New lockdown - Do you agree schools and universities should remain open?

You understand a function of a union is to represent its members, right? Not to organise online schooling, or to facilitate things for students?

The teaching unions aren't there for you. You're not required to listen to them.

It is bloody hard to come up with a plan for anything when you are not given any notice of it.

Your posts do come off as incredibly selfish and entitled, though.

You understand a function of a union is to represent its members, right? Not to organise online schooling, or to facilitate things for students?

The teaching unions aren't there for you. You're not required to listen to them.

It is bloody hard to come up with a plan for anything when you are not given any notice of it.

Your posts do come off as incredibly selfish and entitled, though.

How are they selfish and entitled? They are just voicing an opinion. I've noticed 'selfish' is now the go-to response for anybody who offers an alternative opinion nowadays.

Locking down without shutting schools will just be a waste of time imo, and I suspect it'll be something heavily debated on Wednesday. Maybe even enough of an issue that the vote for the lockdown won't pass unless schools shut.

Your education is more important than what? Other people's lives? Nice.

No other countries have reopened all their schools with the minimal protections the UK have put in place. And a lot of UK schools aren't/can't sticking to those in practice. Most schools in comparable countries are far less overcrowded and have smaller class sizes in normal times, as well.

Looking at the UK data, it's pretty clear that since September there has been a massive increase in the number of cases in secondary school aged students, as well as university aged students. This has slowly spread upwards through the population, so now more vulnerable age groups are being affected. Teenagers don't live in isolation, so the increased infection rates in teenagers affect the whole country. As more people get infected, more people die. The 10,000s of deaths are the government's own projections if we do nothing.

Obviously it's impossible to 100% prove the increase in infection rates is down to schools being opened, but I can't think of another new factor that has been introduced since September...

No, not just my education, the education of an entire generation of children. Society compromises on lives all the time for convenience, education is a more than valid reason.

My school separated year groups into bubbles; face masks are mandatory; there are hand sanitizing stations all around the school, resulting in a 0% in-school transmission rate. My school is a struggling secondary comprehensive and sixth form, by the way, and I know lots of other schools have taken similar measures. Even when there was a rise of infection cases in a given area, outbreaks within schools were uncommon. For example in Italy, > 65,000 schools opened in September when there was an increasing infection rate, and only 1,212 campuses closed due to an outbreak four weeks later. In 93% of these cases, only a single infection was reported and only one school in the entire country reported a cluster of more than 10 infected people. The average class size in Italy is ~20, in England, it's ~25, whilst this may have a small impact on the gross number of cases, I don't think there's much evidence that this is the case: "Data on school outbreaks in England have also shown that adults were often the first to be infected. Most of the 30 confirmed school outbreaks in June involved transmission between staff members, and only 2 involved student-to-student spread.".

Infection rates had been increasing slightly since before September, what you're seeing on the case graph is just the typical exponential growth of coronavirus as a result of easing lockdown, so you cannot say with any certainty that it is due to the opening of schools. If there was a clear causal relationship between the two, the scientific advice would be to close schools immediately, but it's not.

the reason for the lockdown is to slow the spread of the corona virus so that hospitals don't become overwhelmed COVID patients, impacting the care of other ill people (such as cancer patients etc..) . Lockdowns are unfortunately essential to survingin the COVID pandemic, however I argue that the government needs to consider the possibility of selective lockdowns for the most high risk demographics.

Schools however should remain OPEN for all the reasons Ive explained (and many others have explained) below!

I'm very interested to read about this (Parliamentary) aspect - any link to why you think this? Whatever, 'twill be gripping viewing for any with the time on the 4th....

No virus has ever been eradicated.

You guys should think about the year 11. If school closes they possibly won't take their gcses exams and end up having their predicted grade which could be a massive disappointment to other people.

I think schools & universities should be kept open, where safe and possible.

We can protect against it though, like we did with swine flu.

If you're talking about the whole 'it might not pass unless they agree to shut schools and unis'? It's just an opinion of mine. I'd like to think common sense would tell people that if you're going to lockdown for this virus, you need to do it properly. You can't just shut everything bar from the sources that have essentially singlehandedly fueled this second wave and expect it to do anything. Wouldn't surprise me if we see another sharp spike in about a weeks time as we get the cumulative effect of people having their final 'sesh' before lockdown and uni students moving back home in a panic.

Maybe I'm wrong on that? Who knows. To me, to lockdown while keeping the catalysts of this second wave open is a clear chose to just snipe the economy for no real gain.