Thread by @karamballes

1/ Oh @halfon4harlowMP this interview is a shocker for selective quoting, and it appears you haven't read or understand what SAGE have said about school and students

This is full of fallacies

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1343840282727620609

2/ "Transmission is low" You're quoting the PHE report on infectiousness of children, this line has done a lot of work in UK media and also in other countries but its a misquote
The report said they had "low confidence" in this statement, see for yourself

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1298018784104546304?s=19

3/ Report did say they had high confidence schools returning would have significant impact on RO, they said the reports findings of low transmission could only be applied to schools during lockdown with limited student numbers and shouldn't be applied to September opening

4/ This one low confidence quote is doing so much heavy lifting to justify government policy when there are so many high confidence quotes saying there's massive risks of super spreading events in education if we don't have masks or social distancing

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1316083587712716802?s=19

5/ When @halfon4harlowMP says there's no evidence of higher transmission with the new strain, this is a misunderstanding of the scientific use of "evidence"
There is no evidence one way or another until a study currently under way has been concluded.

6/ This is the same as saying there is no evidence the new strain is only as infectious.
No evidence is a neutral term, if they had proof it wasn't more infectious they would say they had evidence to prove this.
Its a misrepresentation of what the scientists have said

7/ This linguistic trickery has regularly been used by the government to spin scientists not having an answer into claiming their policies are low risk.

They did the same with a report on the risk to education workers, and now won't release the data used

https://twitter.com/SarahDRasmussen/status/1343639137287593988?s=19

8/ Reports on children's eating disorders are concerning, this has been on the increase in years and I've regularly heard how cuts to CAHMS has left the service unable to provide the support students need, we desperately need to invest in CAHMS and MH support in schools

9/ Does the report directly evidence lockdown as the main cause of a rise? Causes of disorders can be complex and varied,I'm personally encountering anxiety and MH issues in students who are worried about bringing covid home to at risk family members, exam stress also common

10/ In the last week of term a group of hardworking 6th Formers wrote to my Head to request remote learning in January, they correctly believed infection rates would continue to rise and didn't feel comfortable coming in for a variety of reasons.

11/ "Students are 15 to 22 months behind" Another heavy lifting quote which has many educators scratching their heads but is used on a daily basis to browbeat us into accepting an increasing level of risk.
Plenty have questioned how this figure has been arrived at by the EEF

12/ "Destroy young people's life chances" with a few weeks of remote learning?Life chances are connected to the availability of opportunity, surely we should be talking of ending the chronic investment in FE, as this is where students impacted by this year will find their feet?

13/ Didn't see the whole interview but I'm going to predict he also used the one day off school is 40,000 years of lost education, a totally meaningless stat that came from the Children's Commissioner's office.

14/ Its interesting how closely he makes the same points as the lobbyist group UsForThem who campaign for no safety measures at all in school, after they had meetings in government Halfon has been tweeting in support of them.

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1343359587932626944?s=19

15/ Appears the government is still selling unreliable LFTs as a magic bullet, even ignoring the insane logistics, its just dangerous replacing isolation with these.

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1338951923089764355?s=19

16/ As for the idea we currently have adequate safety measures, my timeline is full of frontline professionals screaming "we have no social distancing, we have no masks in classrooms"

I suggest @halfon4harlowMP should redo his homework

17/ Now we have the Chair of Children in Need telling a member of Independent SAGE they are wrong about the role children play in transmission, interesting she makes a stand now when her timeline was silent on free school meals

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1343889962161287169?s=19

For an example of how gov selectively quotes,PHE commissioned a report on lockdown measures based on data from 30 countries
It found school closures were the most effective measure on reducing RO
Why do they never quote this report of theirs?
#edutwitter

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1321070444376674304?s=19

My article for @LabourHub
summarising the situation in education, they are ignoring the science, they won't #FlattenTheCurve
#edutwitter

https://twitter.com/karamballes/status/1343977228611313664?s=19