Dear Mr Johnson, Will I Receive A Fine For Following Your Shielding Advice? By Lisa Mulholland

I need some urgent clarification, well me and about 800,000 other people…

You revel in your’ vaccination success’. And are using this as some of the basis as to why you are opening schools fully from the 8th March 2021.

You have boldly claimed that all the clinically extremely vulnerable are now vaccinated or at least had their first vaccine dose. And it is true, that a large chunk of those who have already been vaccinated are of an age where their children are not likely at school age.

Yet on Thursday 18th February an extra 1.7 million people were added to the Shielded Patients List. I, unfortunately was added to the list due to multiple underlying health conditions that originally placed me in category, which at this current time that I write, was not eligible for the vaccination.

It’s a marvellous, groundbreaking, quick piece research that has produced the statistics to provide the basis to be able to do this. And for that I am grateful to now be a greater priority for vaccination and shielding support.

However out of that 1.7 million, there are 800,000 of those, like me, that have yet to be vaccinated, at the time I write this.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-02-16/covid-17-million-more-people-told-to-shield-and-820000-moved-up-vaccine-priority-list

Presumably for a number of reasons that would have not made them eligible previously, such as age or vulnerability, perhaps they were not previously in any priority cohort at all. And if they are of a younger age, then they are more likely to have children of school age.

And so their children will be expected back into school. In just two weeks time, they will enter an environment with hundreds of other children containing the remnants of all of the social contact that hundreds of their parents have had, such as when they go to work or to the supermarket.

Will those 800,000 clinically extremely vulnerable new shielders be vaccinated in time? And even if they have their first dose by 8th March will it provide any protection by then?

And if so, doesn’t this go against the advice we have received which is that we should continue to shield until 31st March at the earliest?

How can it be that I am not allowed to go to a pharmacy, or supermarket yet I am allowed to drive my children and walk them up to the school gates and allow them to go into three separate schools, with three separate sets of school staff, three separate sets of school communities and mix with them? And then come home to me. Eat with me, hug me, share a house with me.

If I choose to follow your shielding advice to the letter (and not just the letter but in the very spirit the shielding advice was created: to protect myself and the NHS from covid 19) and I make a logical decision in keeping with that spirit to keep my children at home until I am allowed out of shielding, will I get fined?

It seems ludicrous that I could potentially get a fine for following government advice, but it also seems ludicrous that a phased return to school is not going to happen. After the scientific advisers have told you this needs to happen and after lessons learned from September 2020.

Please please allow us shielding parents with school aged children to have some flexibility about whether we let our children return. Let us decide whether or not to send them back without the worry of receiving a fine.

Please.

Our lives will depend on it.

Class of 2020: My Son Is More Than A Statistic By Lisa Mulholland

If algorithms are picking my sons GCSE grades, then he will surely fail.

This government have played games with our children’s education for too long.

They changed the exam grading system, made exams more linear and made the curriculum so much harder in the last four years.

It almost felt like they were deliberately trying to make things harder. Trying to squeeze our children into a ‘one size fits all’ exam system. The previous system allowed for more differentiation, because some courses were more coursework based and allowed for different skills to shine through. But they changed it and made it more restrictive.

Our children and teachers adapted though and found new ways to prepare children for exams. Jumping through smaller and smaller hoops…

My son, has been allowed to stick with some of the older curriculums for his GCSEs because he attends a specialist school. The teachers have already put in the work to make the case for children who need more differentiation. And luckily they were successful in that.

My son has autism, ADHD, dyspraxia, a severe visual impairment and generalised anxiety disorder. He attends a specialist school. On paper, or according to the algorithms, he’s not going to do well in his GCSEs. It was a battle to even think this day would come where he would be able to sit those GCSEs.

Statistically, only 16% of adults with autism are in full time employment. Statistically the odds are against him.

And yet his reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

Yes he has a ‘spiky profile’. He’s in the 99th centile for his English and Science, yet really struggles with his writing ability due to joint hypermobility that affects his hands. His educational psychologist called him ‘gifted’ but only with the support and tools he needs for his disability. And so those subjects where he struggles, he has now managed to get to a level that is acceptable for him.

This is a whistle stop statement of the last four years.

