*Boris reads article* ....mostly bame.... *reads more* ....disease of poverty..... *finishes realising it mostly affects poor non white kids* Boris - "Schools are open, send your kids back. Quick quick, no time to waste" I am of course joking. Boris doesn't read anything that may relate to doing work.
Julia Hartley-Brewer is a ****ing idiot. She is neurotoxin in human form. Anyone who listens to her has surrendered their status as a rational being. I work in a hospital where ICU and Respiratory Ward staff are on their knees trying to keep a deluge of COVID-19 patients from drowning in their own bodily fluids filling up their lungs. Our team have been trying to support them for the last year. Sorry if we're all a bit stressed, tired and cranky. Despite the relentless pressure, the deaths, the exhaustion, and the ****ing idiots thinking they're being all clever and hard for downplaying the pandemic and spreading the bug, these staff come back for their next shift. And the next. And the next after that. How's that for righteous and hopeful?
Except that it's the poor kids, disproportionately BAME, that are losing out most from schools being closed. Be assured that the private schools are teaching a full day's lessons over video every day.
I was going to say that that's a different issue, and the government could have probably sorted computers and internet for these kids if they really wanted to. But then I remembered that time they bought satellites for one thing but got the wrong ones, so I'm just glad they got some laptops (with the odd bit of malware) instead of british flag stamped typewriters with tin cans attached to them and a string coming out one end to get them on-the-line.
Private school kids can also rely on good old fashioned money and neptoism to open doors for them if [when] their grades are trash. For the plebs, well that coal won't mine itself.
You can mail out a shiny new laptop to every kid that asks, but that doesn't solve the problem when they don't have the support at home. Having two graduate parents that can work from home and answer question on any of their subject is very different to being on your own and having to try and work in a shared room. Also the private schools went to teaching a full timetable over video very early as they were worried that parents wouldn't pay for the next term if they were just emailing out homework. In the state sector they were more worried about safeguarding and cameras in kids bedrooms. Last year what they got was just lots of homework and no teaching. This year there are more lessons, but it may be in bigger groups that the class they were used to. A million things but no amount of laptops and broadband vouchers are going to change the fact that it's harder to learn in your bedroom than the classroom and the impact is worst for the more disadvantaged.
The grades algorithm favoured pupils taking rare specialist subjects like Greek and Latin or archaeology or whatnot. And this was more the case at private schools. They didn't particularly favour them in Maths and English. A your lad that works in one of the shops was taking his A-levels at a (good) private school down here and he got the grades he needed but said most of his classmates got well below predicted in the main subjects before they gave them all the predicted anyway. Anyway the grading scheme from last summer isn't getting carried forward so that link is out of date. This year's plans are very different https://www.gov.uk/government/consu...-grades-should-be-awarded-in-summer-2021-html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55675074
Something for the morons who think this winter is no worse than a bad flu season: Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
Yes, there's lots of problems. But I posted that because there is a vast difference in teaching input this year that didn't exist to the same degree before. There is stuff that isn't fixable without getting kids back into schools and that the impact of the closures is so much worse for those with the least in society.
Indeed, from what I remember, school transmission is not insignificant, so until numbers get low enough that track and trace can actually work, or by some miracle we manage to do a new zealand, it's not a great idea. It would be a less bad idea however if this wasn't true
This paper in the journal Chaos, which aimed to simulate a range of measures in New York City in order to find the best balance between social distancing measures and social disruption, concludes that school closures may not be the best approach for limiting deaths. To quote, and bear in mind this is in simulation: I find the conclusion counter-intuitive, 'cos surely spending six to eight hours at school results in more risk of transmission than half an hour in the supermarket and the kids aren't just hanging out together but with older teachers and going home to older family members, but I ain't going to ignore the paper just 'cos it doesn't agree with my opinion on the matter.
From what my partner has been told ( she works as a teacher) The max class limits will be 15 students upon been granted reopening (between 27 to 35 kids in each class normally) . So most year groups will have to be on a rota anyway. There is no date attached to when full school normal time table will be. The school she works at is hiring extra Assistant staff to help with the practicalities of Video lessons and in person lessons. Initially only those who would of been taking exams or moving into an exam year will be welcomed back into the school. There is currently no return date given for years 7, 8, 9 The biggest issue with children in school is not at school. Its what happens when they get home. Way too much mingling between houses, One excuse someone told me was they are with that person during the day why cant they be on a night. I was like yes they are but they are not with your Younger son who is in a different year group or his younger daughter who is in a 3rd different year group. Covid spreads between those 2 households thats 3 whole years of the school out between 2 familys. A safe Pub is safer than any school. A pub opened where everyone you sit with must be in your household (no bubbles) would be a 1000x safer than any school or shop.
Disagree. "Bubbles" in a pub work in the same way as no smoking sections used to, which is to say not at all. You need ventilation, and existing HVAC systems might make things worse. Basically, given it's winter right now, if you're not freezing your balls off while you're sipping your pint, you're probably at risk.
I think this is all dependant on if they made the assumption that kids will social distance like adults...
I struggled through some of this and couldn't identify where they were accounting for transmission outside the school once the kid had it, which is the main point of closing schools. They also seem to deal with each NPI in isolation. I get that children will likely pick it up in the household if it's out there, but closing schools at least prevents a vector from household to household which I don't feel the paper adequately addresses. In particular I would argue the combined effect of social distancing and school closure is much greater than this suggests (if you just have social distancing then schools remain a vector, if you just close schools the lack of social distancing elsewhere understandably renders school closure largely useless). The comparison of a 4% reduction in infection among young people by school closure alone with 47% reduction of infection through social distancing of everyone also seems deliberately misleading.
