5 October

Dear Government

We are writing to you, to ask to be given the choice to protect our families from Covid 19, as opposed  to being forced to send our children to face Covid 19 alone within schools and then bring it back into our homes at the risk to our extremely vulnerable members, and potentially inflicting Long Covid on other family members.  

We want you to acknowledge that the current situation is causing many children mental health problems, because they are continuously filled with the dread of harming vulnerable family members, and that though the return to school has been imperative for some children’s mental welfare it has also been destructive to a different group of children’s welfare.

We believe that now, four weeks into term, we can now confidently state that sitting thirty children in a classroom together with no social distancing possible, and no masks is not Covid safe in the way our schools were forced to assure it was.

We have also come to recognise that many of us who work in health services, have unintentionally shared Covid 19 with the rest of our families, and it seems we have been spreading it unwittingly straight into those classrooms, and back into the community at large due to the virus being asymptomatic of the three main symptoms proposed by the UK government, and social distancing being impossible in many work and school settings.  

We believe as a group that it’s time the government acknowledges what we know already; most Covid is caught through contact via Covid particles in the air, inhaled at close distance to an infected individual, therefore social distancing is the single most important aspect in reducing the spread of this virus, combined with masks and handwashing.

We know first-hand the Track and Trace in schools and health settings are underperforming and not addressing issues such as children’s transportation on school buses.  Test turnaroundtimes are inadequate, and children and teachers who are not presenting with temperature, sudden cough, and loss of smell are the majority of cases, and they are not being tested for Covid 19, but they are spreading it.

As parents we acknowledge that education is essential for our children’s future, and indeed it is emotionally and physically essential for certain vulnerable children, but most of us are doing a more than adequate job at parenting our children safely, even during distance learning.

As parents we are confounded that our schools are still not prepared to immediately teach our children remotely onlinewhen whole year groups are out of action already, even though we all knew what Autumn would bring, even if the government and its scientists didn’t.

Our requests are simple.

• We want all of parents to be to be able to choose how toprotect their families from Covid 19, by being allowed to choose to commit to distance schooling our children if it is the right decision for our families. We believe this is essential to take pressure off the NHS, reduce the R rate, and potentially protect and reduce large parts of the community from Long Covid and all that it will entail. In addition to this, reduced student numbers would allow school to implement a more stringent social distancing policy, therefore making schools safer for students and teachers.
 

• We believe that those parents who do not want, or cannot,for whatever reason, home school should be allowed to continue to send their children into school, at no risk of judgement from anyone within our community.
 

• We want to see all lessons live streamed.  Teachers should be able to call register and check attendance in line with a normal school day.  We believe it is counter intuitivethat this is not already in place; children self- isolating in line with government guidelines are having their education affected through no fault of their own under the current system. We believe that long term this would benefit extremely vulnerable students who are off for a huge variety of reasons at any one time.
 

• We would expect schools to report children who do not attend lessons remotely or in person to be reported to the council in line with current attendance regulations andallow councils to act accordingly.
 

• We want lower income families to be supported with equipment to home school if they are not able to provide it.
 

• We want teaching staff who are extremely vulnerable to be given the opportunity to live stream their lessons from the safety of their own home to allow themselves to risk assess their own welfare without being penalised.
We do not believe these are unreasonable requests, as parents we believe they are common sense and we are sure current regulations in place are going to become untenable within weeks.

 

Best Wishes

Parents Fighting Covid