Reminder that it will take 9 staff 3 hours to test 100 people. Gov would prefer to take transmission risks with LFTs and have students spending more time waiting to be tested than learning just so they can boast they kept schools open in RW papers
Not education just dangerous PR
Government have told schools all comms to do with testing must be signed off by Department for Health, they're trying to block pictures of 100s of students milling about waiting to be tested for hours while mixing
As well as building a parallel teat and trace system for 500k-1m people a day we must also become DfE PR and propoganda merchants monitoring social media feeds and being "proactively positive" using government approved materials and messaging
Enforced positive messaging, centrally controlled comms, knowing increasing risk to communities with LFTs, done with a sense of panic to pretend all is well while worrying their construct of lies is about to come crashing down
Johnson: The new strain is particularly prevelant in London and areas of the South East
Hancock: Infections in students are driving transmission in London
Any bet failure to tackle transmission in schools turned them into petri fishes for the new strain #edutwitter
Government admitted students were as infectious as adults, they knew students were the most infected groups with figures continuing to rise, they knew half term cut RO, they were advised Nov lockdown wouldn't be as effective without tackling transmission in schools
They were warned about tackling transmission in schools time and time again.
By their own SAGE group, by @IndependentSage, the warnings came thick and fast,but who sets the agenda in this country? Westminster or RW rags and lobbyists posing as think tanks?
Hey @BBCPolitics why did you cut out the most important part of the NEU press release?
Serious concerns have been raised within the scientific community and an article in the BMJ about the unreliability of LFTs, they should not be used as a replacement to isolation #edutwitter
So @BBCPolitics still gaslighting education workers valid concerns on safety.
Not a single mention of LFT concerns and their use on #r4today when @PaulWhiteman6 was interviewed either
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?!
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