to think Gavin Williamsons views on teachers have been found out and he is trying to back pedal

[cakeorwine]

Leaked WhatsApp messages about schools during Covid and re-opening.

www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/01/leaked-messages-boris-johnson-bemoaning-face-masks-u-turn

In October 2020, Williamson said publicly the following year’s exams would be postponed for a few weeks to make up teaching time. According to the leaked messages, Hancock then got in touch with his cabinet colleague to say “what a bunch of absolute arses the teaching unions are”.

Williamson replied: “I know they really really do just hate work.” Hancock then responded with a laughing emoji and a bullseye.

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said in response to the leak: “Why am I utterly unsurprised to now have it absolutely confirmed that Gavin Williamson was unfit to be secretary of state for education?”

According to Williamson, these comments were about "some unions" and he has the utmost respect for teachers who went above and beyond during the pandemic.

Yet it's the teachers who would be doing the work, not the Unions. So who was he saying who "really really just hate work"

Because schools should never have been allowed to close, regardless of risk. Like hospitals and supermarkets weren't

And yet hospitals and supermarkets were given mitigation measures to protect their staff to help them stay open.

Schools were allowed to become covid soup, until the point where it was realised that schools are not silos and the covid soup was spilling out into the more vulnerable community. The death rate was spiralling and the only way to put a sharp brake on it was to close schools.

If they'd done something to prevent spiralling infection rates in schools, the argument could have been made to keep them open. Given the infection rate and the death rate, the argument was lost.

@Evvyjb

I don't need or want your congratulations thanks.

Im not sure how any of that is relevant to me either

My son will happily accept being told he is part of a germ factory, he is not stupid or precious. He knows that children/students harbour germs and happily spread them, be it COVID, cold, flu, D&V, chicken pox etc.

@noblegiraffe

Do you mean for the second closure? Schools did have mitigations?

Bubbles, masks, teachers refusing to go within 2 metres of a child etc etc

I'll never agree their was any justification for closure.

There are dozens of people in the world who don’t live in England.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Its the blaming of children for a non preventable virus that I object to. Not the term Germ factories particularly.

@toomuchlaundry

How do you think any other workplace coped with covid absences?

@Botw1 I am a school governor, before the first lockdown parents were pulling pupils out of the Primary schools I was involved with. Staff were being ill, it was tricky making ratios and having key staff (safeguarding, first aiders). If Boris hadn't made his announcement at least one local school would have had to temporarily close due to lack of staff.

Norovirus, Strep, HFM, chicken pox….kids spread bugs! It’s not rocket science and it’s not new, as every parent ever knows, at the start of every new autumn term….here we go! Don’t be obtuse @Botw1 and PLEASE don’t ignore those of us who are really at risk of the infections kids come home with.

@toomuchlaundry

Lucky them that they had that option eh?

Tesco didn't.

Nor hospitals

@Bunnyfuller

We can't make policy for individuals. The risk is yours to manage unfortunately.

We had masks in corridors, not classrooms. In my classrooms there was no way of staying 2m away from a kid. I can now see from my C02 monitor that was finally delivered a few weeks ago that the air is filthy.

Any teacher in a school that Autumn term could tell you just how shit the mitigations we had in place were. Seating plans, and isolating the kids who sat next to a child, when you could see covid spreading around a year group. I remember a conversation with my Y10s about how bonkers it all was.

The difference is @Botw1 for schools, all classes need a responsible adult in them. I'm sure you would have been first to complain (and justifiably so)if your DC's class had just been left to run feral with no adult supervision, or some random had been pulled in off the street. Schools need safeguarding leads, first aiders in school.

If there weren't enough nurses in, then wards get closed, operations cancelled. If not enough staff in retail, queues build up, shelves don't get stacked.

Oh, and if schools did have effective mitigations, the infection rate in them wouldn't have spiralled to the point where schools had to close.

Therefore the mitigations were not effective.

@Botw1 youd be horrified at how some frontline public services ‘coped’ with the rapidly spreading infections. I only knew of 3 people in the police who died, but we had whole sections wiped out. It’s amazing we got through it. Lockdown wasn’t to protect frontline workers. It was to protect the frontline. To ensure the majority not frontline mostly had access to what that needed. THAT is a key worker. Not someone who decided there was little danger and carried on. We didn’t carry on, or not, according to the danger to ourselves. It was the big picture, and the fact that austerity has left no flex in ANY public service.

Its not just about you.

Because schools should never have been allowed to close, regardless of risk. Like hospitals and supermarkets weren't

As it stood the actual risk was negligible

Those who worked in hospitals and supermarkets got to wear masks, and their 'customers' weren't allowed in the building without starting them too.

Teachers are not allowed to wear masks, and the 30 children that they were sharing crowded poorly ventilated rooms with, didn't wear them either.

At the same time that the rest of us were reluctant to be within metres of anyone else, even masked, you were expecting teachers, with no protection, to be in close proximity to 30 other unmasked people (often very young and with little sense of personal hygiene). My daughter's classroom had no windows that opened more than two inches.
I guarantee that no member of the general public would have wanted to walk into her room even with a mask on, never mind unmasked.

Damn

and their 'customers' weren't allowed in the building without WEARING them too

Teachers refused to go within 2 metres of kids? 😂

Bubbles were completely pointless because they all socialised as normal outside school, as was permitted at the time.

Masks were pointless because they either didn’t wear them at all, or touched them every two seconds, removed them, lay them on their desk, and so on.

Social distancing is also completely impossible in a school setting. Older school buildings weren’t built for current pupil numbers. It was physically impossible for me to maintain social distance in class; because there wasn’t two metres clearance ANYWHERE in my room.

What’s your end game here? The teaching profession in England is the lowest paid in the world. It also has one of the lowest entry requirements in the world - set to get lower. Is it your hope that the UK becomes so desperate for teachers that our children are taught by anyone? That will make any damage done over the pandemic seem like nothing.

@noblegiraffe

You didn't say effective. You said they weren't given mitigations. Which they were

@toomuchlaundry

Unfortunately wards don't get closed of there aren't enough staff. Wards are currently absolutely full with staffing ratios that are totally unsafe. Every single shift.

I don't think they should have pulled some one off the street but I think they should have done more than they did and not been allowed to close

Funny that this started because a pp was so determined no unions wanted schools closed and the hordes of outraged teachers have descended to insist they absolutely should have been

As I said, hospital and supermarket workers wore masks, as did their patients/customers. Teachers could not, and children didn't.

@KievsOutTheOven

Yup.

They had tape on the floor at the front of the classroom that neither they or the children were allowed to cross

Why are you obsessed with turning every conversation about teachers into a conversation about nurses?

Botw1

No, theyre from June 2020 onwards up to March 21.
Im not sure why you're trying to deny fact/rewrite history. It's a bit odd..

Its amusing that you say that I am rewriting history whilst doing so yourself.

Many small shops and cafes are still having to close on random days round here due to staff sickness. Tesco etc only managed to stay open due to large numbers of staff and during lockdown they had reduced number of customers going in

Tories gonna Tory

@saraclara

Who told teachers they couldn't?

I know teachers who wore masks

Hospital staff weren't given ppe until around the april/ may iirc

It certainly didn't do much to prevent spread