To be really angry on behalf of teachers

[Jessicabrassica]

I know mumsnet loves a bit of teacher bashing.
I'm really angry that once again the Department for Education has put out guidance for schools in a Friday night before a long weekend with some schools having already started and others back next week.
I cannot imagine how many iterations of risk assessments have already been completed to make schools as safe as possible given the constraints of staff numbers, building size and requirements to get every child back in school.
They are getting enough PPE to tick the box that it's been issued to all schools but not enough to be useful.
Teachers mostly haven't stopped working since the pandemic began. They have continued to teach, to support vulnerable learners, provided meals and good parcels out of school funds in lieu of FSM, they remained open through school holidays for key worker provision.
I really feel that they have been well and truly fucked over, left massively vulnerable and will be left to carry the can for community outbreaks.

I'm a parent and work for the NHS if it's if any consequence.

Each school is different. No one is saying schools have to be completely risk free or kids can't go back, do they? Most school are doing the best they can, and teachers are merely following school rules.
I really don't get your point, OnlyFoolsnMothers, why do comparing the teachers to police help? They are dealing with totally different circumstances. Care to enlighten me?

And finally, on a different note the head teachers who have allowed secondary school bubbles to be whole year size instead of finding a better solution

What o you propose chaotic?

It's in the guidelines, by the way.

But nothing significant had changed between so yesterday morning and 11pm with regard to virus rates, so why publish guidance at 11pm?

A Plan B could have been written months ago, again why publish late on Friday night?

piggywaspushed you are so right. As a parent of a teenager with a very frail grandfather (who I need to care for) I have absolutely been yearning for some clarity on isolation rules, bubbles popping etc. It's very late in the day for any clarity on this. And to hear that they got it wrong and had to reissue smacks of last minute panic and confusion. Not reassuring.

My heart goes out to the head teacher of DDs school, who has been communicative and professional throughout the summer and is presumably now working on yet another set of procedures and letters to parents before his school opens in a very few days.

Really not interested in the endless MN teacher arguments. I used to be one, dsis is one (primary) and did nothing at all in lockdown, was loving life, and got a pay rise and discounts, in her own words. Teachers are not a homogenous group all working in the same school or educational trust, many will have had a different experience.

So many people have had to work during the peak of this pandemic, not at home, and adapt to endless unknowns and changes, public abuse, changing govt guidelines, company initiatives, severe anxiety about getting I'll, lack of support from the govt and their employers during this pandemic. DP is a non teaching key worker and has had all of the above and more since early this year, with minimal thanks, no pay rise and now threat of redundancy as a thanks. As adults we can just surely get on with it if we wish to earn a wage. Teachers aren't being asked to do things others have not and I'm not aware of strong or existing evidence they are uniquely at risk, unlike those in other sectors who statistically seem to be.

Was you sister not aware she got that payrise in January?

What discounts?? -

@AChickenCalledDaal

In my experience, last minute government guidance is generally a result of a blazing row within Whitehall about what should be in it. Not a timely response to a fast changing situation. Or at least that's how it goes in my part of the public sector. Expert writes guidance. Politician doesn't like it. The row continues till the 11th hour. Then the guidance is stuck on the internet at 6pm on Friday evening and the people that have to make it happen put their heads in their hands.

No idea if any of that applies in this case, but I offer my experience for the benefit of anyone that still believes that Whitehall is a smooth running machine that is doing it's best in difficult times.

@AChickenCalledDaal

Interesting, thanks!

In fact the guidance was changed again just before midnight.

it will change again before Monday I expect.

I would like my child back in school in a sustainable manner.
I would like the Govt to issue guidelines in a timely manner.
I am not a conspiracy theorist and think it is largely incompetence but I do suspect there is an element of Govt hoping Schools will blamed for shitshow (or kids, or parents, or bloody anyone but them)
so are being dishonest / disingenuous as well as totally useless.
If this was in the relationships board, advice would be:
re Govts behaviour towards Schools (and indirectly parents and kids)
'he's gaslighting you - LTB'.

Funny. But people have managed to educate to advanced level outside the school system for years. If you need to learn a new skill or get your child on a workshop ...... then that's just what you do. I will be teaching children at very different ages, including exam age, going forwards because the school system has been demonstrated to be a low priority with a widening gap.

So I have to pick up new skills? So what. It's part of the commitment of parenting.

@OnlyFoolsnMothers

The alternative was government giving guidance more than 0 working hours before the start of term. 6pm on a Friday I meant there’s no alternative to just going back to school. Schools have put in procedures: single class use rooms, single year use corridors, staggered start and finish times, packed lunch only eating outside. At some point though a teacher has to stand in front a child and teach.

That wasn't the point of the OP. It was about the dfe guidance and its timing. Schools have put in procedures and policies, but now they have to change due to guidance released last night.

Im actually not angry for me, but for my headteacher. She should have a weekend off before the term ahead, as its going to be intense. She now has two choices for her bank holiday weekend: rewrite the risk assessment based on the changes to guidance OR worry about the consequences of not rewriting it.

