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Karam Bales Profile picture
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2 Apr, 24 tweets, 8 min read
1/🧵What a term! March Recap

Announcement made in Feb, leaked to papers first.
No rotas, no blended, its the "big bang" for England as Johnson ignores SAGE advice.

LFD testing and masks in secondary classrooms the only improved measures.

DfE Guidence⬇️
2/ Moment announcement was made, even before the 8th, the PR campaign to undermine these safety measures began.

Anti-maskers given plenty of media space to make false claims that go unchallenged
3/DfE uses our money to pay its friends to run a Back to School propoganda campaign.

Includeds several misleading and some entirely false statements including some about good ventilation.

4/Note the NoMasksInClass had started circulating by this time, analysis shows that UfT were the ones predominantly behind this hashtag.

5/ Another issue with the BackToSchool campaign was the false sense of reassurance it gives with its use of language around LFD use.

Due to their lack of reliability, behaviour shouldn't change with LFD use, but govbhave ignored it,now see students with symptoms going to school
6/ While the narrative that #ZeroCovid is pushed strongly by gov and media, EdSelect meets.

@halfon4harlowMP fails to back heads who are receiving hostile letters from UfT

Gib makes odd masks comment

Awarding grades still not clarified
7/ As Gov continues with saying transmission isn't an issue in schools, data stacks up around the world and within the UK.

Schools do play a significant role in transmission, particularly with B117
8/ Catch up is talked about in terms of game time, longer school days is suggested as the solution for students that already have low attendance.

All that talk of wellbeing in February feels hollow

Its using Covid to push a policy Gove wanted in 2010.
9/ Schoolsweek gets its FOI on Greenwich being threatened with court action.

Can't believe how little coverage this has got, can't believe a minister hasn't been questioned on this.

Seriously its outrageous, see Jenny Harries answer ⬇️ this was Dec, testing started Jan?!🤷‍♂️ Image
10/ FOI asked for evidence, DfE gave their narrative of how they interpreted the data, what data they were looking at we still don't know.
11/ Considering a week later the media were doing a year review of Johnsons Covid response, papering over many cracks, the decision to force schools to stay open and the weak and bizarre reasons given to the FOI, it shows how much we are being failed by the media.
12/National Tutoring Programme, did warn about this with the first announcement.

Its a good example of how marketisation siphons away money that heads could be using for real impact.
13/ March was a good month for those in the process of unearthing the actions of corporate lobbyists pushing certain skeptic groups and a "live with it" relaxed about mass infection approach.

Good thread here looking at some of the links
14/ Merkel says B117 is infectious for longer, more contagious and dangerous in children.
Belgium, France, Italy, Ireland, US, coming to similar conclusions.

Not a mention of this in the UK media, not even that we should perhaps relook at isolation policy in general Image
15/ Looks like the government is taking a gamble that vaccines will keep hospitalisions and deaths down, and that infections won't run out of control.

Little concern or action being taken around the risks of variants being broad in or emerging locally
16/ As its rumoured the DfE want to remove safety measures after Easter, more details on UfTs influence and access to government and their links to the wider skeptic disinformation network emerge
17/ How to calculate the damage these groups have gone, not just in the UK but around the world
18/ Long Covid stats come out, gets some attention in the media, but I don't think I've heard it mentioned that a staggering 114k education workers are in the figures, second highest, first was health and social care at 122k

19/ Government decided to review masks in schools, but won't say who its consultanting, or what evidence they will be looking at, and they intend on never releasing this information.

We're just going to get a decree (leaked to the papers beforehand)
20/ March was also the month GBD supporters, those who called for no safety measures in schools and that we should just open up fully because there would be no wave in winter, upped their attacks on those who challenged them.

21/ After the natural herd immunity crowd accused any criticism of their studies as bullying, they are now going for full on character assassination.

Definitely "playing the man, not the ball"

22/ After fighting against FSM several times the government decided to cut Pupil Premium by the back door, this means the most disadvantaged students will be missing out on £200-300million+ of funding.

