Indeed, I've managed such set-ups for DR, lived in a container for a while and worked from another.
However this requires space, money and effort (especially organisational). The former is pretty tricky, especially in urban schools, the latter are things the current UKGov has demonstrated a grievous lack of. Then there are the necessary child management personnel, who'll need training and vetting.

It's just a rabbit...

They could probably just use the existing pub staff. Those people are already used to dealing with rowdy adult infants ... drunk ones at that. Handling pre-teens ought to be a piece of cake.

I now have a mental image of a misbehaving child being thrown out on the street and told to come back when they're sober! :eye-poppi

I did not say it's easy, just that's it quite possible to secure additional classroom space with effort and some funding.

The alternative the British 'government' is trying to pull off is social distancing of 35 kids in a classroom designed to squeeze in 26. That is outright impossible.

McHrozni

Another alternative is to, like most other countries who are planning to get students back to school whilst maintaining social distancing, accept that not all students will be back in school and/or not all students will be in school full time.

This is a viable approach if the primary concerns are the education of those pupils and maintaining public health.

The UK's primary concern seems to be to make sure that adults no longer have childcare responsibilities during the day and are therefore free to rejoin the workforce. The government guidelines for ensuring that workplaces are safe are vague which means that many of those adults are running the risk of going into an unsafe working environment. For example maintaining a two metre social distance may be largely irrelevant if workers are sharing an indoor working space with air re-circulation.

Then again, it'll largely be the less well off who won't have the option to continue to work from home if they choose to do so. People like myself who do "indoor work with no heavy lifting" can work quite adequately from home and those, like myself, who have nice big houses have the space to work uninterrupted and would also have space, and resources, so that children could study. The less well off will have to go back to work and their children will have to go back to school.

That said, I haven't heard of large-scale outbreaks of Coronavirus among supermarket workers so perhaps the risks of sharing a socially distanced working environment are very low.

Yes, it's impossible, but simply saying it gets them a couple of days of nice headlines in their favourite rags.

All of the nonsense that is currently going on is entirely down to maintaining a set of "happy" headlines.

That's their strategy, such as it is.

They'll worry about the impossibility of it all come September.

So continuing down the "it's doable, it's doable" route is a bit pointless when we are currently run by cretins.

It’s getting serious: Marmite supplies hit by Covid-19 beer brewing slowdown

Simon Clarke (housing minister) say Britain was always going to be hugely exposed to the coronavirus because we're a global travel hub.

So did it occur to them maybe that they should have put in travel restrictions and quarantine a long time ago?

Noooooooooo !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fortunately I have about one and a half 600g "catering" packs of Marmite stockpiled which should last a considerable time. The great thing about Marmite is that it doesn't go off, and even if it did, I'm not sure how you'd tell that it had.

This is not an unreasonable goal, the sooner the country gets back on track the better. I'm just saying how this can still be achieved while still moderating the risk of outbreaks. It's not ideal by any stretch.

UK had two major issues - the first was that it locked down way too late, the second is that it wasn't really much of a lockdown, which made it ineffective. Continuing on the path of a semi-permanent semi-lockdown is the worst of both worlds. If the country wishes to reopen more than it wishes to keep people alive then the reasonable way forward is to mitigate the risks as much as possible.

McHrozni

That would have required planning and decisive proactive action and because of that wasn't even considered...:mad:

Much better to dither about, be reactive, continually switch strategies, shut the stable door when the horse is just a distant memory and pretend the negative consequences were inevitable and/or someone else's fault.

You're right, getting people back to work not an unreasonable goal, but IMO it is an unreasonable primary objective in the middle of a national health crisis related to a deadly pandemic.

IMO it's also cowardly to attempt to hide this primary objective behind claims that it's all about education and ensuring that children from disadvantaged backgrounds don't fall further behind.

IMO if you want to get all students back to school full time then you need to make sure that the circumstances are right for that to happen - very low or zero cases, with effective tracking and tracing in place - not by simply asserting that it is going to happen, make schools responsible for making it happen and not providing additional resources to enable them to do so.

Yes the UK government has bungled things completely.

Poll after poll shows that the country doesn't want to reopen quickly, it's the government who is forcing the pace.

