3,122

of 5,000 signatures

Petition text

To the UK Government and local health chiefs,

Please guarantee access to testing if exposed to a COVID positive child. Regularly test all school staff i.e. every 2 weeks. When Rapid Testing is launched, please make sure school staff are near the top of the list.

It's great to be back in school but the Government need to stop taking it for granted that staff in schools are invincible and will manage ok through this pandemic without better testing.

Let me start by saying that my school is actually probably above average: masks in common areas, and any student or staff who wants to wear a mask can, one-way system, table cleaning and invitation to keep windows open. But it is not enough: rooms are cramped and overcrowded, there is no real control in mixing at lunch time, extra practices like table cleaning feel pointless in the light of what's missing and there's just not enough time to care about that as well. Students sit next to each other and there's nothing stopping transmission among them.

At my school 30+ students have tested positive, 20+ staff have tested positive. The school is doing everything this government is telling us to. We are still getting infected. The only way we'll get a handle on this is a better and more immediate testing system.

Please guarantee access to testing if exposed to a COVID positive child. Regularly test all school staff i.e. every 2 weeks. And give schools more than 10 postal test kits which cannot be restocked.

Here's what teachers and other education workers are saying on Organise:

"They send pupils home to self-isolate if they have been in contact with pupils with confirmed covid. However, the staff are expected to carry on working when they have been in contact with the same pupils. If we had rapid testing we could isolate and know if its safe for us to return to school."

"We're trying to do proper social distancing, but the rooms and buildings are not big enough. Also it’s impossible to support SEN students adequately without being close. It's nearly winter and windows are now being closed. Bubbles not working as kids mix at break times. No transparency as to whether there are any possible cases. Due to budget restrictions, staff cover is stretched - so we have to move between bubbles. We are struggling. I've been placed in 5 bubbles over a week."

"Teachers have to do their own cleaning after the kids have left. Only the communal areas are cleaned but not thoroughly. We're used to this now. Teaching with during Covid-19 is okay, I prefer it to lockdown but I do worry about catching it, it feels inevitable so I guess in that sense I don’t feel safe."

"My issue is for TAs, of which I am one. While teachers remain behind hazard warning tape. I cannot do my job without getting close to my students. I am nearly 65 years old and feel so so vulnerable, the school are not interested. We are in Tier 2, ‘no mixing indoors’, but I am in the midst of hundreds of children daily."

"The terror of catching Covid at my age and of being hospitalised and potentially dying. I cannot afford to resign and management say I have to just carry on."

"The uncertainty that we can't confirm if we have Covid and how much risk we’re taking to just keep the school open. I'm having to run about from place to place to teach in different year group bubbles."

"It is very cold with all the ventilation required - doors and windows open. Adults and children are layering up but its the wind flowing through the building to be honest. The heating is not on and the school feel it is a waste of resources. I don't know how much longer we can keep the windows open."

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Rapid Covid-19 testing in ALL schools

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