School return will fail

[covidteacherscotland]

Okay so we have been back to school for a week! Great? No. Definitely not. Some thoughts on why this will be a disaster:

16 and 17 year olds are not children.

Social distancing is impossible. Genuinely impossible. Children will not or cannot stay out your space.

There is no PPE in school at all and staff are not protected in any way.

Children don't give a shit about washing their hands.

We've been doing double periods instead of single to minimise movement. This means that we are stuck in a room with 30 17 year olds with few or no windows as the respiratory droplets add up.

Educating your child is impossible if you can't go near them.

Our time management and pupil progress relies on us being able to give feedback to children formatively as we teach. To mark jotters as we go. We can't do this now.

I think that because infection is so low we'll be okay for a while - a few weeks - then the shit will hit the fan.

Oh yes and no drinking water

Staff at my daughters school are wearing masks and/or visors do I’m not sure why you say there is no PPE?

In my younger daughters primary school, the teacher’s I have seen so far aren’t wearing masks.

Why have you no drinking water?

Are you saying that the shit will hit the fan in the sense that people will notice the drop in teaching quality because of social distancing rules that are not actually helpful at stopping virus spread?

Oh are the schools going back? I don't think this has been discussed on here at all

Interesting first ever post.

Because there is no PPE - that must be an individual school thing. No masks no visors in our schools.

Nobody was in to keep the water systems going. They can't be used until they are serviced. I heard on BBC Radio Scotland that they were, for the meantime, stopping water and vending machines as areas of cross contamination. I'm not 100% if this is true but certainly seems to be the case in my authority.

Let's give it a go?
There is provision for what happens if cases are identified
Lots of people have had to go to work throughout the period

Thanks for that.

@KitKatastrophe

Oh are the schools going back? I don't think this has been discussed on here at all

I know, weird right? You would think somebody would have mentioned it by now.

Why have you got no drinking water?

Been here forever. Name changed.

Shit will hit the fan for both - quality of teaching and also spread of infection.

Lots of people have had to go to work throughout the period

With appropriate safety measures and PPE in place

School asked us to make sure student had water bottle last term

Proximity thing is hard

Yes we are asking students to make sure and bring large water bottles to last all day.

You do realise you can take water in with you, right? My kids always took their own bottles anyway.

covidteacherscotland Not all of us have COVID safety measures, SD or PPE at work.

I’m in a hight risk occupation and it was anticipated that up to 50% of us would be off either ill or self isolating. In reality it was nooooooo where near that.

covidteacherscotland It was you who incorrectly said there was no drinking water available. It’s not rocket science that you can take a bottle with you

@Nicknacky I'd be really interested to know what you work as.

I literally ant think of any other occupation that has been asked to work in a confined space with 30 other people with no PPE

I'd genuinely love to know!

Police Officer. SD is definitely not one of the things my customers do well.

There is no drinking water available. You can bring your own but you can't refill at water stations. There is none to buy at this point (I think that will change) Do you understand what available means? Not all pupils can afford to buy water at Tesco and bring it. It should be freely available.

Why is your school so shit compared to others on this?

I'm not sure it is shit compared to others. What are others doing differently?

I'm not sure enough contingency planning has been done for pupils affected by a burst bubble, local,lockdown, or heaven forfend regional/national lockdown

Because in most of those scenarios, we're not all in it together, and some schools might have one or more 14-day outages, and others none at all. That's potentially going to have a major impact on public exams in 21 and possible 22. Especially as so few schools (according to the Sutton Trust) had good or adequate off-site learning in the lockdown closure. It's a major task, I know, but such an important one