Secondary schools are totally stuffed, WELL-RESPECTED SCIENTISTS ADMIT

[noblegiraffe]

I don't normally get asked for an encore, more usually 'urgh, not another bloody thread', but per a request we have a follow-up to the resoundingly popular:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4078722-Secondary-schools-are-fucked-BOFFINS-ADMIT

Feedback has been received and acted upon re the title so hopefully that will temper the urge to complain.

Quick round-up of where we were at:

1. the infection rate is now highest in secondary school pupils in Y7-11, higher than uni students and sixth formers. They're not catching it at the pub...

2. The government/ONS put out misleading figures to suggest that teachers weren't at higher risk than NHS frontline workers, where actually looking at the data, they may well be. They fudged this by calling the largest group of teachers, who are at higher risk than frontline NHS staff 'teachers of an unknown type' and pretended they were irrelevant.

3. The DfE have changed the format of their attendance statistics report to remove the reference to how many hundreds of thousands of kids are currently isolating due to exposure to covid at school.

4. Boffins are cool

New info: The Guardian reports that teachers are being instructed to ignore app notifications to self-isolate by the school helpline and this might be a bad thing. They can't help themselves though, and have a lovely photo of a socially distanced classroom of lies at the top of the story.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/nov/16/union-says-teachers-in-england-being-told-to-pause-covid-app-in-school

I feel that telling teachers how educational decisions and policies work is a touch patronising, to be honest. Sorry if you don't see it that way. Apologies , though, I misread your previous post as a post about Sedbergh, which is what I was referring to viz the 53 asymptomatic cases. Sending them home is exactly what they did do.

My kids school is now sending a different year home each week for 3 days to do remote learning as the staffing situation is so dire.

So it's all just political grand standing isn't it? We know many schools aren't fully open and are having no choice but to close for some year groups or introduce rotas.

Why do our political class lie to us and misrepresent reality? Genuine question. Are we children? Are we cattle who shouldn't be allowed to panic in case we stampede? Do they think we're so thick we won't know they're lying and misleading us? Do they think that we're as unimportant as the state schools we probably went to and couldn't give a flying fuck about us or those schools?

And why on earth are we being ruled by out of touch toffs who clearly have no ethics or morality, who lie, who give themselves 12% pay rises and massive food allowances and second homes etc etc etc whilst cutting back funding to all public services, freezing benefits for the disabled, illegally cancelling vital child protection safeguards in a crisis, etc etc?

And actually this isn't an anti tory tirade because I think labour are just about the same at the core.

Sorry - feel like I'm about to launch into the speech from braveheart or something but here we all are arguing and bickering amongst ourselves when we have the exact same interests of wanting children to be safe and educated whilst they likely look on and laugh at how effectively their tactics work to distract us from directing our angst in teh right direction.

I think I officially hate politicians now. I hated teachers as a kid and I ended up becoming one so who knows, maybe I've just discovered my next career path.

Thank you TheHoneyBadger you’ve articulated my exact thoughts and expressed my same level of anger.

Reading your rant was cathartic and made me smile.

I don’t know the answer to any of your questions but it’s a relief to know I’m not the only one despairing and ready to go out rioting frankly. Just to be heard and to try to get rid of these pompous twats.

@TheHoneyBadger

The amount spent on takeaways during the pandemic signed off by Hancock would be 2 full time extra cleaners And one part time in a school

@OverTheRainbow88..amen to that

What is wrong with the media. They need to start reporting the chaos in schools, the lack of workplace protection and the danger to teachers.

Come on media!

OverTheRainbow88. Your post is great thank you.

Also @TheSunIsStillShining.

Yes teachers must have a magical something that scares the virus away! As I said in a pp my DH teaches classes of 30 pupils across all year groups in secondary and it's his first teaching post. He truly believes he has been thrown into the fire with this. No masks in classes and pupils are supposed to stay outside his 2m box..hmmm that always works . Now pupils in 2 years are self isolating and he has taught these kids and yet he is not allowed to self isolate. I mean wtf!! The only reason must be that they can't afford for teachers to be off school..so they're absolutely fine with putting teachers at risk every day. No wonder they can't employ enough teachers any more and have to dangle the carrot of a pay rise. No one in their right minds would be a teacher atm!

What carrot of a pay rise? They have just announced a pay freeze. Apparently they are still committed to starting salaries of £30k the following year but no idea how that works without other pay rises (so it may be quietly dropped), would be an odd scale if you earn less in years 2 and 3 than year 1.

