How many teachers will be handing in the section 44 letter tomorrow and not going in?

[SoscaredforJan]

My DSis is scared to go to work tomorrow in a private primary school in Tier 3 but lowish numbers. She is not ECV but has got chemo damaged lungs so it petrified of catching Covid.

She desperately wants to follow union advice and not go in tomorrow but she’s worried that most teachers will be in as normal, she will have a black Mark against her and will be quietly pushed out.

Are there many teachers on here planning not to go in tomorrow? What do you think will happen tomorrow?

netflix - I answered your question.

If prison officers didn't go in, and left prisoners locked up, the prisoners would die.

That's why they are essential.

If teachers don't go in, it will not have the same effect. We can do our jobs from home.

Also, we have many more students, and they are all in touch with many other people in the community, and we cannot wear PPE.

So - teachers are both much less important, and debatably much more more exposed (this is if you manage to keep Covid out of prisons in the first place - possible, but admittedly very tricky). This is why we have options you do not. I apologise about the inequity, but we are exercising those options, not for our own benefit, but to save lives.

[quote MarieG10]@CallmeAngelina

"You're showing your ignorance, here. This is NOT a strike, but a section 44 on Health and Safety grounds."

In our school they are getting 2 days to get it out of their system and after that will be treated as being on strike and pay docked. Is the usual NEU trying to justify their existence

I haven't seen anything from the shop workers union about their members handing in section 44 notices....oh probably because they would get laughed at

[/quote]
Are you private?

I haven’t read back may have missed it

netflixandmixedgrill

Didn't you post end of?
Why are you still posting?
Don't you understand your own posts?

And if you think that teachers are only doing this for their own benefit then you really are deluded.

I'm not small minded enough to only care about my own profession
Yet you don't care about teachers, pupils, their families or the wider community that it will spread too. go figure.

To respond to the OP

Yes, I work across schools in a tier 3 area. Many schools only open to KW/V from tomorrow-as the vast majority of staff are teaching remotely.
Schools reporting 49 out of 55 staff, 110 out of 119, 3 out of 4 in a small school.

@Confusedlady246

In response to your question. Yes I think teachers are more exposed than carers (at this point in the pandemic). My mother is a nurse and manages a care home. Good, stringent protocols now in place with staff being tested every two weeks.

It’s got nothing to do with entitlement. My mother, a nurse in a care home agrees with me.

@TwentyTwentyOne

Comefromawa

I work in a client facing role in a place where 000's of people traipse through, touching stuff, every day.

At my DCs school all the teachers wear masks between lessons and visors during lessons and have gallons of hand gel. Not one teacher at my school or within its group has caught COVID and we are in Tier 4. But then they went back mid Sept, had a week off in Oct and then have been off since the end of the first week in Dec. Compare that to my job with no time off this year due to short staffing and demand. They are not at more risk than me.

At the beginning of the pandemic many of my DC's teachers acted appallingly. One even told us they hoped they'd be locked down until next year they were enjoying lockdown so much and told my DS in March they weren't sending any more form that school year. It's only after the parents refused the next terms fee invoice did they do something about it.

I've already decided that if my DC's teachers go on strike I am resigning my job. If others like me do likewise then your DC having a "subpar" education will be the least of your problems.

Think about it. You've been off most of last year and are still complaining. It's absolutely infuriating.

If teachers strike I hope all other key workers do too. I'll happily join them.

You said your children are at private school.

Several of the things you mentioned here are not allowed in state schools and/or the school does not have the resources plus class sizes in general are a lot bigger.

My son attends FE college and they, like private schools are not subject to the same rules so they’ve been able to put many more safety measures in place rather like your children’s school.

But that’s not the case generally in state education.

@Confusedlady246

Sorry, that was a mistake. Twice weekly testing in her care home. PPE.

@Barbie222

Please explain to me, as others have asked already, why Prison officers, doctors, nurses, police officers, social workers etc must continue to go to work each day and teachers do not?

Because they have been allowed to make their workplaces safer. The nurses now have enough PPE and they distance their patients. Doctors triage on the phone. Prisoners are not able to gather in groups. Police officers do an amazing job, under fantastic circumstances. But they are still not exposed to the risks of mixing with 30 people in a small space, and unfortunately the virus doesn't care how worthy your job is, it just cares whether or not it has a lot of hosts it can pass between.

Schools as they were make the community unsafe because they magnify the risks that are already there. If there are few cases, they are relatively safe. But when there are lots of cases, they make the community rates rise astronomically.They make individuals in them unsafe, when they don't need to. There are plenty of things that could be done to improve school safety, but they weren't done. Now even the Government's own advisers say that it's time to reduce the community transmission and there are no more levers to pull apart from shutting schools to most children. But the government won't act on the advice, so things are going to get a lot worse for individual communities, and the whole nation in the end. And because of this, the unions believe the Government have a legal case to answer.

Now you don't need to be confused any more!

If you genuinely think teachers are more at risk than doctors and nurses then I'm at a loss for words. Clearly you're a teacher yourself.

The issue is the country still needs to keep running despite this pandemic. We cannot retreat to our houses indefinitely until the whole population is vaccinated. If teachers are not in schools, doing their jobs, then parents cannot work. This means parents may lose their jobs, or businesses may even be forced to close down due to a lack of staff. Without income, these parents are vulnerable to losing their house, and may struggle to feed themselves and child. All the while teachers sit at home in their PJ's patting themselves on the back and high-fiving each other virtually for 'doing it for the kids and the community'.

