AIBU No going back to school I’m furious.

There are practical problems. The Government guidelines say no more than 15 in a class and most classes have 30 children so that means there aren't enough teachers or classrooms. My grandchildrens school is very small and they just don't have the spacebircthw staff for any more children apart from key workers children. . Also they have to adapt the classrooms, stagger pick up and drop off, playtime and meal times etc so groups of children don't mix. It's very complex.
Also the issue is not the risk to the child but the risk to staff who will be in close contact with the children and also the risk to the children's families. Children tend not to become ill with Covid but they can get it and spread it without anyone realising it.

Grandad I wonder if you have ever worked in the higher (or even lower) echelons of education?

Dealing with children is not really the same as dealing with HGV drivers. I do know both species and they are quite different.
Although, of course, HGV drivers were children at some point.

trisher, in regard to your post at @22:14 today, I am thinking in terms of an approach to the HSE should come from the main union representing teachers etc. I am not well informed on the National Education Union (NEU) as I believe they are not members of the TUC. I am also unaware of the percentage of teachers that are members of that union.

However, they seem to have shown very little in the way of presence and voice action in the present school's situation.

However, if the NEU are representative of any substantial number in the teaching profession then, without doubt, any approach to the HSE should come through that body.

Grandad1943

growstuff

Have you been drinking Grandad?

growstuff, we are all very much aware that you have at some time claimed to have undertaken every conceivable position there has ever been on offer within the education establishment.

However, I think it is distinctly possible that you have never been employed in the higher echelons of the Health & Safety Executive and therefore you are in all probability totally unaware of their process and means of working.

Good one Grandad43 ?

As you clearly are, Grandad, about the education sector.

Ellianne I think that Mollygo is saying that using church halls etc would not have been a good idea as that could have elicited even more complaints against teachers because parents and children would not have been happy with those arrangements. It's not really feasible. How could one class teacher be in two locations?
Schools did get together to organise 'hub' schools for key workers' children. Some smaller schools were closed.

A good post, Mollygo and describes some of the problems I have been hearing about from school staff.

growstuff

Have you been drinking Grandad?

growstuff, we are all very much aware that you have at some time claimed to have undertaken every conceivable position there has ever been on offer within the education establishment.

However, I think it is distinctly possible that you have never been employed in the higher echelons of the Health & Safety Executive and therefore you are in all probability totally unaware of their process and means of working.

Grandad1943 a cordinated approach from the education sector are you perhaps talking abut the Education secretary and the Department of Education? You know the people who are actually responsible for overseeing schools and teachers. The people who are forever reorganising and setting goals and standards for teachers but who seem to have gone very quiet over this and have left unions and teachers to try and work out solutions. Now they are the Education Establishment you keep talking about. The staff in schools are just the workforce.

I'm with you Mollygo and the idea that different settings/buildings should have been used for different groups of children. Why were not all keyworkers' children sent to one local school instead of being dotted in groups all over? Also seeing as Years 11 and 13 no longer require classrooms and teachers, surely that frees up some physical space and staff for several other year groups to attend.

Have you been drinking Grandad?

Ellianne, in regard to your post @21:17 today, the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) is a powerful government agency and in that will use contracted commercial companies in many fields of investigation, audit and other workplace safety analysis. Therefore they never have staff on hand for any specific undertaking. My own company carries out work for the HSE at times on the above basis.

I believe that should a coordinated approach be made from the education sector for HSE involvement, commercial safety bodies would be contracted to investigate the various aspects of the case put forward, overseen by the HSE senior administrators.

Those executives would then (if they believed the sector was being prevented from full capacity operation by present structures) bring forward recommendations for emergency changes in education regulations or even a recommended directive to the government.

The above was the process that was used to temporarily suspended the very complex LGV drivers hours regulations to the benefit of all of us at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown.