@Flagsfiend

What carrot of a pay rise? They have just announced a pay freeze. Apparently they are still committed to starting salaries of £30k the following year but no idea how that works without other pay rises (so it may be quietly dropped), would be an odd scale if you earn less in years 2 and 3 than year 1.

Yes, I see no carrots? There doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem getting people to want to train as teachers but they don’t stay so having a £30k starting salary seems to be spectacularly missing the point.

I rather expect it will never happen.

The government needs to focus on retention.

*Boosey" - the "only reason£" is actualy the key issue. If parents cannot work because children are not in school then we cannot pay the wages of teachers and nurses. None of the choices for the state are nice to have to take but people will die if we don't keep the country going and generate tax revenue to pay salaries of nurses and heat hospitals etc.

Xenia - if you did the maths you would see that there aren't enough parents who cannot work from home paying enough tax to make a difference. Especially when you compare it to how much they have spent on PR trying to convince us all that "schools are safe". That money would have paid for a few nurses.

8% of the workforce have a primary age child xenia. Many of those will be in part time jobs that don't even hit the tax threshold and I'm not sure if that stat even screens out whether both parents work or just one.

Not exactly a huge tax contribution there I'm guessing.

Im loving the difference in photos between Scotland and Wales here today. (Also on same feed is Boris at a testing site....with his mask on incorrectly.)

What carrot of a pay rise? They have just announced a pay freeze. Apparently they are still committed to starting salaries of £30k the following year but no idea how that works without other pay rises (so it may be quietly dropped), would be an odd scale if you earn less in years 2 and 3 than year 1.

DH announced his starting salary had been increased by £3k p/a...not sure when this comes into effect. I will be on a pay freeze however as NHS admin earning peanuts and working throughout the pandemic with nurses on the front line..but that's off topic.

A couple of nqts and a second year teaching colleague realised that if the starting wage of 30k comes in they'll be earning less than people starting after them whilst talking about pay earlier. That's so not viable.

£30k is quite a lot though surely? My son earns £22k full time PAYE until about mid night too (from age now to 67+ - drives a van to deliver groceries to people at home).

@booseysmom I'm guessing your DH has gone up the scale or taken on a TLR role as unless he is a head there is no other way to have a £3k pay rise. Going up the scale is separate to the pay freeze. Pay scales for teachers are no secret - www.nasuwt.org.uk/advice/pay-pensions/pay-scales/england-pay-scales.html we have had an increase this year already, it is future years that are affected by the freeze. And the slightly odd fact that the government promised MPS1 (for NQTs) would be £30k by 22/23 when currently you have to be MPS4 to earn that - so this seems inconsistent with a pay freeze...

@Xenia, you haven't responded to those of us who have pointed out to you that only 8% of the workforce have primary-aged children.

@Xenia

£30k is quite a lot though surely? My son earns £22k full time PAYE until about mid night too (from age now to 67+ - drives a van to deliver groceries to people at home).

I think £30k would be a good starting salary.

The problem is, the government are suggesting the starting salary will go up from 24/25k to 30, but how will this affect the other pay scales? Top of the pay scale is currently only about 35k!

It crucially, hasn’t actually happened yet anyway, so I’ll believe it when I see it.

They’d be better off putting money into all of the pay scales, not just the first, in order to help retention of good staff.

@Xenia

£30k is quite a lot though surely? My son earns £22k full time PAYE until about mid night too (from age now to 67+ - drives a van to deliver groceries to people at home).

It depends what you are comparing it too. I have the same level of education as my husband, both in STEM subjects (in fact I have more education as I had to do teacher training). As a teacher I earn considerably less than he does, teachers aren't in it for the money.

Indie SAGE focussed a lot on schools today, worth a look for anyone interested. They have released a schools report which was discussed in the review (what we have all been saying on here for months, basically.) I will read it through when I get a chance.

They made a point of saying they do NOT want schools closed, they want them to be safer

In other news, secondary schools continue to have the highest % rate of infections, at around 2%.

Did your son need a degree and post grad qualification to do deliveries? It's a bit of a strange comparison really. Perhaps better to compare with a profession that requires similar levels of education and responsibilities?

Yes, BA Hons (although obviously he could do better..... whatever is better. He was also a postman for 3 years).

I was just saying £22k in the South East for full time work including in his case to about midnight compared with teacher on £30k when both have degrees, albeit my don has not done a PGCE shows how much the public sector have raced above the private sector these days particularly when you include the pensions in it too.