UK Covid death toll

[Derek Hardballs]

There have been some on here who insisted that schools should have been shut down earlier and should have remained closed for a lot longer than they were last year, (Because they are ‘incubators’ { which is true , to an extent}) well, having just spent the last two weeks back in school I can tell you from first-hand experience and from the testimonies of every single one of my old colleagues I speak to, that the standard of behaviour and concentration of all years and sets of pupils, since their return to the classroom, has been horrendous. (Not to mention the fact that the engagement rate on web lessons was abysmal)
 
Before the lockdowns there would be two or three site-wide emails to say little Kyle hadn’t turned up for his maths lesson or had anyone got little Chloe as she’s not arrived for English or ‘if you see Brittany and Milo who have just walked out of their lesson send them this way’. Now there are upwards of fifteen a day of these ‘safeguarding’ type emails. (Avg. 13 per day last week. School role 1400) Low level poor behaviour and disrespect is endemic with very little understanding or compliance of classroom discipline, especially amongst year 7s ( although, to be fair, many new to secondary school seem struggle with not being able to get up and wander around at will)
 
There has been a sharp increase in CP concerns reported by staff and the pastoral departments have been inundated with visits from pupils.
 
So, anyone who calls for schools to be shut down again, as a knee jerk reaction, instead of waiting for actual, quantifiable statistics, need to get a grip on real world consequences and not pander to sensationalist, theorising and scaremongering newspaper headlines.
 
Just let’s encourage everyone to continue with the sensible safeguards until we know more.

I was listening to a representative of all schools in England and forgive me that I cannot remember the actual group he represents but it can found on yesterdays LBC interview with Andrew Castle. 

Andrew Castle was putting the argument that schools are absolutely sacrosanct in regards to they should stay open no matter what. The gentleman agreed that it was very important to try and keep schools open but those wishes have to be practical and safe. He mentioned a number of schools across the country who have seen tens of dozens of staff off ill with Covid and over 100k children in October alone. They can’t find enough supply teachers to help with this, as those teachers would rather do one to one catch-up work with children as it’s safer and I imagine easier for the same if not more money. That is with the Delta variant not the more virulent Omicron variant, we simply don’t know what infection rate is going to be within schools by January with the new dominant variant and how can you run a school with twenty, thirty members for example of staff off safely? How can classes run properly with thousands of children off school? 

At present we have barely any safeguards in place at Primary and at senior school we have finally started vaccinations and bizarrely enforcing mask wearing in corridors and communal spaces but not in classrooms (virus doesn’t like lessons apparently). There haven’t been any ventilation systems put in place when we had months to do so last summer. There is very little that makes any sense health wise with regards to keeping children safe from the virus.  

I certainly don’t want my children off school, I want them to have the best education they can have but I also realise that just saying kids should be at school regardless of the spread of the virus is not necessarily practical, safe or realistic if the virus is just allowed to rip through the schools over the next few months.