My DGD is at the upper end of school, Year 12, and working towards A-levels next year. She has gone back to school this week, straight into mock exams! They had been expected to do the work throughout lockdown. She seemed reasonably confident, though her dad (DS1) thought she hadn't been working hard enough. She is now going to be in class four days a week. I hope that her cousin, my DGD2, who is in year 10 will be equally well catered for, but his dad, DS2, isn't optimistic. Provision across different schools has been very patchy.

“Very long and unsocial hours, weekend working combined with very high levels of occupational stress.....“ good description of teaching:grandad

From the beginning of lockdown the teachers at the school where I am a governor, have been providing online activities, programs and suggestions for other learning activities and contacting children and parents to ask how things are going. Since June 2nd, the school has made secure provision for sufficient bubbles for Y6, Y1 and reception with 15 children in each, whilst still having to provide bubbles for Key Worker children in other year groups. The children have a fixed seat in a set classroom, where they must sit every day.
Despite that, many parents in those year groups AND in the KW groups choose not to send their children in, or not to send them in every day. This means that on some days, bubbles may have 15 children and other days as few as 4. Since the bubbles are not allowed to combine this is a waste of staff and resources.
Some of those parents, adamant that they were NOT sending their children back, then change their minds. There is provision of a place for them, but those children who arrive later are often upset to find that their appointed seat is not where they want to sit.
If church halls, sports halls and other appropriate buildings had been made available for child care for KW children from the start, there would have been more room in school for groups to come back, but children and parents are unlikely to have been happy with that provision and another raft of complaints about teachers would have been forthcoming.
The only satisfactory solution is when all children can come back to school so that parents can go back to their job (if it still exists).
The teachers that I know are not unwilling, despite the risk posed to their health, but it won’t happen until the WHO and the the government decide that’s what will happen.

"they have to be INVITED to engage in a sector or industry when there is not an immediate danger to health or safety."

Grandad1943 does this imply then that there are many different agencies pretty much just sitting around waiting for the schools sector to approach them for help?
Why won't the powers that be allow schools to be proactive in their quest to open at full capacity?

trisher, if you read "thoroughly" what I started in regard to the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) in this thread you would have seen that I stated they have to be invited to engage in a sector or industry when there is not an immediate danger to health or safety.

Therefore, what has to happen in a situation such as that of the Schools sector would be to approach them with a case why the present structure and regulations in regard to education are preventing schools from safely operating at full capacity in this crisis.

Then the HSE may well become involved.

In regard to organisations with high turnover rates in employees, then the Road Haulage Industry always has had a high turnover of employees, especially with LGV drivers.

Very long and unsocial hours, weekend working combined with very high levels of occupational stress has always made it so.

Grandad1943 one of your suggestions was that the Health & Safety Exec should get involved so I looked them up. What do they say about schools? They refer you to the government advice-so no help there then.
Can I ask if you have ever worked with a company or organisation where the numbers of employees leaving during the first 5 years was almost 50%? And would you draw any conclusions from such a high exit rate?

Open all the other holidays that should say.

I assume ours will be open in summer it has been open a

God it was tediously unfunny 40 years ago.

Did you read my post of suggestions? Not a rhetorical question, because the answer is clearly NO.

My old UK school has been open since the first day of lockdown and all the way through the holidays. I don't know what's happening in the summer for keyworker parents. Not sure if it'll be open then.

And all we now witness by the usual education establishment forum members is an attempt at diversion and no effort whatsoever to address the very serious problems of their sector and this nation at this point in time.

So, as Corporal Jones of Dads Army would always say "they don't like it up em.......they don't like it up em" ??

It could be done if the will was there. I seem to hear lots of reasons why not to get schools back up and running but no actual suggestions except that of my nieghbour previously mentioned. It covered a lot of the bases. The organisation and admun might take time but in today's digital world is completely doable.

I must say I would be much happier my child going to school in New Zealand strangely enough.

They could always try the tried and tested 'Trace, quarantine, test' as is being done in countries who are managing it well.