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?

Thanks Sansa that’s really helpful. Primary may be harder? We have high kw numbers and I know this makes school time very scarce for those not if SD comes in.

@TwentyTwentyOne it is not a strike. Have you not grasped that yet?

There seems to be a variation between schools with regard to face masks. At my kids secondary they say some teachers wear them during lessons. So some are clearly allowed to. Which seems sensible.

@pennylane83

The letter reiterates that staff are willing to continue to work, just not on site but wfh instead

So again I ask, what measures are teachers/the unions wanting the government to put in place in response to your action that would make you return to the classroom. Schooling can't take place from home indefinately so what solution/s are you hoping for.

Adequate PPE. More spread out students with spare rooms utilised to lower class sizes. Extra staff put on (maybe Ofsted could get off their arses and do something useful). Regular testing for staff and students provided by a world leading track and trece system. A rota system for older students who can self manage so teachers can spend time with younger children who can’t. Plastic screens separating rows of students like they have in theatres/ restaurants. Maximum one student per desk. Equipment cleaned in between lessons (by someone who isn’t me, so that I can safely supervise students leaving and other students entering.)

You know... all the safely procedures that other places of work have.

None of these things will benefit me. I’m not worried about me. I (and they) are worried about their grandparents.

I just wonder, are YOU ok with your children being sent in to such an unsafe environment? You honestly might as well all pile back into your offices and lick your colleagues.

[quote RoseTintedAtuin]@Bagamoyo1 yes they do. And distance learning and support can be tailored to assist their learning. There is a subset of children who thrived during lockdown as remote learning better suited their learning style.[/quote]
That must be a teeny tiny minority, probably the ones who were getting bullied at school and hated it.

WhoLettheCatOut

When talking about covid, what is at the most risk of someone bringing covid in to the prison.

The prisoners or the staff?

I'm so glad the unions are standing up for teachers because the gov nor most parents give a shit from what I can tell. How anyone expects primary teachers to happily go in, many not allowed to even wear masks in the classroom in case it 'scares the children' is literally beyond me when we know that young children spread literally everything!

I have a primary teacher friend who is over weight (Gov.uk have quietly added BMI of 40 and above back on the shielding list for tier 4 - go and have a look) and has an elderly family member living with her who is going through chemo but she's expected to teach a group of 30 littlies with no protection whatsoever and no plans to up teachers on the vaccine list - is she really supposed to just accept that her job could kill her and/or her Mother and have nothing to say about it??!!

I wish they'd just go ahead and shut the lot for 2 weeks and reassess the figures. It's truly frightening at the moment.

Ooh fluffy , while there’s so much taxpayer money flying around, can I have someone to clean the room after I’ve examined patients in there too please, to save me the bother of doing it?

[quote Fr0thandBubble]@2020out The point is that it is very, very rare for someone to be badly affected if they do not have an underlying condition (counted as such for purposes of COVID - i.e., those which are recognised to increase the risk of death from COVID). Now, if through no fault of their own, a teacher has such a condition - like Type 1 diabetes - I have some sympathy. I don't imagine that there are that many, to be frank - not enough to justify all schools being closed. But if you're arguing that schools should be shut because some teachers - like you - are obese, that is just unacceptable. How can you not see how awful it is to expect sacrifices to be made by others when you can't be bothered to make sacrifices (i.e., losing weight) yourself?[/quote]
Thanks for the repeated body shaming. You are disgusting.

My colleague is currently in hospital because she has covid. She does have an underlying condition. You wouldn't know it and she certainly didn't have a reduced life expectancy. It wasn't her fault. Is that OK for you?

@Bagamoyo1

Ooh fluffy , while there’s so much taxpayer money flying around, can I have someone to clean the room after I’ve examined patients in there too please, to save me the bother of doing it?

Don't be ridiculous. You would need someone else if you had 30 desks to clean between patients. If teachers were teaching fewer than 5 students each they could also clean. Or they could clean the 30 desks and shave 5 mins off each lesson while the students crowd in the corridor outside.

*The letter reiterates that staff are willing to continue to work, just not on site but wfh instead

So again I ask, what measures are teachers/the unions wanting the government to put in place in response to your action that would make you return to the classroom. Schooling can't take place from home indefinately so what solution/s are you hoping for.

Strike:

a refusal to work organized by a body of employees as a form of protest, typically in an attempt to gain a concession or concessions from their employer.

They might be using different language for their own gains, but it sounds like a strike to me.

[quote Fr0thandBubble]@2020out The point is that it is very, very rare for someone to be badly affected if they do not have an underlying condition (counted as such for purposes of COVID - i.e., those which are recognised to increase the risk of death from COVID). Now, if through no fault of their own, a teacher has such a condition - like Type 1 diabetes - I have some sympathy. I don't imagine that there are that many, to be frank - not enough to justify all schools being closed. But if you're arguing that schools should be shut because some teachers - like you - are obese, that is just unacceptable. How can you not see how awful it is to expect sacrifices to be made by others when you can't be bothered to make sacrifices (i.e., losing weight) yourself?[/quote]
You ought to be disgusted. You have "some sympathy" for those with type 1 diabetes who die of covid.

@Bagamoyo1

You must work in a pretty crap GP surgery then. I used to clean our GPs room very frequently even pre covid as the receptionist. There was always adequate cleaning supplies. Far more than I have ever seen for hundreds of kids.

