All getting a little agitated guys and there seems to be some degree of contradiction.
Firstly, GP...teachers haven’t been ‘furloughed’ on the basis that they’re still working. Those that have the technology are providing online lessons. Others are providing a service - child minding rather than teaching I suspect - for vulnerable pupils and the children of key workers and there are still reports to be written and future lessons and schemes of work to be planned.
You GP are speaking from the position of someone who can work from home. You have, on at least two occasions, described your anxiety at the way people behave in your ‘corner shop’ and yet you are critical of teachers who are reluctant to work in a relatively small room with up to six**** other people.
Swale, you are equally critical. The impact on you appears to be exactly the same as it is on me...no restaurants, gigs, theatres, holidays etc.
Other than that you say it has made ‘no difference’...you too have the privilege of working from home although the impact of the virus does appear to have brought forward your retirement. Fairly significant I would have thought.
You say ‘so it’s okay’ for the other workers you mention to be put at risk knowing full well that I have defended them throughout this crisis. I don’t think it’s ‘alright’ for any worker to be made to work without the necessary protection and I’m not about to concede that teachers should be added to that at risk list.
You also say that the risk of children passing on the disease is minimal. How do you know that? It’s really not like you to be anything other than intelligently sceptical where government advice is concerned.
The government, understandably from an economic point of view, wants schools to reopen and says that children aren’t effective carriers.
In mid March when the schools were closed the advice from the government was that children were often asymptomatic carriers. That’s the same government who described the risk to care homes as minimal even though common sense said it wasn’t. But even if children themselves are not top of the ‘at risk’ list, those fif**** children return to at least fif**** homes at the end of each day where they will come into contact with, on average, at least three - often more - other individuals. I can’t see how that doesn’t vastly increase the risk of the virus spreading.
If you look on here there are intelligent posters expressing various levels of anxiety. Andy being very cautious where shopping is concerned and using the minimal contact method of ‘click and collect’. Ram59 verging on the paranoid about people coming within an ‘armslength’ of him in his Brum supermarket and even mac has told us how he virtually ran out of a supermarket, reporting the incident on his way, when he encountered a woman with a bad cough.
I don’t blame any of them, or GP, for their caution/anxiety...but if bright and intelligent people are so aware of the need for such precaution how much sense does it make for schools to return at this time?
Finally...there is worldwide disagreement on the reopening of schools. In Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark they have reopened or will soon be doing so. In Italy and New Jersey they are closed until at least September.
Even if UK schools do reopen they are simply not able to do so fully. People HAVE to socially distance and schools - like aeroplanes, theatres, cinemas, buses, trains, shops etc - are not sufficiently spacious to allow a full return.
So what can they offer in the short term? Part time attendance for some year groups against a background of an alleged 35% of secondary pupils’ parents and up to 49% of primary school parents who are not prepared to allow their children to return.
Why the rush? I appreciate the economic concerns but, as a grandparent and the father of a teacher I have huge concerns. Wearing my long abandoned ‘school management hat’ I also totally understand the concerns of heads and school governors.
P.S. Andy, can you explain to the obsessives who own this forum that ‘te-en’ isn’t a rude word?
