NEU calls for two week closure for secondaries and colleges following leap in infections

[noblegiraffe]

The NEU has called for a two week closure of secondary schools and colleges following a more than 9-fold increase in the infection rate in secondary school children in a month.

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-teachers-demand-2-week-school-closures-after-cases-jump

The infection rate in Y7-11 was 0.5% last week, according to the ONS survey of random households, but this nearly doubled to 0.93% in the latest set of figures. This rise cannot be ignored or passed off as relating to university students as has happened so far.

In other, entirely unrelated news, 61% of teachers report that if a student doesn't wear a mask in a school where they are mandated in communal areas 'nothing happens'.

www.tes.com/news/coronavirus-61-staff-say-nothing-done-if-pupils-wont-wear-masks

And Teacher Tapp data from yesterday had 26% of teachers reporting that their schools were partially closed to students.

In the meantime, the testing positivity rate in 10-19 year olds is 17%, which means that this group is severely under-tested and lots of cases will be missed. The rate should be below 5%.

Yet the insistence continues that in any lockdown scenario, schools will remain open. Idiocy.

As I’ve said @echt, I think it would be a great gesture for teachers to throw a few bottles of hand sanitiser in with their weekly shops for their classrooms and communal spaces.

This would show that they are in tune with the public mood and really working hard for their wages to keep schools open.

This obviously doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to the “public mood” because teachers, including myself and my colleagues, are already doing this and yet you still post this on most threads you come on, as if we don’t.

It’s not just hand sanitiser that I buy either, (alongside actual resources for children to use) but gloves which I go through very quickly, so I can safely clean every keyboard and mouse between every lesson, the spray to clean with and cloths to wipe them down with. All have to be replaced weekly so it’s not cheap.

All for the safety of myself and other people’s children.

What are you doing for others during this pandemic, Ecosse?

@Ecosse

As I’ve said *@echt*, I think it would be a great gesture for teachers to throw a few bottles of hand sanitiser in with their weekly shops for their classrooms and communal spaces.

This would show that they are in tune with the public mood and really working hard for their wages to keep schools open.

The government simply cannot be expected to provide sufficient supplies of hand sanitiser for every school in the country.

I am really working hard for my wages.

I normally do 50-55 hours a week. On top of this I am now expected to do another 40 minutes of break and lunchtime supervision every day. Email any students who are absent work (typically 3-5 in each class) . I can't group email because then they would know who else was off. Keep s record of who isn't completing the remote work. Phone form members who are isolating, currently 4. Replan 90% of lessons because I'm a practical subject and we're not allowed to do practicals anymore. Either add notes to them for isolating students so that they can complete them independently or make videos to explain it properly. All of this whilst only having one 25 minute break during the day. Whilst kids need much more emotional support than normal.

And now you expect me to buy sanitizer?

The public mood can do one. Lockdown made it clear, and MN in particular, that we as teachers are not valued at all.

A 2% payrise when my workload has gone up by 10-20% depending on how many kids are off in one week doesn't feel like a fabulous deal.

Did....did someone just suggest that teachers should be expected to buy sanitiser? Because of their “large pay rise?

😳😳😳

I’ve started to view Ecosse as a form of performance art. Their posts now actually make sense to me.

I call the hand sanitiser piece “Textual Mood Attenuator”

The forced relocation of nurses, I call “The Angry March”. That one is my favourite.

@Armi the same things happen on nhs threads unfortunately.

Nellodee

You might be right.

The alternative is that Ecosse is a person who thinks that constantly undermining and trolling teachers is a good way to help keep schools open 🤷🏻‍♀️

The alternative is that Ecosse is a person who thinks that constantly undermining and trolling teachers is a good way to help keep schools open

Maybe they are trying to save teachers from their addiction to Mumsnet so they can spend more time in the real world.

Yep, that’s the alternative. My way of thinking about it gives me a smile every time I read their posts, though.

I think not even went to the same art school. Nice work!

@notevenat20

The alternative is that Ecosse is a person who thinks that constantly undermining and trolling teachers is a good way to help keep schools open

Maybe they are trying to save teachers from their addiction to Mumsnet so they can spend more time in the real world.

