Headteacher unions begin legal proceedings against DfE

[Makingnumber2]

www.naht.org.uk/news-and-opinion/news/leadership-news/update-regarding-start-of-term-sent-to-members-on-2-jan-2021/?fbclid=IwAR3WFugSo-KsSToWAvbteMs8HspeXZTMBd9VaiOlAVxOeL0FM1wDRzqbviA

NAHT and ASCL start legal proceedings against DfE

Teachers are refusing to work in unsafe conditions so that they can remain well enough to provide remote learning for most children and continue to provide on-site provision for key worker kids.

If the schools are shut due to too many staff off sick then where would key worker kids go? Doctors and nurses would be forced to stay home rather than work. I don't think we have capacity for that anymore.

Remember this? www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/hull-schools-brink-of-collapse-4716574

It's a question of planned, organised closures or closure because it's not safe to open and not enough staff. I know which will be better for children.

Would you oppose doctors refusing to work on covid wards without PPE? Actually I guess a lot of the people arguing against teachers here probably would.....

What does remote learning look like for a reception aged child?

@Flaxmeadow

Says who? I think you’ll find that it will set a precedent. Legal action against an acting Government is history in the making.

So this is about politicising it to you? Setting a historical precedent for unions, scoring a political point and damn everything and everyone else. You would sacrifice our most vulnerable during the worst crisis since WW2, to make teacher trade union history. Do you have any idea how selfish, up it's own arse, and bonkers this sounds

No more bonkers than you do repeating yourself about strikes which it's nit and you've been told repeatedly.

I completely support the teachers on this and I'm a parent. Most parents I know support them 100% and are appalled at the government's lack of funding to make schools safer.

@Oysterbabe

What does remote learning look like for a reception aged child?

Reception children are meant to learn through play. They have some phonics and reading etc.

So would look the same at home.

I've lived in countries where they don't start formal schooling for kids before age 6. Their educational outcomes are better than ours. I really think for the little ones (I have one), playing outside and being at home with parents is just as good as school. They'll easily catch up, it's really not a problem for them.

For later years it's a tragedy that the government didn't fund schools to make them safer so it's come to this.

In countries I have friends where they DID fund schools to make them safer, their rates are about 20x lower than ours and their kids have had uninterrupted learning.

@IloveJKRowling

I've lived in countries where they don't start formal schooling for kids before age 6. Their educational outcomes are better than ours. I really think for the little ones (I have one), playing outside and being at home with parents is just as good as school. They'll easily catch up, it's really not a problem for them.

For later years it's a tragedy that the government didn't fund schools to make them safer so it's come to this.

In countries I have friends where they DID fund schools to make them safer, their rates are about 20x lower than ours and their kids have had uninterrupted learning.

No matter how many examples and fact based evidence going back decades you show some people they will believe what story they have created in their own head or is being fed to them.

It's not a fucking strike, flax

For it to be strike action there needs to be a ballot. There's no ballot.

That's where you're wrong. See Scargill and the coal miners strike in the 1980s for just one example

There's no withdrawal of labour, merely a refusal to enter an unsafe building.

Do you think a supermarket is any safer than a school at the moment?

Teachers will provide remote education.

How would this work for primary age children?

My daughter feels 100% safer in a supermarket (she has a part time job as an age compliance auditor) than she does at school.

@Flaxmeadow

It's not a fucking strike, flax

For it to be strike action there needs to be a ballot. There's no ballot.

That's where you're wrong. See Scargill and the coal miners strike in the 1980s for just one example

There's no withdrawal of labour, merely a refusal to enter an unsafe building.

Do you think a supermarket is any safer than a school at the moment?

Teachers will provide remote education.

How would this work for primary age children?

You might want to check out the changes in employment law since the 80s, flax, before thinking about how supermarkets and schools are really not very similar in terms of bodies per square metre multiplied by time spent within 2m.

NO ONE IS SAYING TEACHERS SHOULD STRIKE, LEAST OF ALL TEACHERS.

Maybe the big letters will make it easier to understand.