Doesn't feel like levelling up to me
23/ And now we have Whitty claiming society has chosen to "live with it"
Not society, government, lobbyists and RW media have decided we will live with it.
They are incredibly relaxed about mass infection of children, school staff and the under 50s in general. Image
24/ There are massive risks to this strategy, and relying on partial vaccination to keep numbers down could still lead to the NHS in serious trouble if growth becomes exponential while gov tries to ride it out.

Look at Chile, higher % vaccinated than UK

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More from @karamballes

Karam Bales Profile picture
30 Mar
1/🧵Blood on their hands!

So schools drove b117 growth in the south-east, late government response saw many thousands die, billions lost from an extended lockdown, strain now spreading around the world

And now UsForThem are trying to remove masks from classrooms!
#edutwitter
2/ How many grassroots organisations have multiple government links, multiple articles in RW papers every week, get coms support from Conservative PR gurus and can enlist one of the most expensive multi-billion law firms to threaten the UK government?

How is this funded?🤷‍♂️
3/ Consider how hard @SafeEdForAll_UK @Parents_Utd have fought to get a bit of airtime, how hard the still ongoing struggle to stop CEV/CV parents being fined. The inability so many groups have had in having their voices heard by this government.
Read 17 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
25 Mar
1/ 🧵Culture wars in education, indoctrination, and baiting.

Despite what the media says, not all educators are hard left Marxists intent on indoctrination, some aren't even left.

I'm worried alt-right in education are going to engage in deliberate baiting.
2/ Don't know what this teacher was thinking, might have been an error of judgement trying to spark a difficult debate, however we are going to get cases or deliberately provoking an angry response, so they can play victim against the "hard left"
3/ Here we go, man's now a free speech martyr, by Timothy who has been quite positive about the discriminatory policies of Orban in Hungary.

These will be the same people who questioned if BLM should be discussed in schools.
Read 23 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
25 Mar
1/ Short 🧵 I wonder how much damage has been done due to the gaslighting by UK government, client journalists and suspect experts on transmission in schools?
Their stance and selective use of data and studies has impacted policy in other countries.
2/ Europed now discovering B117 is more infectious in children,also Merkel said more dangerous in children, similar data in other countries

This was raised in UK around New year, and pediatrics stepped in,the media closed circle and the story disappeared
3/ They should have been warned, been prepared to put increased safety measures into schools, but this information was stifled for ideological/political purposes, UK told them not to worry.

Then we exported B117 to those countries.

Read 4 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
24 Mar
Remember few months ago the bbc 5 live phone call from a woman who said she had a hospital ward of children with covid

Certain high profile pediatrics called it fake news, bbc rushed out an apology

Well...
#edutwitter
reuters.com/article/uk-hea…
We were seeing increased hospitalisation at the time, but the statement from pediatrics completely shut down that conversation
The same pediatrics who don't feel long covid is enough of a major issue to have been more cautious around school safety. The same ones who downplay transmission and don't worry about education workers safety
Read 4 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
24 Mar
1/🧵I wonder how many people who contracted covid but didn't get a positive case due to lack of testing in first wave or being asymptomatic will suffer long covid.

It has employment and education implications.
2/ Long covid is varied, there will be workers and children struggling with long covid who don't even know they had covid.

Without knowing long covid is the cause workers could find themselves in capability issues, students could be labelled as school refusers.
3/ We have had our department isolating multiple times due to outbreaks, I tried recebtly to get us antibody tests as these could confirm who had covid even if they didn't get a PCR test,this would allow me the ability to negotiate adjustments if they started suffering long covid
Read 5 tweets
Karam Bales Profile picture
23 Mar
1/ 🧵Third wave gamble
Its clear government is taking a gamble, frustrating, as they did after the 1st wave they risk unnecessary suffering due to impatience.

Looking at SAGE modelling they've already decided around 30k lives is a fair price to pay.
2/ I guess this is a consequence of a government of financiers, PR, and hacks with a liberal sprinkling of edgelords.

They're used to gambling without personal risk, particularly while they have a protective ring of client journalists around them.
3/ They might get away with it, or as they expect, they might be able to edge it without collapsing the NHS, avoiding a dangerous new variant and keeping thr death toll down to numbers they deem manageable.

I worry they've messed up timing and measures.
Read 26 tweets

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