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Schools Ignoring Change in Government’s Guidelines on Mask Wearing

by Michael Curzon
15 May 2021 12:06 PM

The Department for Education (DfE) has, as reported in Today’s Update, made it clear that schools cannot decide by themselves to reintroduce face coverings in the classroom when the mask mandate is removed by the Government on May 17th. Instead, the decision to temporarily reintroduce mask-wearing in response to “localised outbreaks” can only be made by “local directors of public health”. These must take “educational drawbacks” into account. The DfE said in an email to the campaign group UsForThem:

Given the negative impact that face coverings have on teaching, learning and wellbeing and current epidemiological information, their use in classrooms or by pupils and students in communal areas is not recommended at the current time.

Email received today from @educationgovuk

‼️This could not be more clear: schools CANNOT make up their own rules to continue to demand masks

➡️Any LOCALISED temp reintroduction CAN ONLY BE by PH Local Action Committees & must take educational drawbacks into consideration

+ pic.twitter.com/UQTOxKr7jV

— UsForThemUK 🌟 (@UsforThemUK) May 14, 2021

Despite this, some schools have decided – independently of “local directors of public health”, and regardless of the costs on teaching and learning – to ignore the upcoming change in the Government’s guidelines and to continue instructing children to wear face masks in the classroom. One such school (the Friesland School in Nottingham) has written to parents saying that their children will have to continue wearing masks because local infection rates are higher than the national average.

Due to local infection rates being currently higher than the national rate, we are taking a measured approach to the easing of our Covid precautions at Friesland School.

We are requesting that face coverings continue to be used indoors from May 17th by students, including in classrooms. Furthermore, and in accordance with Government guidelines, staff and visitors will continue to wear face coverings indoors as they do now.

In the letter, the school’s headteacher justified his decision by claiming some students wanted to carry on wearing masks because they were “used to wearing them”.

[Members of the school’s Student Council] were very much of the view that the majority of students were now used to wearing them and that it would be sensible to continue with masks in the short term.

With local infection rates being currently higher than the national rate, we are taking a measured approach to the easing of our C19 precautions at Friesland School and asking students to continue wearing masks from Monday.
Read more ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/hetP6VFN1X

— Friesland School (@FrieslandSchool) May 14, 2021

Perhaps the DfE should be more clear about the right (or lack thereof) of schools to impose mask mandates independently of local public health bodies.

Tags: ChildrenEducationFace MasksSchools

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34 Comments
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Monro
Monro
4 years ago

The socialist fascist nature of some of the non pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) by this government, including mandating the wearing of masks in the classroom and elsewhere, implemented without proper parliamentary scrutiny, has been clear for some time. Amnesty International has already condemned certain other of these governmental NPI measures in no uncertain terms:

‘The UK government, national agencies, and local-level bodies have taken decisions and adopted policies during the COVID-19 pandemic that have directly violated the human rights of older residents of care homes in England—notably their right to life, their right to health, and their right to non-discrimination. These decisions and policies have also impacted the rights of care home residents to private and family life, and may have violated their right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.’

And very much the same could be said to apply to certain of the NPI measures implemented in state schools.

So it is interesting to hear today that members of the government’s own ‘Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviour’ (SPI-B) have also condemned some of the government’s response as tantamount to totalitarianism:

‘Clearly, using fear as a means of control is not ethical. Using fear smacks of totalitarianism.’

‘The way we have used fear is dystopian’

‘You could call psychology ‘mind control’. That’s what we do.’

‘..people use the pandemic to grab power and drive through things that wouldn’t happen otherwise.’

‘We have to be very careful about the authoritarianism that is creeping in’

‘A State of Fear‘ by Laura Dodsworth

Mussolini was a socialist journalist. Adolf Hitler was a socialist as a young man. Lenin, Stalin, Tito, Honecker, Hoxha, Husak, Ceausescu….and so on; socialism and fascism have a long history of coexistence and Britain today is very much a democratic socialist state.

While parliament shows no leadership, refuses to hold this government to account, what this country most closely resembles, to its undying shame, as its own government servants admit, is a totalitarian grosser reich: socialist fascism.

Shameful! Shame on them! What an utter disgrace!

Last edited 4 years ago by Monro
56
-2
Moist Von Lipwig
Moist Von Lipwig
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

Hitler was a socialist to his dying day.

