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.

Agree with the points no one has actually thought what happened when teachers also get sick. Our schools idea seems to be we will 100% set work from home even if we are sick?

Could easily be sick with other things too. We had an awful lot of bugs going round staff this winter.

We have now been told that we will be remote teaching exam groups live when they would have their usual timetables lessons. That will be interesting when my children are at home - especially my 5 year old DS who is awaiting ASD referral! He has trouble leaving me alone at home for 5 minutes, let alone 2 hours (some of my lessons are doubles).

I raised that with my HOF yesterday davinci. She just kind of blinked at me.

We are still BAU. School play had it's opening night yesterday, and will be continuing til Saturday. My parents were going to come and see it but I've told them not to. Where they live there are no confirmed cases, there are confirmed cases near me, including a teacher at a different school who has tested positive on Monday, but has been at work before that. I wasn't in contact with her, but have been in close contact with children she teaches. As has dd2, as have a lot of my pupils. We won't know who has been infected until they start feeling ill. I think it's best to keep my parents away from somewhere that could become a cluster as they are both over 70 with underlying health conditions.

FINALLY this morning our head has addressed this. We subject leaders are having a meeting at lunch where we’re being told what to do about work for students in the event of closure

My son's secondary school have just emailed to say that teachers will be setting homework and classwork online via their usual methods and they are actively looking at other options too.

Just bene on phone to an exam board about something and they definitely are meeting later...

Any other teachers wondering how cancelling any half term will work if we have things booked? Assuming travel is back on (fingers crossed) do we just lose that money? And cancelling six weeks holidays?

*may half term

Primary here, we have set up Google Classrooms with individual child/teacher log ins. Agency cleaners with virucidal cleaning products, regular, monitored hand washing, posters and regular reminders for children. Hand gel situated around school. Parents, despite being told all of this, still think we are doing nothing! I’m convinced they think it’s just us lot reading social media and making a decision based on that!

Finally got an email telling us to make sure we have copies of eg textbooks at home and to put our work somewhere we can access it from home. Also told that the backup plan is to use Microsoft Teams (ominously referring to how you can use video conferencing through it etc). Emphasised that there are no plans to close!

Not mentioned:

• what to do if staff don't have computers at home
• what to do if students don't have computers or internet access at home (will definitely apply to some of our cohort)
• what happens with BTEC classes whose work is 100% coursework and relies on software hardly any students have at home (Adobe suite which is expensive and needs a good computer to run on), and who are working in groups!
• what happens with teachers who will have primary-aged or younger children at home with them (applies to conservatively half the teachers here)
• what happens if teachers are ill
• how this is monitored
• what happens with NEA A-level work which is not finished yet.

Some of the union advice copied below. The last sentence is interesting! Note the bit about deep cleans, too!

At the moment, school closures are usually brief to allow activities such as deep cleaning to take place. Under no circumstances should members be told or volunteer to go into the workplace when it has been closed or engage in the deep cleaning. That is a matter for specialist cleaners who have the relevant training, experience and safety equipment.

These should be treated in a similar way to other enforced closures, such as inclement weather. There should be no detriment to members, and there should be no requirement to ‘make up’ the time that has been missed.

It is not unreasonable for teachers, if they are asked, to provide where there are facilities to do so work for pupils to do during the closure or provide remote/or online learning support. However, schools should not be imposing increased workload burdens on teachers in order for them to produce this work This does not mean any face to face meetings with pupils or returning to the closed workplace during the period of the closure to facilitate this.
School closures - long-term
Schools should have contingency plans in place should this occur, such as having work ready to send home, or utilising online homework platforms etc. Where preparations are being made for this time should be given during the working day for teachers to produce these resources.

Some schools are planning to use technology such as Skype but there can be no expectation that all pupils or indeed all teachers will have such facilities as the internet or appropriate equipment at home and nor can they be required to have them. Teachers may also not have the technical expertise to deliver such sessions. Preparing such materials can be workload intensive and the NASUWT expects schools to provide the time and support for teachers during the working day for any necessary preparation.

The NASUWT is also concerned that online sessions can be recorded and edited and this could lead to inappropriate postings on social media. Safeguards must be built in to prevent this and safeguard teachers and pupils who are participating and if teachers feel concerned about this they should not be required to deliver sessions in this way.

Where teachers volunteer to provide such provision, this should be seen as an emergency contingency only for a long duration school closure. There should be no monitoring of teachers’ performance. One-to-one sessions should also be avoided via video conferencing as this could present a safeguarding risk for both pupils and teachers.

Schools should also make it clear to parents that they should not be monitoring or commenting on the quality of the provision made.

And:

There should be no attempt made to split or double up classes or increase class sizes to accommodate teacher absence.

If this is proposed in your school then contact should immediately be made with the NASUWT for advice.

We've been asked to make sure our school issued laptops are onsite next week to check their remote access.

Someone asked the head if we are closed, will we still be paid. She said she didn't know, which is concerning.

There should be no attempt made to split or double up classes or increase class sizes to accommodate teacher absence.If this is proposed in your school then contact should immediately be made with the NASUWT for advice.

Presumably if the government bring in new emergency laws on this, there’d very little the unions can do?

We are also not certain of being paid if we are closed- however surely if we are providing work online each day we are still working?

I don’t think we will close. I think we will limp on in order to provide childcare for essential workers. I’ve resigned myself to this- but I think there needs to be thought given to exams. Sats need cancelling at least. Too much absence now. It’s not going to be fair.

I agree @playdoughbum - the general feeling here is we'll keep going until Easter and then open again as usual.

I'm in East Sussex though, and as of yesterday there was only 1 confirmed case outside of Brighton and Hove.

Question : is a parents' evening a mass gathering??

@Piggywaspushed school itself is, the average secondary school has just under 1500 students a day

Yes, but the government would say not gathering (hahahahaha). No one would say a parents' evening wasn't inviting people to gather?

Am a teacher cheeky!

I work in a special school and have a feeling we may close soon. Most of the kids have chronic underlying health problems and parents are rightly worried about sending them in. Most of the pupils unfortunately don’t have the capacity to understand about properly washing hands, keeping distance from others, not coughing/sneezing over others etc so it’s really hard to keep them safe. We also sent around 15 members of staff home yesterday as they came into school and then reported symptoms. SLT are holding an emergency meeting on Monday to decide what to do next week.

We got an email on Wednesday evening about setting remote work. On Friday, a small number of staff were sent home with coughs etc, and the self isolation advice was sent to all teachers via email (after we'd done morning tutor time, though).

At the moment, teachers are being taken for cover as normal, which will obviously increase workload. I'm not sure what the plan is for if/when they can't cover classes in the normal way.

I think a lot of teachers are expecting the school to close soon, but I think we will limp along until Easter.

We’ve cancelled trips abroad. Encouraging hand washing. Sanitiser in lunch hall. Assembly about being sensible but not to worry.

Yessica, similar here but it's other illnesses staff are off with atm. Sickness bugs, tonsillitis, bad backs, stress.