Right back atcha notevenat20 Showing your true colours/intentions there.

Maybe they are trying to save teachers from their addiction to Mumsnet so they can spend more time in the real world

Interesting swipe.

Right back atcha notevenat20. Showing your true colours/intentions there.

I can't tell what half the insults from teachers mean here. I assume it's because it's best to be obscure when insulting a child. The other half usually involve just swearing so maybe that's lucky.

What are the true colours that you are inferring?

Well, we're not supposed to go to pubs, restaurants, or meet friends, are we? All for the greater good? So, what else do you want us to do with our time?

(I'm not going to pubs, restaurants, cafes, shops, other people's houses or anywhere but school so that if I catch it and pass it on to my ECV husband and he dies, I'll know I caught it at school.)

It’s a testament to the patience and good nature of teachers that they’re willing to engage in a polite and non confrontational nature with anyone suggesting that they should spend a significant proportion of their income to buy supplies of hand sanitiser for their schools when government won’t, and other nonsense. They are able to do this because they spend a great deal of their professional time reasoning with immature, irresponsible, selfish, ill-informed and entitled individuals. But this (minority) of children mostly grow out of it, thankfully.

I think it would be a great gesture for teachers to throw a few bottles of hand sanitiser in with their weekly shops for their classrooms and communal spaces

I already buy five packets of decent cleaning wipes every week (so we can share laptops with our year group). I also buy books, paper, plastic pockets, laminating pouches, marking stamps and ink. I buy my own sanitiser and hand cream for my TA and myself to use after all the sanitiser we dish out - really dries the hands. I buy tissues for the class.

How much of your salary do you spend on stocking up your place of work?

Come on, who the fuck isn't currently buying their own hand sanitiser? It would cost too much for me to buy hand sanitiser for 30 people every day I'm afraid.

And I'm not sure why PPs are now suggesting teachers shouldn't post on MN? That's low @notevenat20 . If you can't find a decent argument gracefully say so or shuffle off to FB

I assume it's because it's best to be obscure when insulting a child

Another interesting comment not.

I have a friend who is a university lecturer. They have had to record their entire lecture courses using only computer / recording equipment they bought themselves. What's even more annoying is that most of the students are now paying 24k a year to the uni as they are from outside the EU. That's about half of her salary per student and there are ~300 of them.

Good to see the trolls are continuing to derail the thread by making teachers defend themselves again. I note that despite apparently wanting to discuss Classics on this thread, they didn’t want to go and discuss it on the thread started for that purpose.

Infection rates in secondary schools everybody - worrying, aren’t they? Do we think that Boris will announce a circuit break that includes schools, showing that he’s following the science, or excludes schools, showing that he only cares about how he looks?

I think it would be a great gesture for teachers to throw a few bottles of hand sanitiser in with their weekly shops for their classrooms and communal spaces

I earn about £12000 per annum before deductions. I also obviously have to pay for wrap around care for my own children. I buy hand gel for my own kids for school and support their school as much as I can afford to.

I suggest it is on parents (a lot of which will earn MUCH more than me) to fund the extra cleaning and sanitiser, especially if they are the ones clamouring for schools to stay fully open at all costs.

I find it exceptionally worrying that I am informed that a TA that has supported a student in one of my classes (and with whom I had an urgent and necessary whispered close conversation with the day before they went off) is now off ill, grapevine say they have tested positive, but I have not been formally told.
Other staff are off awaiting test results or just "ill"
I find it exceptionally worrying that every class I teach I have increasing numbers of students with X code or just "ill" on the register, but we are not told if they are positive (if they have even be tested that is).
I find it exceptionally worrying that despite being in a low incidence rate area in the south west, the catchment area around my school (largest secondary in the area), the rate is now approaching 220 per 100,000.
But my school officially has no cases.

Infection rates in secondary schools everybody - worrying, aren’t they? Do we think that Boris will announce a circuit break that includes schools, showing that he’s following the science, or excludes schools, showing that he only cares about how he looks?

Now that Wales's circuit breaker has been leaked the only delay is while Boris and Dom desperately find a new slogan and buzz phrase to make their circuit breaker really different and special to the devolved nations' ones, and sound nothing at all like what SAGE and Keir have asked for.