I cannot even begin to tell you the work that has been put in over the years.

However despite his many issues, his teachers who have taught him over the years have all said things like “he will be something amazing when he’s older”

“he has a brilliant mind and he has the type of brain that will change the world”…

Those are quite vain statements, however I only include them to demonstrate the disparity between what my son looks like on paper and what his reality actually is. This is to highlight the point that a statistic cannot tell you everything about someone. And this is why the Class of 2020 need to be seen as more than just an unfortunate cohort of statistics.

With support in exams; a room on his own, a laptop for extended writing pieces, my son actually performs exceptionally well in exams. He loves them! He thrives in tests.

He has big plans for his future and he always does what he sets out to do. He wants to be an architect. He plans to go to university in 2022. He has set out his pathway with back up arrangements if he doesn’t get the grades he needs .

Despite the odds stacked against him I truly believe he will be in the minority of his algorithm category, for want of a better word. I hope that will be in that 16% that will go on to have a full time job.

He’s completed some qualifications already, he’s done his functional skills exams and performed very well.

But this has only been achieved through years of struggle and overcoming many hurdles. His teachers and I have worked incredibly hard to build confidence. To help with panic attacks that just make him block out the world and not be able to concentrate. He’s been taught exam techniques, and ways in which to overcome his inattention due to his ADHD.

We had got it down to a fine art. His actual art and design work is the level of a grade 9, and his history and science are around about that of a level 7. Other subjects that he struggles with and has no interest in, were predicted around a 4. Amazing for him and what he needs to do every day just to be able to attend school, sit quietly in a classroom, let alone think, or concentrate.

But the A level travesty last week is not filling me with hope that he will get the grades he deserves. The algorithms have moderated the grades; not by teacher assessment but by background, area or type of school setting.

So what chance does an autistic child at a specialist school have?

The algorithms are against him. This government is taking this opportunity to once again compound inequality.

No student from Eton missed out on their predicted grade though!

The statistics won’t tell them how well an individual child has worked, what difficulties they’ve overcome, or what their dreams and hopes are. How many of them now have their hopes dashed?

I cannot speak for those children in depth because I don’t know them, but it doesn’t take a genuis to know that children can and do perform differently to how their class/ race/ gender/ disability statistically performs.

The statistics won’t tell them that my son is resilient.

But I can tell you that he is.

His teachers and I can tell you that four years ago we had been through two secondary mainstream schools. We’d been refused help from CAMHS until I’d written a letter that somehow went viral and I ended up on TV. We then finally received some support from CAMHS which changed his life for the better.

He eventually got into the school that met his needs and they have turned his life around; from an anxious boy who was school refusing; to the boy who skipped his lunch break to go into the classroom to work harder on his projects and coursework.

And everything in between. From sliding work to his hunched over self with his hands over his head. Every day his teacher would slide a piece of work under his face and walk away. Slowly but surely his head started to lift. Until eventually he would do the work. In the end he used to be so animated with his work that he would take over some of the lessons and be helping his other anxious counterparts.

Will they listen to his teachers that are incredibly skilled not just in the subjects they teach but in the emotional support they provide to the children at his school. And in the creative ways that they adjust the curriculum to meet the children’s needs? I’m sure his teachers aren’t the only ones. Teachers up and down the country work so hard getting to know their students and what they are capable of. So why not let them decide?

It is not like anyone is expecting a free for all, finger in the air type guessing game of what grades the children should get; they have to prove those children are capable of those grades…. they worked hard at this with not much notice and living through a pandemic themselves, so why aren’t they being listened to?

I can only hope that somehow my son will get the grades he deserves.

My story is just one out of millions. Each student has their own story. Unfortunately the ones with the biggest stories and ones who have jumped the highest hurdles are likely to be the ones who will be graded most unfairly.

Millions of other students on Thursday will be in the same position. Waiting for their fate to be decided with bated breath. Because they had the misfortune of being the class of 2020. Living through a pandemic isn’t enough stress for them, they now have to wait to see what grades are fished out according to background, and bloody algorithms !!!!

For most of those students, the stakes are higher than they are for my son. They are waiting to go to university, or the college of their dreams… at least my son is guaranteed a place at his sixth form and for that we are lucky but what about the others?