The last thing we need is key workers in a knife fight over who has it worse while the old Etonians sit back swilling their port and laughing that they've fooled the little people once again. This incompetent, populist, people-pleasing, reactionary Gov have caused the current mess.

And, the remote education our school provided during the first lockdown meant that my year 1 class are now on track! AMA except how to find a climb down

Who has refused to work?

You’re wrong and the fact you don’t understand what a strike is, and keep going on about it. It’s embarrassing now.

No-one has suggested a strike, you keep saying they have because you don’t understand what

A strike or "walkout" is exactly what's being suggesting. That they want to call it by a different name, will not make it anymore palatable to the general public, who will know exactly what it is. Or do teachers unions think the public are stupid?

That's where you're wrong. See Scargill and the coal miners strike in the 1980s for just one example

Oh are you actually still living in the 80s? Have you not noticed the legislation introduced since then?

Do you think a supermarket is any safer than a school at the moment?

Yes.

How would this work for primary age children?

Supported by parents. As I supported my primary aged DC with learning while working during the first lockdown.

That they want to call it by a different name, will not make it anymore palatable to the general public,

Interesting that you think the general public haven't noticed there's a pandemic going on.

Lots of support from parents on here, for example.

I imagine lots of support from people who aren't happy at keeping schools open with no mitigation measures during a pandemic while they have to close their businesses too.

@Oysterbabe for us 3 short live sessions a day using TEAMS, the same that would happen at school with a 5 minute follow up that can either be done in the lesson with teacher support or afterwards and submitted if the child finds it too full on. Around 25 minutes each with laptops and dongles provided where needed. Lots of parents have just used their phones/iPads though.

The last thing we need is key workers in a knife fight over who has it worse while the old Etonians sit back swilling their port and laughing that they've fooled the little people once again. This incompetent, populist, people-pleasing, reactionary Gov have caused the current mess.

Thisbis laughable. You really do see yourselves as at the vanguard of some prole uprising against oppressive forces don't you?

You are not 19th century coal miners, or 21st century minimum wage retail staff. Please stop this ridiculous man of the people downtrodden labourers posturing

Lots of reasons why schools are unsafe (more so than, say, supermarkets) at the moment.

This chart is a good indication of a major reason:

go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=twitter.com/datagraver/status/1345126498227912713?s=21

Whichever way you interpret that data, it's hard to conclude anything other than that schools are a major locus (& thus vector) of transmission. And transmission is rocketing.

LOL at the idea that miners

a) weren't keyworkers

and

b) got huge public sympathy. They were demonised , derided, beaten and virtually starved into submission

Besides which successive government have changed the law since to make the type of strike the miners engaged in virtually impossible.

Honestly, the real shocker here is why it's the unions, not the government, acting.

The figures in that graph I've posted are really shocking.

Interesting that you think the general public haven't noticed there's a pandemic going on.

Are you addressing me or the general public feeling here? Yes we do know and that is precisely why "a walkout" , in other words a strike would be so unpopular with the public. Because we are in a crisis

Lots of support from parents on here, for example.

No some support from middle class mumsnet

I imagine lots of support from people who aren't happy at keeping schools open with no mitigation measures during a pandemic while they have to close their businesses too

Ask John and Jane minimum wage Tesco staff what they would think about a "walkout" by teachers

@thecatfromjapan LONG TIME NO SEE!!! Lovely to see you, although in not great circumstances.

It's SUCH a shame that the DfE didn't listen to all the threads on here about safer school opening back in September. Turns out the many teachers on those threads were right.

All the scientists were saying the same thing too. Small class sizes, social distancing, masks, ventilation. That's what works. UK didn't do it, didn't even give extra money to schools for soap.

It's utterly predictable, given they didn't do any of these things, that we're here.

At least I know I was writing to my MP back then pointing out how they were ignoring all the scientific advice on safe school opening. So I did my best to keep schools open.

@Flaxmeadow
John and Jane know fuck all about public heath. They might not even understand how this whole shit is spreading. They should not be in any form or way in a position to decide what should happen in a public health crisis to me, my son, the teachers, their kids, their families.

What ahve you personally done to support and fight against minimum wage working and zero hours contracts flax?