Will you send your kids back to school?

[Kermit power]

Sorry, yes, it's another Covid thread!

On the lunchtime news on the BBC, they've just been talking about whether parents will be willing to send their kids back to school in September, with a suggestion that many might not.

This came as something of a surprise to me, as I can only think of a single person I know who wouldn't send them back now, given the chance, so I thought I'd see what the parents of PH think?

[Kermit power]

whoami said:

HTP99 said:

Her SiL gave her grief too, saying she won't be sending hers back at all until there is a vaccine as it's not safe.

They might never go back again then.

In fact, given the number of viruses for which we've actually been able to find vaccines or cures, it's an odds on probability that she won't!

[Kermit power]

Xaero said:

My 5 year old is already back at reception. We didn't send him back after half term, just to see how it all worked and it really clashed with my work schedule as I drive him in (My company split us into late and early shifts, school is doing 2.5days on, 2.5days off), but parents who did were very positive (not in the covid sense), so we have sent him back for the last 3 weeks, mostly as a chance to say goodbye to his teacher before next year. However, we found out he is getting the same teacher for year 1, so that wasn't a great reason to as it turns out.

We also found out that in the 2.5 days he's going to school, they are just doing the work that everyone staying at home has been set, so as long as parents are putting some effort into teaching their kids, then the stay at home and go to school kids are about equal. In reality, there are going to be some kids who did nothing at home, and some with demanding parents who push more than the schools requirements.

In my experience (only as a parent) at that age, kids gain far more from learning to interact with teachers and other kids than they do from the actual work they've been set.

[Kermit power]

Trophy Husband said:

Totally this. Everybody with kids are thinking about themselves.
Teachers are the custodians of our children's futures and thus incredibly significant to us.
Until lockdown (I hate the word!), I had lost my respect for the teaching profession. Now, I see them as heroes.
Why should they risk their lives? They signed up to be educators.
Nurses such as my wife knew what they signed up for although they could not have foreseen this. Nevertheless they continue with their duty.
I don't blame the teaching profession to be concerned and I totally respect their views about returning to work. They have family too. Whether an elderly parent or an at risk partner.
I've not seen, and forgive me if I've missed it, any post that considers these people that hold our kids futures in their hands. I've only seen posts that to be honest appear self centred and to do with "my" life.
I guarantee that we will lose some wonderful educators come the Autumn.

It's to do with everybody's lives. Not just now, but in the future as well. At the start of lockdown, the government pulled final year nursing and medicine students out of Uni to help man the wards. How would they cope if this crops up next year, and this year's penultimate year students have been out of Uni for half the year?

Move from that to looking not at individual parents complaining about how difficult their lives are if their kids can't go back to school, but looking at all of them as a collective. At the moment, vast numbers of households with kids off school will also have parents off work on furlough, so it doesn't really impact things at the moment, but paying for furlough is costing billions of pounds! There is simply no way that it can continue as it is. The country would go bust! One parent moaning that they want little Johnny to go back to school might be construed as selfish. Several million doing it because they can't otherwise go to work is going to crash the economy.

I have every sympathy for teachers with a chronic health condition, or living with someone who has one, but for the rest of them, the chances of them dying after catching Covid from a kid in their school is absolutely minuscule compared to the risk of the government not being able to pay their pension or provide them with free healthcare in retirement if they don't get everyone back working/learning soon.

[Kermit power]

sim72 said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

"A couple of emails", yeah right mate.

We've been in school every week since lockdown, including the Easter and half-term holidays. We'll be there in September. The PH culture of bashing teachers is tiresome, especially from the hard of thinking that seem to believe that schools are some sort of childcare system that exists to allow people to go to work.

But it is though. Most households have two working parents. As individual households, they rely on those two salaries to pay the bills, but equally importantly, the Exchequer relies on all those two salary households to pay the country's bills.

Of course your performance shouldn't be in any way measured on parents' ability to go to work, and yes, your own personal goal as a teacher should be to give the kids the best possible education, but that doesn't mean that school doesn't have an equally indispensable role in allowing work to happen.

[Kermit power]

Trophy Husband said:

I get the feeling the poll is showing strongly towards yes because people are answering not from a health of their child perspective but from an economic need perspective. A very different scenario.

My daughter is seventeen. She's highly intelligent, but has been withdrawing from life since lockdown started. She can't get herself out of bed, can't engage with school work. She has been quite simply shutting down.

Fortunately, for us, there is a silver lining to the cloud.

Firstly, she is highly intelligent, to the point of being able to diagnose herself with ADHD (tends to be rather different in girls to the stereotypical boy version!) to the point where she was able to convince me to book a GP consultation, and then to convince a sceptical GP that she absolutely knew what she was talking about.

Secondly, I could fortunately afford to take her for a private psychiatric assessment. As a result of this, she has indeed been diagnosed with ADHD and with General Anxiety Disorder, and we're now able to start treatment for her.

We're very lucky, and hopefully we'll be able to turn this around before her A levels next year, so in that respect, you could say that the lockdown has been a blessing for us, as it brought matters to a head, and we were able to do something about it.

For thousands of other kids, though, it's an absolute curse! They and their parents may well not be able to figure out what's going on, or have the money to seek private treatment - as NHS CAMHS certainly aren't able to step in at the moment - so all they've got is the blackness.

More teenagers have committed suicide because they're unable to cope in lockdown than have been killed directly by Covid itself. Yes, I think it's important for the economy that kids go back to school in September, but even if I thought it would damage it, I would still think it was absolutely critical that they go back for their own mental wellbeing.

[Kermit power]

Trophy Husband said:

There's a huge difference between the behaviours of adults and children. Hopefully.
Schools are known to be hubs of infection for other illnesses. Always have been always will be.
Seems to me that many people are just considering the health of their kids and shrugging their shoulders because as we know only a handful of under 11 year olds have died and apparently with underlying health issues.
Your kids get it, no big deal. They're asymptomatic so you don't know. Great. You get it, maybe no big deal. You don't know you've got it but have been all over the place, maybe to see your elderly parents or neighbours. Many of them may get it and don't know because they're asymptomatic. Big deal.
That is the problem.

The solution to that problem? Keep shielding the vulnerable.

[Kermit power]

Trophy Husband said:

DoubleD said:

Trophy Husband said:

FFS. It isn't about the teachers. It is about their higher level of duty of care, and the LA that runs the school. Bang my head on the wall please?
An outbreak attributable to a school has far greater significance than one in effing Tesco which, let's face it, is untraceable.
There is some proper tup logic here.
I really do despair.

Lets leave out the dramatics.

Why is it more significant than an outbreak elsewhere?

FFS. Bang my head on a wall again! Levels of duty of care? Shall I say it again? Once more for the hard of hearing/illiterate?
Differing levels of duty of care.
Statutory ones.
And breathe.......

I don't get it. The last time I looked, fewer than a dozen school aged pupils have died.

You're quite right... Teachers have an enhanced duty of care to the kids in their charge. Those kids are at greater risk of harm if they stay off school than if they go back, yet you continue to argue that they shouldn't go back.