THIS POST CONTAINS MY STRONG VIEWS AROUND CORONAVIRUS, THESE ARE MY OWN VIEWS, AND OF THE GOVERNMENT AND THE CHOICES AROUND EDUCATION.

This week should of been the week that children go back to the classroom. However, in true British style, there is another covid-19 national lockdown. This infuriates me for a number of reasons. Including, and not limited to:

We are not teachers, let alone SEN teachers
We are not therapists.
We can’t possibly do the work of the therapists that are trained to do what they do. Therapists are too highly trained
School staff were undoubtedly an afterthought when the powers that be decided on things like going back to the classroom, testing and PPE.
School staff deserve to work in safety like other industries.
They are key workers.
They take care of critical key worker’s children. This means they are critical key workers too.
Schools and education are our children’s future
Even elective home educators are being let down in this pandemic.

As you can see I’m quite vocal on it. And despite my joy that Charlie can go back, I know that it is an incredibly difficult time for many, with unfortunately a lot of judgement from communities that believe in what they think is right.

It also infuriates me as I truly believe that in this country, we have lacked positive stable leadership that has lead to a number of mistakes and poor decisions and this has made the situation so much worse. As I spoke about on the Christmas blog, I had a friend stay with me over Christmas my friend was from Ukraine an Eastern European country. The situation there is very different!!

Their capital city city Kyiv is 323 square miles with a population of 3million people.
The whole of the Ukraine is 233,100 square miles and a population of 44,390 million.
London has a population of almost 9million and is 607 square miles.
England has a population of 58 million and is 51,328 square miles.
The rate of deaths in Ukraine as a whole is 19,357 as of 6th January.
The rate of deaths in England is 66,626 as of 6th January.

As you can see there is a vast difference in the way the cities and countries have been handling the virus and the effect that it has has on the countries. This both shocks me and infuriates me. My friend had to self isolate when she got here, and was only able to travel locally for walks/outdoor activities. We saw one other person, outside. Once her self isolation was up, she did get a chance to explore a bit further however, we didn’t go far and we didn’t have long to explore, again we only visited places outside. After she flew home she is now self isolating in Ukraine for a further 2 weeks.

And this is why I am so upset at the government’s handling of this pandemic, Ukraine is 4 times the size of England and there is just 14 million people difference. The sheer size of the population of London, why did they ever go into tier 2!!! What happened there? It is a huge densely populated area, tier 2 was the wrong decision.

And now, we are all suffering, spikes in cases and deaths from the virus means that we are all back in a national lockdown and we are even more frightened of the deadly killer virus than we ever have been. There is a new strain and this is exclusive to England, why? Because we didn’t take more strict draconian measures when we should and the failings from the government in leadership skills and not following covid secure measures and models from international countries (New Zealand) has meant we really are in a pickle.

So back to school!! We have been given the go ahead to go back. This will always be done with the safety of the staff members. Luckily, Charlie’s school means that he will have an exclusive 1:1 and exclusive classroom just for his use. if you have been following me for some time, you will know Charlie only accesses education for 1 hour twice a week with 1 hour horse riding. However, horse riding will not be available to him during this lockdown. So although, it might seem like a massive achievement to get him into school, actually it only equates to 2 hours 3 maximum.

Extra measures have been put in, and the school staff will be tested every Monday morning. A positive test would mean the whole school closes and a deep clean will take place.

I for one am looking forward to my 2 hours of respite and making sure Charlie’s barrier to learning is not damaged any more.

We all have our own way of dealing with this awful virus please don’t bash each other about it (feel free to bash the government though).

Love G XX