I wouldn't blame headteachers a cross the country for stepping down. We already have a shortage. Schools without headteachers perform poorly.

i really don't get your point, OnlyFoolsnMothers, why do comparing the teachers to police help? They are dealing with totally different circumstances. Care to enlighten me? my point was lots of people are putting themselves in less than completely risk free environments- The example I gave was the police. I don’t get why everyone else in society is sucking it up but there’s this idea teachers shouldn’t dare go back into a classroom unless in a hazmat suit

@dontgobaconmyheart it's stemming from systemic failure of this government and subsequent govts to deal with complex situations. It's stemming from shed loads of evidence that the govt don't know what to do. It's stemming from all the mistrust in the govt as a result of previous issues between the govt and the education sector. It's because they ate lying. They aren't lying because they're showing socially distanced classrooms when they won't be. They will be 32 kids sitting shoulder to shoulder. If it was safe why are you they not showing full classrooms?

@OnlyFoolsnMothers my friend is a detective, still working from home.

Are lying... Doh!

I bet there will be many parents complaining if their child’s school has to close due to staff shortages, not because the teachers have died or are at death’s door but simply because they have too many self isolating due to being a contact or because they have symptoms.

And the person complaining that schools have too big bubbles. The schools are simply following the guidance. Do you think schools have the space and staff, especially in Secondary school, to be able to set up bubbles of say 30 which share no teachers or communal space?

@derxa at least you got PPE I'm not a nurse, simply reposting a previous post. The poster was a nurse. Imagine working in a hospital on a Covid ward even with PPE. It must have been bloody terrifying.

I do apologise. I don't preview my comments due to shit WiFi! This is what it should have said:
@dontgobaconmyheart it's stemming from systemic failure of this government and subsequent govts to deal with complex situations. It's stemming from shed loads of evidence that the govt don't know what to do. It's stemming from all the mistrust in the govt as a result of previous issues between the govt and the education sector. It's because they are lying. They are lying because they're showing socially distanced classrooms when they won't be. There will be 32 kids sitting shoulder to shoulder. If it was safe why are they not showing full classrooms?

I don't dislike teachers at all. I respect them. However the absence of many state schools for the children who were at home during the pandemic was a shit show. And... we are in a global pandemic. Most of us who are working have had to adapt, change, support, work on the fly and forgone holidays. It's what society does to keep it going. So I don't single out teachers for any sympathy. Most teachers I know cannot wait to be back with the kids next week. They have missed the kids as much as the kids have missed them. Did the government totally fuck up their guidance regarding children at home - yes 100%. But it was hardly rocket science for schools to realise that these children needed some contact. And guidance wasn't needed. Compassion and some common sense would have righted that wrong. So forgive those of us who have worked at home for 5 months full time with children here who right now can't wait for our children to be back at school where they thrive and are happy. And forgive us for our lack of 'sympathy' where quite frankly, we don't see why teachers need it over any other worker.

I haven't ever seen any teachers saying that. They are worried, and understandable. I see lots of people not sucking it up, so many posts about people who doesn't want to commute or go back to office work because they worry. Those people can fight individually, but not the teachers. If the gov decided school to open, they have to go to work.
I want school to open, but I want it to be safe for both children and teachers.

That was respond to OnlyFoolsnMothers, me and my slow typing.

I teach year 12, 13 and 7(so 3 bubbles) the guidance previously stated that children up to the age of 14 were not hugely impacted by transmission or serious illness due to covid. One of the questions we were asking was about how we manage 350 over-16s in the same space as presumably they are adults, in physiological terms, which previous guidelines did not acknowledge.

Last night's update has now quietly changed that upper age to 19. 19! Now classed as a child, which cannot possibly be based on biology and is instead massaged to simply include ALL students because they couldn't make the guidance fit any other way.

My 6th form students are fairly sensible and my 6th form is also fairly sensible. But as I teach across three bubbles I'm still not sure what happens if one of those bubbles is asked to isolate, given that I will be a common factor. It simply hasn't been addressed and, as OP said, there is no time left.

@LadyGAgain sorry to read your DCs and others attend failing schools. Ours certainly did not operate in that unprofessional way. It makes me so cross that those 'on our team' have let us dreadfully down.

I want to go back 110% but I just want justice/recognition for our welfare by the provision of masks and stronger rules for masks in Secondaries even in lessons for those not exempt.

This is because of that rushed out thing a couple of days ago on hospital admission which looked at 0-19 year olds (presumably under instruction).

I want school to open, but I want it to be safe for both children and teachers. But schools can never be 100% safe short of everyone wearing full PPE or that the virus has gone or we get a vaccine that is effective.

I don't see the unions putting forward any workable solutions as an alternative, or in fact any solutions at all. They have showed zero inclination to accept that this situation is going nowhere and that change and compromise is needed.

The guidance that was published (and then amended late last night) is the FUCKING PLAN B THAT THE UNIONS HAVE BEEN PROPOSING SINCE JUNE.

This is their proposed solution. Stop believing everything you read in the Daily Fucking Mail.

@ukgift2016

Boo hoo

Many of us have still worked through the pandemic. Teacher must play their in our society.

This is so childish and hateful. You've shown yourself up here.