Two big outbreaks in my area shuts two schools for the rest of the term.
School in London 65 out of 950 pupils turned up today. #edutwitter
Heard Havering are telling schools go remote if you want.
Three more schools in my area moving to remote learning for Friday. If this term was one week more the schools would probably all be shut from lack of staff anyway
Two more primary schools in area just sent out letters that they are going remote
So Tory run Stockport Council said schools are moving to remote learning for last few days, and here is another Tory Council, no threats so far from DfE.
Almost like they thought squaring up to Labour councils would play well with the RW media.
2/ Worth beginning with the press release earlier today, dont worry not much work you just need to use January Inset day to retrain as public health officials.
Note that many support staff won't be in as schools cut their training to save money years ago
3/ Step 1 retrain and retitle staff.
100 tests a day will need 9 staff, 11-13 tests an hour per testing bay, so we either need to spend all day testing or have a lot of bays.
How many staff do they think we have in 10 years into a retention crisis deepened by covid?
2/ And LFT are particularly bad at picking up asymptomatic cases, the effectiveness of a policy like this is completely unproven.
3/ The policy is students don't isolate if they agree to daily testing
For seven days!
So gov has moved isolation from 14 to 10 days against WHO recommendations, a move @ReicherStephen said on @LBC wasn't based on reliable evidence, and now students only need 7 days of testing?!
1/ I don't think there are any other countries now taking the same approach to schools as the UK.
Most have masks in schools, most have reduced class sizes for social distancing, most have shut already for Christmas, most have access to regular testing
@DavidLammy on @lbc asks "Should schools be given a day off to save their Christmas"
I like the guy but he doesn't get it,inset day isn't a day off most schools won't do it and it won't save our Christmas, switch to remote learning next week like Eton have might.
@DavidLammy should be highlighting the letters DfE have sent out telling schools to NOT provide work for students who are taken out of school by parents worried about at risk family members over Christmas
Government care more about attendence figures than education @lbc
@davidlammy should be apologising that @LabourParty got it wrong on schools, he should be calling out Jenny Harris and all the others who claimed transmission wouldn't occur in schools, proven wrong by Hancock announcement this week.
1/ Short Thread: So I knew government had banned schools from closing early, and removed blended learning as an option, putting all decision making into hands of DfE.
They also banned schools from having inset days at the end of term, which is quite bizarre.
2/ To take away option of inset days seems pretty petty a bit of "we're putting the foot down" posturing.
The determination and effort to keep pushing through that final week despite their own scientist warning it will cause additional deaths is ridiculous.
3/ So was sent this, didn't realise a message had gone out to NOT provide remote learning for students who have the cheek put protecting vulnerable family members above a couple of days in school at the end of term.
2/ The government likes to set its own measures of success, initially below 20k deaths was said to be considered a good result. When it quickly became clear this would fail they switched to preventing NHS bed capacity being overwhelmed as their success target.
3/ Looking at how they cleared out hospital beds in Spring, including putting infected patients into care homes, you could argue that meeting their target was more important than preserving life.