@TwentyTwentyOne

teachers can provide distance learning (among other suggestions such as rotas)... entire degrees with complex information have been taught in this way

Yes, an 18-22 year old who has the maturity to get good A'level results and invest in a degree or a mature student like me who does online learning is really comparable with teaching 30, 9 year olds via an iPad or posting them some worksheets to do independently and follow a rota.

I know plenty of parents who have to sit in from 0830-1530 every day and take leave to make sure their DC is doing the work. I've listened in on lessons of well behaved students in a class of 18 and it's still impossible. Nothing gets done. Do all of your students even have a device to log into? Why do you think GCSE's are being scrapped or watered down? It's because remote learning is ineffective with kids.

But you keep talking yourself into a teachers strike being an act of altruism for the general public.

Depends on the school/children. I taught classes of 26 in the last lockdown and we got plenty done. Evidenced by the quantity and quality of work submitted online. Wouldn't have worked at all in the previous school I worked in.

@MarshaBradyo

Thanks Sansa that’s really helpful. Primary may be harder? We have high kw numbers and I know this makes school time very scarce for those not if SD comes in.

I do think it is much harder for primaries- I have a friend who works in a primary that had 80% of their children in at various points over the summer.

I think the 1m thing is possibly aimed at secondaries where you have 200 odd kids interacting with no social distancing because they are "in a bubble", which does feel unsafe to me.

I don't know what the answer is to this. I think SAGE suggested other buildings be utilised by schools, but I don't think that's viable in many cases.

I think the argument about what’s ‘safe’ began as ‘unsafe because of transmission’ but now vaccines are available, it’s ‘unsafe in case teachers catch covid’ which is a different argument altogether
I think it is, as it has been for most teachers I know, about reducing community transmission and reducing how many people needlessly get Covid because of conditions that even the government has acknowledged increase transmission.

I have a health condition, but am only CV not CEV so I don't get told to shield. Am I unreasonable for wanting to do my job with appropriate and reasonable precautions in place?

The 'in case teachers get covid'argument matters if we want schools to remain open as much as possible (which teachers do, contrary to what you see non teachers claiming on Mumsnet), then you actually need teachers to be able to teach, not off sick with covid because a bunch of moaning minnies and a useless government decided safe working conditions were a step too far.

There's so many people acting like selfish, lazy teachers don't want to work /selfish teachers just want to jump the queue for the vaccine, but none of them have confirmed that they would be entirely happy with their child's school being closed because the staff are unwell!

@TwentyTwentyOne

*The letter reiterates that staff are willing to continue to work, just not on site but wfh instead

So again I ask, what measures are teachers/the unions wanting the government to put in place in response to your action that would make you return to the classroom. Schooling can't take place from home indefinately so what solution/s are you hoping for.

Strike:

a refusal to work organized by a body of employees as a form of protest, typically in an attempt to gain a concession or concessions from their employer.

They might be using different language for their own gains, but it sounds like a strike to me.

Teachers aren't refusing to work though.

We are offering to do any other type of work that does not involve teaching full classes with no social distancing or PPE.

Legally, it is not a strike, and that is what matters, not "what it sounds like to you".

@2020out - It's not body shaming! You can be as fat as you like and I couldn't care less but when you start using it as an excuse to stop doing your job, meaning my children lose out on their education and my job is at risk because I can no longer do it as I am having TO DO YOUR JOB FOR YOU INSTEAD, then it's not on is it?

I am sorry about your colleague but if you read my post you would see I DO have sympathy for those who have other serious underlying health conditions and I would hope that they could be covered by supply teachers. But that shouldn't mean all schools are closed!

@Bagamoyo1

Ooh fluffy , while there’s so much taxpayer money flying around, can I have someone to clean the room after I’ve examined patients in there too please, to save me the bother of doing it?

Ooh Bagamojo...my smear test is a year overdue as I am currently on a waiting list due to a backlog because my GP surgery is working at 50% capacity.

I guess that is GPs like you have the time to clean it afterwards and to change their PPE. I’m not k with that because I don’t want to my GP to put themselves at risk.

But hey... I guess students are less important than you.

Sorry @greenbinday from about 13 pages ago!

I had been pushed to the edge by goady teacher bashers over the last few days. I took myself away from MN for a good few hours. Because I have had these same conversations non-stop since before June, I forget that not everyone else has!!!!

@Fr0thandBubble your previous comment was simply vile. What an entitled point of view. And to think that teachers with underlying health conditions have put themselves at risk to provide education, safety and security to your children...

@ktp100

I'm so glad the unions are standing up for teachers because the gov nor most parents give a shit from what I can tell. How anyone expects primary teachers to happily go in, many not allowed to even wear masks in the classroom in case it 'scares the children' is literally beyond me when we know that young children spread literally everything!

I have a primary teacher friend who is over weight (Gov.uk have quietly added BMI of 40 and above back on the shielding list for tier 4 - go and have a look) and has an elderly family member living with her who is going through chemo but she's expected to teach a group of 30 littlies with no protection whatsoever and no plans to up teachers on the vaccine list - is she really supposed to just accept that her job could kill her and/or her Mother and have nothing to say about it??!!

I wish they'd just go ahead and shut the lot for 2 weeks and reassess the figures. It's truly frightening at the moment.

I don’t think BMI over 40 has ever been on the shielding list? It is on the clinically more vulnerable one I think?