They have already missed out on so much, the rites of passages that comes with ending school. Saying goodbye to friends and teachers. Having the experience of sitting their exams.

Everything about this year has been rushed and clinical. The least the examining boards could do was actually follow the teacher assessments and allow the experts to decide?

One thing is for sure: us parents of the class of 2020 will not take this lying down.

If you would like to support us, here is a link to complain to the DfE

https://form.education.gov.uk/en/AchieveForms/?form_uri=sandbox-publish://AF-Process-f1453496-7d8a-463f-9f33-1da2ac47ed76/AF-Stage-1e64d4cc-25fb-499a-a8d7-74e98203ac00/definition.json&redirectlink=%2Fen&cancelRedirectLink=%2Fen

COVID-19: What It Means For My Family As A Young, But Vulnerable Group By Lisa Mulholland

The media is saturated with scientific talk, statistics and projections regarding the Coronavirus COVID-19. It’s enough to give any reasonable person some anxiety at least.

The panic buying of hand sanitizer, toilet roll, cleaning products, tinned foods is out of control, with queues outside of shops before they open. Which is a major inconvenience for me as someone who needs these products in abundance due to being a carer for my 6 year old who is disabled and incontinent who myself has diabetes and needs to test my blood sugar levels when out and about.

We are constantly hearing about other countries going on lockdown. Which becomes scarier when it becomes our European neighbours; Italy, France, Spain, Ireland … as the fear intensifies we look to our leaders and the authorities for reassurance.

But instead we get the complete opposite.

Boris Johnson said “ Many of YOUR loved ones will die before their time”…..

I mean, have you ever heard anything like this?

Then he went on to discuss herd immunity. As if the numbers and statistics of the people that are going to die are just that. But the vulnerable and the elderly are real people.

And right now, I , along with millions more, feel like my life doesn’t really matter. I have diabetes, several heart conditions, a disability ( Ehlers Danlos Syndrome) that can sometimes trigger autoimmune responses called mast cell activation disorder and I have 3 children that have various disabilities.

I am considered a ‘high risk group’ when it comes to most things. I have routine flu jabs, I have medical exemption from prescription charges, but I do not know whether I am a high risk group for this new virus.

I have received zero instruction. Zero advice.

When I search for the advice ( as of today , this could change very quickly) it is very flimsy indeed. I kind of feel like the decision is being left up to me about how to proceed. I am not a medical expert and I think we as a nation, especially the vulnerable groups should be given more direction.

If I get a basic cold, my body can do really strange things. My mast cells( the cells that detect a threat or a virus and are meant to protect us) go into overdrive and start attacking everything. Once I had dry eyes, I rubbed it slightly. Within an hour I couldn’t see out of my left eye. I went to my GP who sent me to the emergency eye department. After a series of tests they said my body had gone into overdrive and given me an ulcer on my cornea! I didn’t even know this was possible. But this is how strange my condition is.

What could an unknown virus do?

Let alone the impact on the diabetes or my heart…

My 6 year old has autism, global delay and suspected epilepsy and he goes to a specialist school where some of the children have conditions like cystic fibrosis that mean they’re on oxygen tanks/ tube fed. Most of the children there (700 of them as it is from age 2-19) will have underlying health issues. They’ve not sent out any information as yet because our leadership, our government have clearly not thought about them in their containment or delay ‘strategy’.

And when the media states this virus doesn’t affect children, do they mean all children? My children have the same condition as me. My 10 year old gets a cold and then the next minute he has an infected hand or limb. What would be the implications for him?

Or did they think about them and decide that they are one of the “many loved ones” that we will “lose”.

My eldest autistic son’s specialist school has children with autism but a lot of them have comorbid underlying health issues and they have taken matters into their own hands advising us to keep the children home if they are anxious or have underlying health conditions. They said they won’t mark any absences during this period.

Part of me wants to be safe, then another part of me thinks if this is going to go on for months then I’m not sure what to do. Do I send them in now before the real danger hits? Or has it already hit but we don’t know because we aren’t routinely testing? These are rhetorical questions but the governments’ lack of direction is shocking and dangerous.

We are people and we have value. We matter and we want guidance now.