I know several teachers who are genuinely scared about returning to work. Two of them have handed in their resignation.

@Confusedlady246
You truly and honestly believe teachers are more at risk than doctors and nurses? Do you really believe that?

Doesn't matter what I believe, clearly doctors, nurses, prion officers do (en mass) think they are safer or they would be revoking section 44 too.
Doctors and nurses do generally work in safe and hygienic circumstances with appropriate protection, training and safety equipment.

@TwentyTwentyOne

Teachers are one of the only professions where there is no social distancing or PPE.

Then take it up with your head. There are very strict social distancing rules in our school and the teachers have PPE. We have no cases in teachers.

Your school is at fault for not protecting you.

State school heads have no money for PPE.

State school heads have been told their teachers should not be wearing PPE

State schools can only enforce social distancing if they have approx half the children in at a time which heads have been told is not allowed.

I haven't seen anything from the shop workers union about their members handing in section 44 notices....oh probably because they would get laughed at
They'd have my full support if their employers weren't putting in appropriate measures to reduce risk.

The fact that workers are so willing to turn on anyone who has the audacity to expect reasonable health and safety at work is right-winger's wet dream

Seriously, right now Johnson and his mates must be laughing that some members of the general public are seriously arguing against moves to make schools safer. He knows schools aren't safe because he said 'schools are safe, it's just levels of household mixing that aren't safe'.

Johnson doesn't want to make the difficult decisions. He never has. He does what he's told and what he thinks will make him popular until things get so bad that his hand is forced. Then he blames everyone else.

While schools were shut, cases reduced significantly. In the term they've been open, they've increased

The entire country was in lockdown for most of the school closure with society opening up in summer just in time for everyone to jet off on their 2 weeks abroad. Unsurprisingly, cases increased in the weeks that followed. Similarly, everyone went crazy in Dec going out doing their Xmas shopping before the teirs changed and, unsurprisingly, cases have again rocketed. Schools being the source of spread are just a convenient way for irresponsible adults to pass the buck when it comes to their own socialising. Yes, covid may well be spreading in schools but the children caught it from somewhere in order to be bringing it into the classroom all term and given that with most social activities closed children have spent the term merely going from home to school to home that leaves what...

All the while teachers sit at home in their PJ's patting themselves on the back and high-fiving each other virtually for 'doing it for the kids and the community'

Based on what evidence? Your imagination again?

[quote SeldomFollowedIt]@Confusedlady246

In response to your question. Yes I think teachers are more exposed than carers (at this point in the pandemic). My mother is a nurse and manages a care home. Good, stringent protocols now in place with staff being tested every two weeks.

It’s got nothing to do with entitlement. My mother, a nurse in a care home agrees with me.[/quote]
Great, so in your mother's care home things are safe, that must mean every care home in the nation is safe. Excellent work

My mother is in a care home.
Staff have PPE, and are tested weekly but more to the point, the home has been in lockdown since the end of March. The residents haven’t left the building and all visits were strictly regulated and Covid-secure.
Deliveries are also quarantined.

Bit different to working in a primary school.

It would be very good to see the occupational data on cases and hospitalisations since May, but the government are refusing to release it. However the patchy data we do have suggests they are a bit more at risk, yes.

Based on what evidence? Your imagination again?
Someone on mumsnet said so.

It's going to be a week of goady teacher bashing on here.

[quote ByersRd]@Confusedlady246
You truly and honestly believe teachers are more at risk than doctors and nurses? Do you really believe that?

Doesn't matter what I believe, clearly doctors, nurses, prion officers do (en mass) think they are safer or they would be revoking section 44 too.
Doctors and nurses do generally work in safe and hygienic circumstances with appropriate protection, training and safety equipment. [/quote]
Correction, those professions are continuing because they know they have to. Let's hope we don't wake up tomorrow and find all the doctors and nurses have decided they'd like to stay home for a while too

Yes, my daughters friend feels far safer at her part time job working in a care home than she does at school (although she actually gave up her job because there was too high a risk of her bringing Covid into the home from school).

@Feckers2018 I really wish you all the best. You are the third poster I have seen on threads today who have left the profession and it is completely understandable. I wonder what will happen when teachers become so scarce that there aren’t enough left to keep schools running, and whether that will open people’s eyes to how valuable they are to society.

@ZeldaPrincessOfHyrule

All the while teachers sit at home in their PJ's patting themselves on the back and high-fiving each other virtually for 'doing it for the kids and the community'

Based on what evidence? Your imagination again?

Your post doesn't make sense. How can I provide evidence for a light-hearted comment I made on the future behaviour of teachers?

@Feathersinthehead

My mother is in a care home. Staff have PPE, and are tested weekly but more to the point, the home has been in lockdown since the end of March. The residents haven’t left the building and all visits were strictly regulated and Covid-secure. Deliveries are also quarantined.

Bit different to working in a primary school.

Have the care staff, kitchen staff, cleaners, delivery staff etc stayed within the walls of the care home too?

I know of 4 local primaries closed and only one open tomorrow in our Norfolk area. My daughter isn’t due back until weds so I guess we’ll find out Tuesday night!