsted inspection shows that they are all out standing in their field.