to be massively concerned about teachers shortages until a vaccination is found

[awaywiththecircus]

This potentially will have a massive impact on our dcs education. I read a thread where a teacher stated that only 45% of her colleagues were not in the vulnerable category! What on earth does this mean for dc?

Personally I think they will say those who are vulnerable but not extremely vulnerable will be expected to teach.

Its ok - half the parents near where I live aren't sending the kids back anyway until there is a vaccine!

Personally I think they will say those who are vulnerable but not extremely vulnerable will be expected to teach.

I agree.

Older and vulnerable teachers will be required to work.

schools will recruit agency staff to cover others’ sick absences and more people with no pgce.

Also if schools open schools it will not be for all students so that might help

I’m thinking long term as well as June. Say there’s no vaccination ever, what will happen then?

What Dozer said.

I think pupil attendance will be fairly low so absent staff won't be as much of an issue as it would be if pupil attendance was at normal levels. Combined classes based around numbers rather than year groups or subjects might be implemented which is rubbish for the teachers and I would be concerned that it would be used as justification to bring in more combined class teaching by the backdoor, I can see this being the reason for teacher strikes at some point.

Pupil attendance will be low because anyone with symptoms has to self-isolate for seven days, anyone living with anyone with symptoms has to isolate for fourteen days, the shielding group are being asked to continue shielding beyond the twelve weeks and letters have starting going out advising of this, people in vulnerable groups (but not shielding) will probably be asked to continue to self-isolate. All of this will affect how many children are able to attend to school, and provision is going to have to be made for them to continue doing work at home.

Some parents won't want to send their children in if they consider it to be too much of a risk (e.g., the child isn't in an at risk group but lives with someone who is) so provision will have to be made for this.

I don't know what the return to school will look like but I know schools my DC go to have said that they don't have the building space to enable social distancing or the extra classrooms to allow for classes to be split across multiple rooms so that fewer pupils are in any given room.

On another thread a teacher implied she would get signed off with anxiety if she had to go back into work. I’m already worried about my dcs missing school but increasingly getting more anxious.

I do think there will be a vaccine, the Oxford team are very confident and in initial trials with monkeys the vaccine was effective at preventing infection.

I'm interested to know what the teacher workload will look like. From what I know of teaching in England, teaching a standard day is intense enough. I can't see how those teachers will teach their regular day and do any kind of planning for kids who are absent.

I think the children currently attending will be given priority for places and will be allowed to attend for five full days as they are at the moment. This will be followed by children whose parent(s)/carer work outside of the home who will be able to attend either full time or part time, depending in availability of space in school, and with any lost hours made up with work to do at home. Children with a stay at home parent able to provide care could potentially be asked to continue doing school work from home to increase the space available in schools, along with children unable to attend due to shielding, symptoms, etc.

Pure speculation, of course, as nothing has been indicated as yet but it's going to be tricky to get the balance right. Germany are reopening schools (this week?) so I'm sure the government will be watching closely to see what happens.

I'm interested to know what the teacher workload will look like. From what I know of teaching in England, teaching a standard day is intense enough. I can't see how those teachers will teach their regular day and do any kind of planning for kids who are absent.

Our schools are setting work on Google classroom and it's the exact same timetable and lesson content that they would be getting in school if it was open as normal, right down to instructions from food tech last week on making a fruit salad and uploading photographs of it for the teacher to see. Work could be set for school and home simultaneously simply by uploading from the teacher laptop directly to Google classroom much innthr way they currently upload from their laptop to the whiteboard in the classroom.

I'd be astonished if 40% of teachers really were in the vulnerable category. That would probably make them the sickest group of people in the UK! And if they all start pulling the sick pay card, then I suspect that what will happen is that their employers will do what other employers have already done - impose policy changes that enable them to be dismissed for sickness absence. My own employer - and it's public sector - starts sickness management processes after only 8 days. That's increasingly the norm that going off sick gets your career stopped and a very real risk of dismissal.

But if the teachers are in school teaching, who is going to set and monitor the work for the kids at home?

Teachers will not be able to do both work for those children at home, and also return to full time teaching in school. It’s not feasible. For example, right before lockdown happened, when loads of parents were pulling their kids out early on a voluntary basis, we were instructed not to provide any work for home, as we were all still in school doing our normal jobs, and our headteacher wanted to protect our mental health and well-being.

So, I expect that with the return to schools for each year group, as and when it happens, that will mean an end to remote learning for that year group, also. Send the kids in if you want and can do so, but if you choose voluntarily to keep them home after lockdown on schools has officially ended, you can’t expect a continuation of remote learning.

The only exceptions I can possibly see would likely be for those children who genuinely can’t attend for serious health reasons, as many of us teachers already have experience of providing work for home for extremely ill children whilst they are in recovery.

Yeah there’s no way teachers can teach a full timetable and cater to loads of students who are staying away. It’s hard enough normally to keep up with students who are ill and that’s only a few. When there’s loads off it’ll be impossible.

I'm a teacher Brogley, all of that Google Classroom work actually takes a lot of time to put together. It's not as simple as just uploading the plans for in-classroom work.

I agree with Sacha - I wonder if some kind of online learning hub could be set up, so very vulnerable teachers could teach very vulnerable children?

Good teachers will go off with stress ✔️Poor teachers will be more employable ✔️ There still won’t be enough. More children will be permitted per class ✔️ Good graduates won’t enter the profession ✔️ Irreversible damage to the education of an entire generation ✔️

Depends on whether the teachers are medically significantly vulnerable or are self identifying because they prefer not working (my friend admits he loves not having to go in, he simply sends 5 emails a day, one to each age group!)

Hopefully: by the time schools go back, cases will be low enough and being kept low enough that the chance of any individual teacher being exposed is really really small. Far smaller than it was before the lockdown.

@GailForceWarning why will good teachers go off with stress?

It would be impossible to teach all day and prepare/upload remote learning. Kids at home would have to follow the Oak Academy/BBC stuff or we could prepare some paper packs of worksheets.

I think most teachers will be able to teach. We have one in our one-form entry who is shielding and one who is vulnerable but I expect the latter one would have to come in. The problem would be if infection rates pick up and lots of staff have to isolate for 7-14 days.

Good teachers go off with stress often, in my experience, as they are the ones working themselves into the ground to try to get the job done to the level demanded by government bodies.

I dont think worrying will help much. Its quite possible that this generation of children will have their education impacted by coronavirus. World events do impact education sometimes, you just have to deal with it as best you can.