Tory back benchers are pushing for the 2m rule to be relaxed to 1m to 'help get the economy moving'

No. The return to normalcy needs to be measured against the inevitable deaths, hospitalisations and other consequences of increased virus spread.

What I don't understand is why there is all this "before the school holidays" - the most obvious thing would be for the long school holidays to be canceled, giving schools another 6 weeks in which to ramp up, identify kids most at need and so on.

And so it has started. Blame the scientists

John redwood: "The scientists advising the government chose the date for lock down. Why has one of them now said that was wrong?"

Where do the containers come from? Are there sufficient available? Who carries out the fit-outs and who certifies them? Where are they placed? Are there utility connections? Where do the supervisory staff come from? Who organises, vets and pays them?

Who pays for the containers and the necessary modifications? Speaking from personal experience a used 12m box costs around €4k just for the box. Pre-fab office units start at around €15k for a basic 12m layout. A 6m bathroom unit costs about €5k on top of the container price.

No the other alternative is not re-opening schools prematurely.

Isn't that what they would do to them in regular school?

It's what happens here.

Unless thy're black, then they cuff 'em and take 'em downtown.

The UK government is reconsidering the contact tracing application:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52995881

Oh well, the app which was previously a vital component of the Track and Trace system which was itself a key element of the UK reducing its alert level and reducing the lockdown restrictions is not just the cherry on top of a system which ministers refuse to give any statistics about and in any case the government is lifting lockdown restrictions well in advance of the conditions they had previously claimed were prerequisites and pretty much ignoring the science.

If it wasn't for the fact that Dido Harding and her chums stand to make a pretty penny out of it, I'm sure they'd have just knocked it on the head. Instead this white elephant will lurch along to its inevitable, expensive failure..........

Don't know about the UK but over here there is a burgeoning business in containers already fitted as office space. Multiple sizes and configurations. All fitted out, certified to code, etc.. If hook-ups are unavailable then generators and Port-a-Jons are used instead. Drive past any construction site of reasonable size and you'll see one or more of them. They are ubiquitous. (And I too am speaking from personal experience. I've had them rented and set up on more than a few building sites.)

My understanding was that the idea of such temporary alternatives was because they could be put in place quickly. As a capital investment they probably aren't the wisest course, but if you need something in a hurry and don't plan to keep it there they are a good alternative. Hell, the U.S. military assembles field hospitals out of them in war zones, complete with surgical suites and all. They can be very adaptable and effective.


I agree completely with this, but you've got the politicians y'all voted into office, and that's that. You may have to settle for next best.

In yesterday’s PMQs Boris was complaining that Kier Starmer has “one brief on one day and another brief on the next”. Of course he does, he’s addressing the government’s position of the day.

It was so rehearsed yesterday (about attacking Labour for so called changing their minds) the Tories may as well got their phones out and said "Dominic sent an email, give me a minute and I'll read you our prepared media-friendly soundbite of the day."

I'm stunned at these comments about the current track and trace system:rolleyes:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl...ost_type=share

IMO that's one heck of an understatement.

Scotland has done less than England to loosen lockdown restrictions.

Scotland's R-number has fallen significantly - as has the number of Coronavirus cases.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/worl...ost_type=share

Boris Johnson would likely use this news to significantly relax restrictions immediately. Nicola Sturgeon is being a wee bit more canny:

And when you're over run with foxes we'll send you their natural predator, the chinless twat in a red jacket.

This is getting serious. Two slices of home baked bread, toasted with thick layer of Marmite gets me through the day!

Why, it's almost like Johnson doesn't appreciate what the role of the Opposition is...

I think he was trying to have a dig at Starmer's past as a lawyer, when he was required to give his best efforts to his clients irregardless of his personal feelings on any matter. Contrast that to the unassailable commitment to principal of a man who wrote two articles for the Telegraph, one supporting and one opposing Brexit before deciding which one if submitted would benefit his own hunger for personal power more.

