Teachers: What is your school doing?

[noblegiraffe]

The DfE have said DO NOT CLOSE YOUR SCHOOL. Ofqual have said KEEP PREPARING FOR EXAMS AS NORMAL

My school seem to have taken this as an instruction to just keep on trucking. They might have put some posters up in the toilets about handwashing tbf.

Other schools, from what I can tell on here, are gearing up to teach lessons remotely, cancelling trips, stopping assemblies, wiping door handles with disinfectant, making kids wash their hands before lunch.

I can’t see much chat about it on edutwitter, even after the Times article suggesting that A-levels might be postponed and GCSEs put back to September.

Primary - We're hand-washing much more, and talking about hand-washing, counting to 20 with soap etc. There aren't any cases near us, so it's all low key at the moment.

The computing guy is apparently setting up a server that children can access from home, in readiness for remote teaching, if it comes to that, which class teachers would have to organise. However, I reckon at least half of our families have no access to the internet apart from mobile phones or some tablets. Most don't have laptops or computers.

And I've yet to bring up the fact that most of the staff don't have school laptops. We use our own set-ups for home working, and my 2 family laptops will be being utilised by my 2 exam year teens who would also be at home, so not sure how that would work.

Yes we don’t seem to have had any sort of audit to find out if teachers can set work from home, it’s probably assumed that we can.

We know for sure that there are some kids who can’t do work from home as they don’t have a laptop or printer as we do a yearly audit.

A lot of kids don’t take their exercise books home either, if schools were closed without warning they wouldn’t have anything to write on.

Primary here.

We've a few more handwashing posters put up. Classrooms and toilets have been well supplied with soap, but our cleaners were reduced last year and each room is only cleaned every second day....

The LA did hand out a Staff Memo which quite remarkably said nothing informative or useful in four pages of writing.

It’s all business as usual here-we have lesson observations next week, parents evenings the week after and then Assessment data in and Pupil Progress meetings the week after that.

We have no soap and the cleaners are agency staff who often don’t turn up

We’ve got agency cleaners too. Not very many of them.

The thing with hand washing is that you go to wash your hands before lunch, then to get back to the classroom you have to touch five million grubby door handles.

We have hand sanitizer at the queue to the canteen now. However, one toilet block is temporarily closed for a deep clean because some students were hanging out in there and eating in there (?!) my hopes are not high for general hygiene. We have two trips that are at risk that are being reviewed on a daily basis but until the FCO says don't go the insurance won't pay out.
Whether we could work remotely or not is very teacher dependent. I could. I have colleagues who would struggle.

Primary here, hand washing is up from once before lunch to washing them first thing when children arrive, after play time, before lunch and after lunch time play.
Teachers have been supplied with Dettol spray to clean tables while children are at lunch.
No plans as yet to remote working.

Nothing extra.

But we are special with very vulnerable children so our daily practice is over and above what is being suggested anyway.

Antibacterial handwash at all sinks.
Sanitiser gel in every room.
Paper towels and foot controlled bins.
Anti abc spray and cloths in every room and certain colours for different surfaces.
Washing machine and dryer in school for washing and weekly sterilisation of plastic items.
Dishwasher in staff room.

We also have agency cleaners and I'm sure sometimes we are better at cleaning than them!

Primary.
We're supposed to encourage them to wash hands when they arrive at school, normal lunch hand washing, then wash before they go home. I've got Y6 and they were absolute prats in the toilets on Friday so that's not going to last long...

Not a teacher but we've had messages from our Secondary Head to say school is staying open even if kids gets coronavirus as its government advice. School in a village full of elderly.

Also said all school trips running including to Italy as thats government advice. Only thing that appears to have changed is parents were given the option to say for parents evening they were self isolating and wanted an e-mail update instead. Parents asked not to shake hands. Otherwise no sign to parents or pupils school operating differently. Kids are deliberating coughing over each other and saying coronavirus.

School did say putting posters in the toilets, hopefully they've put some soap in as well, primary didn't have soap in kids toilets sometimes.

More hand washing. That’s it. I’m primary.

We're doing nothing different except squirting kids with hand sanitiser in the lunch queue.

which will probably be impossible to get hold of once it runs out...

(Not UK, we have fewer cases 'in country' than the UK but big outbreaks nearby)

Primary:
Big focus on handwashing with soap
Sanitizer dispensers in the corridors
School plays postponed
Trips out postponed (ours was to an airport )
Parents' evenings postponed
Clubs stopped.
We've been told to be ready for online learning/sending out packs of work, in case we follow other countries in the region and close.

Primary - big focus on hand washing and hygiene reminders
We would have had sanitiser but we couldn't get any for love or money.
Making sure that all pupils have log in details to access work remotely if needed.

Primary. Dc told to wash their hands before break snack and lunch. No one is checking they are doing this. If the caretaker is asked to fill the soap dispensers he rolls his eyes but does it, unlike during the noro outbreak we had when he refused until the Head told him to (they were “using it too fast” apparently. Because we had asked them to. Because Norovirus).
I have my own Dettol wipes and clinell ones too, which I am using for my own laptop and any pcs/iPads I use during the day. I haven’t got enough to wipe the desks daily, or I would do. We are not allowed to use bleach based products unless it is a weekend or holiday, even if the school is closed for the day to dc.

Business as usual. Communication to parents about self-isolation if going to/coming from an infected area but that's been it. Will see how the next week plays out...

Hand washing 5 times a day. Not sure why schools would need to close at the moment to be honest as children (so far) have not been contracting the virus. I think the country would quickly descend into chaos if schools closed due to parents having to care for their children and therefore not being able to work.

Not sure why schools would need to close at the moment to be honest as children (so far) have not been contracting the virus

To try to contain the virus spread.

It’s happened in China, Japan, Italy, UAE etc-I see no reason to think that if our numbers get into the thousands, our schools will close, too.

Post 16

Posters in the toilet, tissues in classrooms and hand sanitizer around college but annoyingly mostly in the toilets so kids are not washing their hands with soap but using antibac instead.
Some communication to the kids about emailing the DSL if they have symptoms or have come back from high risk areas.

Nothing about working from home, remote teaching etc. Not a peep.

Fuck all at my school.

My school is frankly filthy. Our cleaners are predominantly 16 year olds using filthy mops and cloths.

No discussion about work or exams. Given my school has 5 year groups, two of which are due to sit public exams seems to have bypassed SLT.

I am allergic to anti bac, not that we have any.

At DH's school, tissues have been delivered.

We also have a school trip in Italy...

Secondary here - our meeting time this week Is being given over to training in the software to teach our lessons remotely and to make sure we have access to the stuff we need.

We don’t have school laptops so I assume they are assuming we will just use our own.

Other than that we are carrying on completely as normal. The thing about remote teaching is that we can’t do it with no prep so we are (as far as I can tell) just making sure we’re ok just in case we do close.

Primary here. We've had gel dispensers mounted on the wall by the doors, and that is it so far.

My A Level year DC has had to complete a contact form saying if they have computer access at home. GCSE year DC has had nothing (same school).