Should teachers be prioritised for vaccination over half-term?
There is much in the news today about vaccinating school teachers and staff during the half-term break to allow schools to return to normality faster, having a positive impact on children’s education and mental health.
Britain’s top schools have unveiled a bold plan to vaccinate the country’s entire teaching staff and get pupils back into the classroom.
Headteachers have drawn up a detailed blueprint to get the educational workforce, including support staff, inoculated over the February half-term week.
The ambitious scheme could prove a political lifeline to Prime Minister Boris Johnson as he faces mounting calls to put teachers at the front of the queue for jabs and prevent more catastrophic damage to the prospects of millions of locked-down children.
Under the emergency scheme, 150 independent schools and state academies would become vaccination hubs with medically trained staff inoculating school workers for 16 hours a day.
The plan’s architects claim that ‘most or even all’ of England’s one million school and nursery teachers, teaching assistants and support staff, including dinner ladies and caretakers, could be vaccinated within the week
By using the stocks of the vaccine on these key workers the trade-off would mean the delay in vaccinating the vulnerable groups set out in the vaccination programme.
The plan is being backed by the Leader of the Labour party. Boris Johnson has challenged Sir Keir Starmer to “explain which vaccines he would take from which vulnerable groups” in order to achieve the vaccination of teachers. He claimed the prime minister “hasn’t got a plan” for the reopening of schools and said a “first step” should be the vaccination of all teachers and school staff during the “window” of next month’s half-term.
What are your views? Do you think this makes sense? Is the vaccination trade-off a good idea? If the vulnerable people are shielding does it make more sense to use the vaccine stocks in this way?
What are your views?
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As a supply teacher a vaccination would offer me protection and I would be able to return to working in schools and to help where help is desperately needed in catching young people up in their education.
Teachers have been expected on occasions during this pandemic to continue as if nothing is happening around them. They are expected to face up to some 150 students a day in secondary, entirely without protection.
The teaching unions are rightly against teachers being exposed to a potentially fatal virus in this way. If you want to get the unions and their members on side, the kids back in school, and parents freed to continue working, then VACCINATE NOW.
In this thread there have been so many different prioritised sections of society that have been put forward that there could now be a shortage of vaccine to go round !!!
Parents would feel more confident about children returning to school if staff were vaccinated
I appreciate the concerns about children's eduction and their mental health, but I can assure you that older and vulnerable people who have had to shield for nearly a year - that's confined to your house and garden (if you have one)- are also experiencing problems with their mental health. No one is immune from the problems a pandemic brings, but until we all learn to respect and support each other, how will we survive.
It stongly suggested that the staff room was a lot more dangerous than the class room
I also think anyone who has to go out to work and mix should be vaccinated. . I know people who have been out to work from week 1, most are having to take their holidays now, and they are more likely to catch it.
It’s difficult, but at least me and my husband can stay at home.
Personally, I would promote shop workers and then police.
What this does show is that everyone is entitled to have their windge in this country, this is democracy.
Stay safe.
It is definitely not teachers who have the closest and prolonged contact. I worked in a school for 16 years and there are many others who are just as close to students throughout every day helping them with their work; looking after them if they are poorly; sitting next to them in class and assisting them throughout every lesson. It's a misconception that teachers do it all in a school and all other staff have no dealings with the students. It is a multi-team effort; teachers alone do not keep schools functioning.
I think what angers me as a teacher is the way that if someone else is furloughed on nearly all of their salary, no one complains. But if a teacher isn't seen to be working his/her socks off, everyone complains. There was even a "snitch line" which parents could use to report teachers. Does this exist for other professions, I wonder?
I agree that there is an argument for teachers to be considered along with such as police, fire brigade, shop workers and others that have direct contact with large numbers of people before other groups but NOT at the expense of older people and those considered clinically vulnerable. Critical workers who are in the older age groups and those considered more vulnerable will get theirs along with the rest in the priority groups anyway. I am afraid it’s just a waiting game and we all have to be patient until it’s our turn.
I know I would feel so much safer having the vaccination. I love my job, but the children do not keep distanced, and we are therefore at greater risk of catching Covid19. We don’t wear PPE and until January, we were told we didn’t need to wear masks either - as if we have an amazing tolerance to this horrible disease. So yes please allow us the vaccine soon!
I really can appreciate that getting the kids and teachers back into school is vital. Even if the teachers were given a vaccination around half term, they wouldn’t get the second one for a further 12 weeks, under the current programme, and it would be a few weeks after that, that they could expect to have full protection, and even that is an unknown for us all at the moment. Is giving the teachers a vaccination jab right now, going to immediately mean it’s safe to reopen schools fully right now. I’m not so sure. Anyway, I’m happy to wait in line for mine and will take it willingly when it comes, twice. Take care everyone.
Children need to have the best education available and being in school is the place it will happen. It will not happen at home, despite the best efforts of parents and the BBC. We need the generations in schools and universities to have the best education they can have.
In no order of priority, they are the members of society that will be the futures doctors, engineers, lawyers, teachers, skilled workers, front line staff, drivers, electricians, hairdressers, hospitality workers and so on.
This dreadful pandemic will pass and it will take us many many years to recover. We need the generations in education to be educated and ready to take on the recovery. Silversurfers like me and presumably you are not the generations that will be part of the rebuilding of the future
One more thing. For many children, the most sensible adults in their lives are the teachers at school. We already know that the incidence of child abuse and neglect at home is massively increasing. School is very often the first place that abuse, neglect and hunger in children is recognised and action is taken
I am 62 and my husband 66. We are obviously both eager to get our vaccine, but we are both retired, in good health and have no commitments which require us to leave the house so we are happy to wait a few more weeks.
As a retired infant teacher I know exactly the risks that teachers put themselves in every day.
The comment from one of the government officials yesterday made me smile......not!
The children could take the virus back into their homes but would be less likely to pass it to their teachers. Why? Oh of course its a clever virus that knows who the teachers are and wont infect them! Really!
Get the teachers vaccinated now!
The vulnerable groups were promised that they would be vaccinated first, the government has kept its word for the four top groups and they are now all being given their vaccines at the moment so for people a few years younger has the risk of serious illness or even death gone away if we catch the virus, I don’t think so!!!
The only think keeping me going through this dire lockdown was knowing that I would be getting my vaccine around end Feb/early March and could feel safe to go out once the restrictions are lifted
If the government let our generation down by allowing healthy teachers to jump the queue I think it’s despicable also teachers are no more likely to catch the virus than any other workers so are the government now going to put all workers in front of us and just leave us to continue to worry, I’m sorry for going on a bit but I feel so strongly about this, it’s making me very anxious