To tell you all that secondary schools and colleges

[namechangedbecausejob]

Will be at home for the first week of Jan across England for home based learning.

Apart from Ys 11 and 13

says who?

Ds won’t be. His college are already doing alternate weeks and he is in week one the first week back.

Yup saw that earlier. Makes sense. Most local schools have so many student and staff off isolating they're not fully open anyway.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55348886

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-55348886

If it helps halt the spread then that’s a good thing

I hope they make masks mandatory too

This has come from the DfE, who only this week were threatening schools with legal action for trying to do the same thing.

And?

I don't understand how this will give schools any time to implement a mass testing scheme. With exam groups in school, as well as key worker and vulnerable children, and all the other kids being taught online, how will they have time to implement a mass testing scheme? Who's doing the training? When? Will exam groups/key worker/vulnerable be allowed in school without testing? This is such a joke.

For what it's worth, I do think secondary schools need to go online for a bit to break the transmission. But the idea of schools being responsible for mass testing, and being told on the last day of term, is an absolute joke.

I wish they'd do this for primary schools, the virus is in our school but we're not distancing, not bursting bubbles when families test positive, it's ridiculous.....

In theory it’s an idea but it’s utter utter madness to expect schools to deal with this when they break in a days time. It’s unbelievable. Schools were threatened with legal action when sensible suggestion to move to online learning last week of term to help stop spread and protect families. Now they have to plan and prepare for online learning with a days notice as well as set up mass testing scheme. The whole country’s government have failed to accurate details up mass testing scheme with billions of pounds thrown at it and schools are expected to do it in a week??? I despair.

Not to mention a massive childcare headache this will cause for some.

@Kolo well for one thing it will reduce the spread after people have been travelling for Christmas and secondly it will give them time to set things up. It will be impossible to have a mass testing system set up while the school isn't even open.

No they won't, they will be wondering around the shops like they are doing this week, spreading their Covid germs everywhere

As I teacher I don't know whether to laugh or cry. This should show everyone what schools have been dealing with working with the government. I will not be administering tests on top of what I do already.

That's not true though, exam pupils, key worker children and vunerable children will be at school unless there's been another announcement in the last short while.

Apparently the government believes it will only take the nine spare staff that all schools have sitting around with nothing else to do, just 3 hours to test 100 pupils. They'll soon get through the 1200 pupils our nearest secondary school has then!

well ive just had an email saying they open as usual on 5th and will be doing testing

K

@spanieleyes are they being serious?? what’s ‘spare staff’ - you know when you’re running around in allocated Minimal PPA doing cover??! It’s truly mind boggling

My one son in GCSE years has had 40 days, 8 weeks of remote learning since September because his school is rife with cases. We are used to it!

[quote IMNOTSHOUTING]@Kolo well for one thing it will reduce the spread after people have been travelling for Christmas and secondly it will give them time to set things up. It will be impossible to have a mass testing system set up while the school isn't even open.[/quote]
But how will they get the mass testing system ready for 2 year groups plus key worker/vulnerable children to be back on first day? When are schools supposed to be trained/train staff/work out logistics?

Jolly decent of you because schools have been told too late in the day to plan for this phased return/partially remote teaching, work out what it will look like for each student group (vulnerable kids anyone?) and send a proper communication to parents.

@flumposie We won't be administering tests because I can see this being the point at which teachers say enough is enough. I certainly will refuse point blank to be involved in this. I now have to plan online lessons for the first week back and I'm damned if I'm going to do that, teach year 11 and administer tests. They won't provide adequate training, there'll be no PPE and the tests only pick up 50% of cases anyway (and that's when they are done properly not by one of the mum's on the PTA or worse still the kids themselves).

Before you start with the, "well you should count yourself lucky you still have a job", you can absolutely stick it. We've lost relatives during all this and I'm damned if I'm losing more by increasing my exposure to the virus. This term has been awful and I can honestly say I would rather lose the income and get a decent night's sleep than continue with this absolute farce.