Mussolini’s economic policy of corporatism was identical to the British Labour party’s of guild socialism

7
-1
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Moist Von Lipwig

There’s enough burbling nonsense from assorted duggies out in Covidland. Keep partisan nonsense for that forum.

4
-5
Rowan
Rowan
4 years ago
Reply to  Moist Von Lipwig

Mussolini came to a nasty end and the Labour Party has been a slow motion train wreck for years, but even this not enough for some, so Starmer was sent in to finish the job, once and for all. All going nicely to plan.

5
0
RickH
RickH
4 years ago
Reply to  Monro

“socialism and fascism have a long history of coexistence and Britain today is very much a democratic socialist state.”

More one-eyed bollocks from the monomaniacs of the right – just like the Covidmaniacs – paddling their own leaking canoe with the virus paddle.

If we want to get into this sort of partiality and misrepresentation, lets consider the close historical links of the right in the UK to totalitarian enterprises, and the close links of the monarchy and aristocracy to fascism ….

7
-13
Noumenon
Noumenon
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

“If we want to get into this sort of partiality and misrepresentation, lets consider the close historical links of the right in the UK to totalitarian enterprises, and the close links of the monarchy and aristocracy to fascism ….”

And by extension, socialism. As Tim Bidie said, socialism and fascism have a long history of coexistence. You don’t have one without the other as they are both authoritarian, moneterist and statist.

7
0
Monro
Monro
4 years ago
Reply to  RickH

Whataboutery……adding nothing whatsoever to the discussion.

The problem, today, in this country, is democratic socialism, an overmighty public sector, particularly the pooterish apparatchiks of health and education, directly responsible for devising any number of totalitarian, illiberal, measures, unsupported by the balance of data based evidence, pushed through a supine parliament by a government of hopeless nincompoops.

You may not have the intellectual honesty to call out this behaviour by our government for what it manifestly is: socialist fascism, but you are in a minority on this site, if not, to our great shame, in the country at large.

10
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
4 years ago

The Little Hitlers will hang onto their power as long as they can. It we be up to people to get together and force them to back down. Then mark them for further action once things settle down.

26
0
Marmalade
Marmalade
4 years ago

I see the words “request” and “ask”. I don’t see the words “must” and “tell”.

So no masks it is then!

29
0
JayBee
JayBee
4 years ago

“Given the negative impact that face coverings have on teaching, learning and wellbeing and current epidemiological information”
vs.
“the majority of students were now used to wearing them and that it would be sensible to continue with masks in the short term”

And the former is the closest they have come sofar to admitting that introducing them was WRONG.
As such, the latter demonstrates nicely the decay into a general state of idiocy amongst the young.
We’re doomed, and those young fully deserve it.

22
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
4 years ago

The simplest way to resolve this:

Sack the head teacher.

Not only is he a danger to children he is clearly very stupid.

He needs a period of re-education.
😀

37
-1
tom171uk
tom171uk
4 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

He’s not stupid, just trying to keep his job. Another victim of Project Fear.

3
0
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  tom171uk

No courage then.

0
-1
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Having been educated just after the war, my experience of teachers leads me to believe that they never get beyond the age of the children they teach. There is a real world out there but they seem not to evolve in it.

0
-1
crazypaving
crazypaving
4 years ago

This is why I fight these stupid rules. I get the usual ‘it’s only a mask what’s the problem?’ and then they all think these rules wi magically disappear whenever we are finally allowed (won’t be June will it?) I worked for the public sector, these rules never go because someone says ‘we’re keeping people safe’ by keeping them. In the same way my kids school claim they’re keeping everyone safe by asking for masks as drop off and pick up, outdoors. Meanwhile teachers aren’t wearing masks in classroom along with my 6 year old so why are we being asked to do so outdoors? To keep people safe of course. How dare I challenge them? These stupid rules won’t go unless we simply say no.

36
-1
Mr Taxpayer
Mr Taxpayer
4 years ago
Reply to  crazypaving

Anyone who says it’s just a mask, what’s the problem, I invite to wear one for the rest of their miserable, pettifogging life.

1
0
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  crazypaving

Just don’t do it it then. You are conditioned by the public sector job to obey.
You are a free individual so act like one.

0
0
Norman
Norman
4 years ago

The government apparently doesn’t think masks work.

Opera Snapshot_2021-05-14_161910_www.telegraph.co.uk.png
12
0
Susan
Susan
4 years ago

Students are “used to them anyway.” They’ve been thoroughly brainwashed and conditioned.

