Summer exams in Scotland may be cancelled for a third successive year as new Government guidance means that entire classes will have to self-isolate if even one case of the Omicron variant is detected. While First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has stressed her commitment to keeping schools open, she admits that there will be a “period of disruption”. The Times has the story.
While Nicola Sturgeon said she would “bust a gut” to keep schools open, leading educationalists warned that the new guidance was likely to be “highly disruptive of children’s education” and would inevitably damage their mental health.
It came as teachers’ unions called for the early closure of schools to “fend off a new wave of infection”.
The First Minister said that there would be a “period of disruption” but insisted that there would be no “blanket” closures of schools.
“Nobody wants that,” she said. “Of course, if there are outbreaks of infections in schools then there needs to be a response to that, but I’m very clear about the importance of minimising the disruption to children’s education.”
She said that under the new guidance “all household contacts of any Covid case should isolate for ten days, regardless of the vaccination status and even if they initially get a negative PCR test”.
The new variant, added Jason Leitch, the national clinical director, had an “attack rate” of 50%. “If you have a room of 100 people and a single unknown Omicron case is in that room, you could in the days after that, find 50, 60 or 70 positives,” he said.
The scale of the impact on education was laid bare during Sturgeon’s Covid briefing today when she was told that schools in Edinburgh had been advising parents that if one child tested tested positive for Omicron, all their classmates would have to isolate for ten days even if they tested negative,
Earlier this week, a primary school in Paisley closed because of an outbreak of the Omicron variant, and a secondary school in Irvine, Sturgeon’s home town, has reverted to blended learning for the S3 year group, because of “significantly high levels of staff absence”.
The latest advice on isolating would make a “woeful situation even worse”, said Lindsay Paterson, Professor of Educational Policy at the University of Edinburgh. “This new prospective disruption to students’ learning brings into serious doubt the fairness and viability of the exams next May.”
Worth reading in full.
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Another very good reason not to pay the livence fee.
I threw the TV out on the second day of lockdown in March 2020 as I did not want either the 3 stooges in Westminster or the two in Holyrood telling me what to do. I remained mask-less throughout as well.
However, I have just been down South for 4 weeks and was able to watch TV and after 4.5 years of not seeing it, it was a shock. It is dire in every aspect – entertainment, news, comedy and weather reports to name a few. Viewers have been slowly conditioned by filth and banality in equal measure to accept the abysmal viewing which has gradually crept up on the viewer over the last few years.
Perhaps surprisingly, I mention weather reports. The script is like an episode from an Armageddon movie with a daily description of a pending apocalypse to further the ridiculous Net Zero policy. It is weather and can be calmly described as normal for our island nation in the same way for the same weather as in my youth in the 1940s and 50s.
Please do not get me started on alphabet focused lifestyles, denigration of Christianity, abortion and Starmer.
Haven’t done so for 15 years. Can’t understand those who complain about the BBC output yet still support them via the propaganda tax.
If it is assaulting your sphincter should it not be called a ‘sludgehammer’?
“What a shame it’s not more funny.”
No surprise that a Guardian writer mangles the English language. It is ‘funnier’ not ‘more funny’.
Either is fine.
What is not fine is “more funnier”.
How about just telling the truth and calling it a “PILE OF SHIT MADE PURELY FOR IDEOGICAL REASONS”
The world gets more sillier by the day.
Thing is none of this is remotely cutting edge. It’s tired and derivative and reflects a weird belief that having drag queens and transvestites on telly hasn’t been done before. The BBC and others have apparently forgotten that the genuinely funny Lilly Savage was mainstream in the 90s and about characters like Babs from League of Gentlemen (me nipples are like bullets!). More egregious is the assumption that all this ‘queering’ and cross dressing is in any way reflective of the lives and attitudes of your average gay man or lesbian who’re perfectly happy in our own skins AS men and women who don’t feel the need to cross dress and simply of that small proportion of the population attracted to members of the same sex. That’s it – no worse but certainly no better than anyone else, in no need of constant ‘celebration’ and overrepresentation in media. It’s all so embarrassing.
EGREGIOUS, ROSS??
Forgot about that!
For the Transgender crowd in female changing rooms, I’d say once they’ve gone through the full procedure then they should be aloud in female changing rooms. That should separate the genuine from the chancers.
No matter how men mutilate their bodies into a facsimile of the opposite sex, they remain men.
No balls in women’s stalls! (even if they’ve been chopped off)
yes but a fully Trans would also look out of place in a mans bathroom would they not? The only place left for them would be a disabled toilets. You don’t have to believe in the Trans pseudo science, just compromise so we all get along. TPTB thrive on divide and rule and it’s working.
That’s our problem to deal with as men. It’s not women’s. If we cannot go for a slash and not tolerate other men who dress differently, then our behaviour needs to be moderated.
I agree. A man who has had his nether regions remodeled, and gone through hormonal and other procedures to look like a woman, should be treated differently from the chancers we’re familiar with.
Who’s going to check?
Good question, maybe a form of certification.
The sooner the BBC is privatised and offered on the stock market to become a plc, thereby losing its monopoly, the better. Then with no guaranteed income, it will have to compete as a subscription service with the others, or compete for advertising, or a mix of the two as some subscription services do.
Prior to privatisation, a commercial manager will be appointed to sweep out the Augean stable, to make the BBC attractive to investors.
The question is why do successive governments keep this inefficient, self-serving entity fed from the public purse which doesn’t gave a damn about those whom it is supposed to serve and who pay for it – like the NHS?
As I have observed elsewhere their mission nowadays is the decidedly anti-Reithian “to mis-inform, propagandise and lobotomise”
Perversion.
The solution is simple, don’t watch BBC and don’t pay the TV tax.
My fear though, is what happens when the BBC tax cannot fund the BBC? It’s possible that government will fund it from general taxation and that would be the worst possible outcome at it would end up being used for state propaganda even more so than it is now.
I don’t think a subscription service would work as few would want to pay it when there are better options out there.
In the days when they made Allen Partridge, One foot in the Grave etc, they could survive, but not now. Lucky they have Bill Gates to fund the next lot of propaganda.
So in other words, another waste of licence payers money, the BBC excels at this, even friends that are gay , trans etc say why?…, still someone will have made a few quid!
The BBC has moved beyond propagandising to deliberately and systematically gas-lighting the Telly Tax payers. They are deliberately trying to provoke a reaction.
Until a majority stop watching and paying for the BBC, nothing will change.
Not with my license-fee cash, as I don’t have a licence. Only those who like it “up em” pay that after all. Why would you waste money on a licence to receive live TV when there are lots of sources of streaming on demand, many of them free, and others much better value than the tired, boring, biassed BBC?
While I like Stephen Tucker’s writing, his articles are generally far too long. He coil use a good editor!
There is a tiny corner of the BBC which broadcasts no news and plays and (some might say) controversial programmes from bygone days without any censorship. I sometimes think it has been forgotten by the ‘high-ups’ in the organisation. BBC R4X gives only quick a “this reflects the attitudes of the day” warning so that that it doesn’t offend today’s woke ears. Although I doubt many people listen to it.
Last week, they broadcast ‘Hidden Treasures’ a series of plays not heard since the 1980s. ‘Ninety Eighty Four’ in all its dystopian honesty and an Alan Plater in which a Vicar took a very placid attitude to sexual assault. Yes BBC is a vile organisation now just spouting propaganda without any attempt at balance, but listen in to 4X to hear what was the glory days of real quality radio listening.