Schools and Covid 19 (part 5) **Mod warnings in OP**

Primary school presumably? Since ours went to secondary the joy of parents' whatsapp groups is behind us. 😀

It's an automated system. The HSE do not nor can they look at every individual case. People should not need there hands held. A lot is common sense. If you have a positive antigen test it makes sense to count from it if there is a positive PCR days later.

We cannot micro manage COVID.

It's not a mess. At present we have 20k cases a day and probably more we cannot diagnose fast enough.

It all about managing the disease. Omicron is more infectious but less dangerous than previous variants.

Medical grade masks will not significantly improve the outcome neither are HEPA filter a margin bullet. We should not constantly need the government to micro manage this. In any job you have to manage you workload and risk. People are not exacting falling dead around the place at present. It's not the end of the world if you get Omicron, IMO if it gets into a normal healthy vaccinated household every body is as well off getting it 5-7 days will see it over and done with in that situation effectively and you probably have good immunity until next winter

My school similar to those above with approx 50% students absent and approx 33% staff out.

A few in our place have proposed that our teachers who are out (isolating, not sick) should be working remotely. Obviously, this would solve a lot of problems like students sitting doing nothing in a class. How do teachers on this thread feel about this? It would solve a lot of the problems (at least for a few weeks until things got a bit back to normal).

It would solve the problem of the sub not being able to teach the class subject for starters.

I'm not saying it is the perfect solution ... but it would solve some of the problems we have in our place today.

Would you not agree?

Exactly!

Do teachers on here think this is workable?

They are still sticking to the mantra that most outbreaks occurred in homes but new numbers show a high number of out breaks in schools in second half you the year.

This is my favourite bit but it's worth reading the whole article

"The latest data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre looks at the total number of outbreaks recorded in the fourth wave of the virus between 27 June and 31 December 2021.

While the largest number of outbreaks, 919, were recorded among families in private homes, the next highest figure was associated with school students and staff, with 514 outbreaks among these groups in the last six months of the year.

The next highest amount of outbreaks - 458 - were recorded in workplaces."

My take on it is, all schools were closed for July and August. So you are comparing 4 months data to 6 months data or for 1/3 of the time the schools were closed for holidays. Why is RTE not picking up on this?

https://www.rte.ie/news/education/2022/0106/1272079-schools/

Yes, one problem which I agreed with.

I was curious as to what “a lot of problems” were that could also be solved?

Today for our 2 kids

Primary (6th) - Teacher in. 20/25 kids in. 3/5 absent have Covid. Unsure on 2/5.

Secondary (JC) - 2 Teachers absent from today's timetable (9 subjects). Specific work left by both Teachers. About a third of students absent.

Not too bad.

Exactly ... great reply!!

I wonder why more teachers aren't doing this? I also wonder why there seems to be no support for this from the teachers on this forum??

supervised two classes today 5th and 6th teacher taught them remotely in 6th and was on for first 15 mins setting them up in 6th. i just set up the call. in fairness both classes could have been left there on their own for all the difference i made. Never had to say a word in either class. Some kids are amazing when they get to that age.

Hse took antigens into account for my children, symptoms before the antigen for me and my husband. They do take the antigen into account if you speak to someone instead of following generic text

"but I'd love to know what the teachers have been at for the last two weeks."

It's a pretty odd comment, it comes across as accusatory...more than likely they've been doing the normal stuff that nearly everyone else in the country has been doing for the past couple of weeks.

Normal enough to ask a friend or relative if they have an idea how they got it because that's general conversation and long before covid people would say who they caught a vomiting bug from etc. but for people who you don't know then it's weird to ponder how they got it, especially considering it was over Christmas where as I said they are probably doing the exact same thing the rest of the country did!

My eldest childs school have had to tell a year group to stay at home on Thursday and another year for Friday due to staff shortages also. They had a contingency plan in place for if it happened last year at several points through the year but never needed to implement it. I've never at any point wondered what the teachers were up to that meant so many were out at the same time.

But once the kids are in and out of their parents way they don't care. I still don't understand why parents can't recognise that when teachers are calling for Hepa filters so they can at least reduce the amount of time windows are open ,they are ensuring the learning environment is comfortable for their children.

Instead all you get is ,well if shop keeper have to go in to work bla bla bla....

More parents should be lobbying govt ministers to ensure their children are in a safe learning environment instead of worrying about where teachers visited over Christmas

I've seen this point raised before about parents lobbying government - but fact is nobody in education ( government or schools) gives a damn what parents think. Nobody wants to listen to the parents view - we are just moany pains in the ass. Thiis will achieve nothing.

A quicker solution would be for each school to get quotes for HEPA filters installation and ask each parent to contribute. It was mentioned way back by someone that the cost per parent ( depending on numbers could be quite low). In my kids school over the year we are asked to pay for all sorts of silly things way less important - most parents wouldn't have an issue with this.

Do you have kids yourself?

We can't get our parents to pay for a pencil for their kids,let alone a hepa filter . Whilst I agree its a lovely idea, I couldn't see it happening on a practical level