28
0
helenf
helenf
4 years ago
Reply to  Susan

It’s like saying a victim of domestic abuse is used to being abused, so they can put up with it for a while longer.

29
0
Annie
Annie
4 years ago
Reply to  helenf

It’s only a little slap. It’s only a little kick in the face. It’s only being pinned down with your head being knocked against the kitchen floor. It’s only being dragged round the block with your hair slammed in the car door. You get used to it.

29
0
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  helenf

Just do it. DON’T COMPLY.

1
0
SweetBabyCheeses
SweetBabyCheeses
4 years ago

But some locations are always going to be above average? That’s the notion on average. So by this logic, children in these areas should continue to wear masks forever? I despair.

8
0
tom171uk
tom171uk
4 years ago

The blame for this lies fairly and squarely with the Government. They know there is no scientific evidence for the efficacy of face coverings but decided to following the international groupthink and mandate their use. They have deliberately misled and frightened the public, and have been highly successful in doing so. And now they are hoist with their own petard.

14
0
Nessimmersion
Nessimmersion
4 years ago

From the OffGuardian:
“A good indicator of the health of a society is the health of its children.

Sadly, in the US now, with the former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director Robert Redfield saying publicly in July 2020 that deaths from suicides and drug overdoses among high school students far outweighed their deaths from Covid and failures among school children, especially high school students, is at epidemic levels, the answer to this question would have to be, “No. The children are not well. Not well at all.”

And I am astounded by the lack of outcry among most of our public officials.

For more than a year now, children and teens have been robbed of most of what gives their lives value and meaning – seeing their friends at school, club meetings, church groups, camps, family gatherings, singing groups, playing with school bands and orchestras.”
SO just like in the US our vaunted public sector specifically charged with the health and well being if the youngest couldn’t wait to kick them under the bus.
https://off-guardian.org/2021/05/14/and-how-are-the-children/

9
0
peyrole
peyrole
4 years ago

Lets be clear. Politics may enter into this, but I strongly believe the prime motivator is the jelly fish nature of most of the teaching profession in the UK. Backbones? Got to be joking. I know people can and will write about exceptions, but they are exceptions. Most teachers are ‘precious mois’ , and extremely arrogant about it.
Poor dears might get covid from their pupils….don’t have half a brain cell between them.

7
0
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  peyrole

Well said.

0
0
DoctorCOxford
DoctorCOxford
4 years ago

As long as students who wish to wear them may, then the school’s argument is taken care of…but they do not have legal permission to demand they be worn. If i was a parent there I’d send my kid to school on Monday sans mask, and if they are refused entry draw as much media attention as possible to their actions. Heads can’t decide they are just going to start doing all lessons in Latin only and using curricula for Timore Liste. The government sets policy on issues like this, for better or worse. I’m betting they had zero plans to protest the mandate when school returned (despite masking already having been proven unneeded for under 18s in educational settings). The stubbornness is always one way.

3
0
imp66
imp66
4 years ago

“Get them while they’re young”, seems to be working for these power-crazed goons, doesn’t it?

6
0
slcaley
slcaley
4 years ago

My children’s school have said masks still required in corridors and communal areas due to local infection rate! It is low, not quite as low as the uk average but not too far off about 30 per 100,000. Will be writing today.

2
0
JohnK
JohnK
4 years ago

Defensive bureaucracy and a degree of opportunism, coupled with a typical “something must be done” attitude has a long history, not just in education. It’s been manifest in a variety of industries, and related governmental servants for years. Some if it may be wise, but a lot of it is junk, which is just complied with – even if it jacks up overall costs and transfers the risk to someone else. I’m all right, jack, over to you etc.

Over to proper psychologists on this issue, I’m afraid.

2
0
DevonBlueBoy
DevonBlueBoy
4 years ago
Reply to  JohnK

It’s only the state sector that has this negative, defeatist attitude. They will get their funding irrespective of how they perform. It’s an ever open tap called taxpayers. In the commercial world risk is an accepted fact of life and it is managed. They know that if they don’t perform they won’t have a job. Is it just a coincidence that Unions are dominant in the state sector?

0
0
gedhurst
gedhurst
4 years ago

To which I say: masks don’t work, wearing one when not ill is stupid, and kids aren’t major vectors of the disease.
We know all this by now.

4
0
Tillysmum
Tillysmum
4 years ago
Reply to  gedhurst

Yes, we know it. So don’t do it.

0
0

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