There is a similar business in the UK, and most countries. However while the can supply smallish numbers of modded pre-fabbed container offices for disaster recover scenarios, low hundreds, they cannot cope with the surge in demand from reducing class sizes. For example a scenario where such classrooms are needed for one-fifth of the current school-going children, and allowing for fifteen children per 12m container [both very optimistic numbers], over one hundred thousand such containers would be needed. That's a capital outlay of [again optimistically] one billion Euro.

My point regarding fit-out and certification is that such containers are not typically intended for children, do not have size appropriate fittings, do not have 'child safe' features. While I believe such fit-outs are available, so there will be plans for them, there is no way anyone could cope with such a sudden demand without massive expansion.

Then there is the issue of supervision, utility connections (i.e. power, water, sewage, data) to the container farms, supervision of so many units and space for them all. Stacking containers [let us assume] four high and allowing minimal spacing for access [fifteen square metres per stack] would require 1,250 blocks each 30 metres square. Such a density would require significant transport resources to bus in children.

It's an nice idea, but utterly unfeasible.


Also I'm not a UKian, I didn't vote for these corrupt, incompetent, cretins.

We can cope with those.

Breaking News : Scottish scientists investigate 5-A-Day causes COVID-19.

Cool.

Say, you guys fancy a road trip?

Some good news at last!

Now, if only there's a way you could build a wall to keep them out.

Could an election strategy this stupid every work? Yes[emoji16]

I'm not arguing with that. It's just that BJ's priorities aren't so much "keep UK alive" as they are to keep his donors happy.

This too is a reasonable objective. Now, is it the most appropriate objective for this time or not is a well-founded question, but that goal isn't unreasonable in on itself.

Another option is for children to attend class either two or three times per week. Disadvantaged children (defined by grades) attend three times.

I'm not saying BJ did anything well (or at all) in this regard. I'm just trying to point out how the objective of reopening the country can be met with moderate expense. It is indeed possible, not easy and the expense is not minimal either, but it remains within the realm of possibility.

This is not limited to the epidemic. There are 18 days left to either conclude a deal with the EU is possible within the next 6 months, or else agree to an extension. Unlike with the act of Brexit, there's international law that has to be upheld and one of the provisions is such extensions must be made six months prior to the end date. There is no extending this deadline in late December. Between the epidemic and no-deal Brexit, Scotland may indeed just push for seccession and get away with it too.

If there is no deal and no extension, BJ may indeed be the man that tears the Union apart.

McHrozni

Possibly although I don't think donors have quite as much sway in the UK as they do in, say, the US. IMO it's more likely that his sole priority is remaining Prime Minister.

Exactly, a competent government which is genuinely interested in the education of the less advantaged would do something like this.

The UK government's plan of opening up the schools but not providing any resources and making the schools responsible for the "minor details" of how to keep pupils safe whilst educating them shows that they are neither competent nor interested in the educational outcomes of the less advantaged.

Your suggestions really weren't at all practical primarily because they couldn't scale.

I think the correct term is independence ;)

A no-deal Brexit is the desired outcome for the UK government. The current shenanigans aren't incompetence, they're a deliberate tactic. :mad:

Indeed I suspect that in private conversations many of the pro-Brexit side are rather happy Brexit has been pushed of the front page.

And I don't think that is a far fetched speculation as we know many of them were for Brexit regardless of the cost to the country, they were of a "sacrifices have to made (by other people)" approach.

Well yeah, that's the goal, but the way to do it is to keep a purse ready to run a reelection campaign. I just stated the main tactical goal.

It could also be incompetence at work. The government doesn't have any answers so it asks the principals to provide those for them. Pretend like those answers are easy and don't require Whitehall and at least some of the electorate will beleive you.

None scale well enough. Given the enormity of the problem no single solution could do. If you wanted to do it right you'd need a host of solutions, some to reduce the number of children that need oversight and some to provide alternative schooling places and additional capabilities of oversight.

Achieving the same quality as before isn't really doable, at all. Video classroom is decidedly second rate compared to a proper classroom. It's still a whole lot better than nothing though.

Yes, yes. Either is fine :)

Maybe. They still bungled it up completely.

McHrozni

Airlines are going out of business. Airports are packed with grounded planes. There must be many seats available, each with a screen and little desk.
I say turn them into classrooms!
:D