If workplaces are planning on a 25% absence rate then how on earth are we all expecting schools to carry on as normal ?

[Timetobuckup]

I have just been reading in the BBC website that the gov are telling businesses to plan for a quarter of their workforce to be absent .
There is no way schools / colleges will manage with that amount of staff out.

I work in a secondary school and had a pcr this morning , my teen ds is positive and I am keeping fingers and toes crossed I am negative but not holding out much hope.
We are doing mass testing on Tues and I am really interested to see how many have to go home.

@blueshoes

I presume this 'staffing crisis' due to covid absences is somehow affecting the public sector more badly than the private sector.

Why do you presume that? What are you trying to suggest? If you want to take a pop at public sector workers by insinuating that they're swinging the lead, I'd have more respect for you if you came out and said it openly.

Presumably teachers will be vaccinated & boosted so unlikely to get particularly poorly

Sod the CEV and CV kids, eh?

If someone tries to put me in a room with a couple of classes, I shall be playing my CV card which I have so far ignored. There is no way I am putting myself at any more risk than I already am to just babysit.

Secondary/colleges - One member of staff could do online lessons for several forms

Just the small issue of timetabling to contend with there, eh? We can teach all classes at all times…. Not.

I'd have more respect for you if you came out and said it openly.

Very happy to do so.

Staff absences are not an issue at 2 separate independent schools which my dcs go to and never were. Funny that.

@blueshoes

I'd have more respect for you if you came out and said it openly.

Very happy to do so.

Staff absences are not an issue at 2 separate independent schools which my dcs go to and never were. Funny that.

Assuming your anecdote is true, there can be nuanced reasons for it other than the age-old right-wing-press lie that public sector are skivers.

These reasons include:

Virus may not have hit your school too hard yet as it behaves differently across the country.

Your school may have more money for cover staff.

You may not be fully enquiring enough for the full picture because our school seems to be fine but has had to cover 20% of days last term. Luckily cover was available.

Your school is perhaps reckless abs bundles classes together when staff are short.

Your school may have terrible sick pay abs teachers may be coming in ill.

Your school may have a draconian head who insists staff come in ill.

Or you’re chatting half true anecdotes.

And you’ll come back with even less true anecdotes that mean zip.

@blueshoes

I'd have more respect for you if you came out and said it openly.

Very happy to do so.

Staff absences are not an issue at 2 separate independent schools which my dcs go to and never were. Funny that.

@blueshoes

'Staff absences are not an issue at 2 separate independent schools which my dcs go to and never were. Yet.'

Corrected it for you. My DS's teachers (subject teacher and class teacher in an independent prep) both caught Covid in the last week of term along with several other teachers. I wouldn't count your chickens yet.

Hokay, I shall wait and tremble

My private sector office is also not affected. I sure some staff may be off sick at any one point in time but it is being covered.

@angstridden2

I expect I’ll get shot down , but it would be good to see a few more teachers on here being constructive and offering suggestions on how schools could get through this hopefully short term crisis. Classes can’t be blended, non fully qualified staff can’t help out, online teaching won’t work because covid + teachers won’t continue working although most of the young people I know who have had covid have continued working from home. It’s so relentlessly negative. What exactly do they suggest? Send all children home again to the detriment of their education and keep primary school parents away from their own jobs...nurses, doctors etc.

I know it’s been hard, I know it can be a rubbish job; been there, got the t shirt but really what do people suggest happens?

It's not individual teachers' jobs to come up with a national plan. Only the govt/dfe can do that, and they've failed again.

I've seen plenty of suggestions from teachers on here over the course of the pandemic. The one that probably could have helped the most is ventilation in classrooms, but that's not something that teachers can organise (apart from that pp who got one for Xmas - hope that it keeps you and your students safe ). I know a few local schools who only got their lockdown laptops just before Xmas (which sparked another panic about this signifying school closures in Jan, but more likely they really are just delayed by A WHOLE YEAR.

Some schools have been given co2 monitors. Mine was promised some, but they didn't ever arrive. Although they seem a bit useless too - a colleague who has been fortunate enough to to have some for their school says that they only had 3, for over 1000 kids. And the monitors always show a level tens of times over the safe level, but there's no more windows to open. But useless to measure air quality when there's nothing to be done when it's shown to be poor.

Our LFTs haven't arrived either and we can't get any to test staff twice weekly.

I know this sounds very negative, but what should have been done hasn't been done. We're 2 years in, we can't claim the govt have been caught by surprise anymore. There should be ventilation going into schools, LFTs available for asymptomatic screening. The govt have failed us and I'm furious about it.

blueshoes I'm in an Independent school and we have had far fewer problems with absence of both staff and pupils than most state schools seem to have done.

But the reasons for that seem pretty clear to me and are nothing to do with different attitudes to work between the sectors.

1. longer holidays.
   We were just starting to get overwhelmed with cases the week before half term and the week before Christmas. But we had a 2 week half term which was sufficient to break the chain of transmission and mean we were then fine for several more weeks. We finished on 10th December and it was just getting really bad. I don't know what it would have looked like in another week. We've now had more than 3 weeks off and, currently, all staff are well. Now we wait and see what happens next.

2. class sizes.
   No class is bigger than 16 in primary and 20 in secondary. Fewer children does mean less transmission.

3. holistic education (not sure if that's the right phrase).
   Most of our pupils are on the school premises till long after school ends doing various activities. They don't therefore tend to go to activities outside of school or mix with many children from other schools. Similarly staff are on site for more hours, including Saturday school, and less likely to be elsewhere. So we're less likely to encounter out of school transmission.

4. parental occupations
   A much higher proportion of our parents can work from home than in most state schools. Which again cuts the transmission pool.

5. School size
   The average independent school is smaller than the average secondary.

Question though, wouldn’t having eg 2 weeks’ worth of plans available be a good way to mitigate impact if you’re off? Yes it’s work up front but it’s not entirely work you wouldn’t otherwise be doing (or work that hasn’t been done in the past) and it means that your lessons can be covered at short notice - thereby meaning less extra work for colleagues, better quality work for kids, AND if you did end up being unwell and unable to wfh it has less impact

We follow schemes of work. We rarely do the same thing twice, year on year, because all classes are different and require different activities/input. Sure, I know what I will need to cover, in what order, between now and July for all my classes, but I adjust constantly. Something that took me half a lesson last year might take 3 lessons this year. Because learning is missing, because abilities are different, because shit is happening constantly, because kids are not machines…

My department and I sat down one evening the last week of term and put together booklets for the full term and sent them for printing so all kids will have a bare minimum in their bags/at home with them for reference and worksheets in our subject. This will help with the inevitable simultaneous in-class/online delivery that is coming. We also made pdfs of the booklet and posted them to Teams for good measure. So we are ready - for us to be off, for kids to be off individually or en masse, for lockdown, semi-shutdown or anything else. But I am still going to need to actually teach for the booklets to be of any real use. I still need to be well to teach either in person or online and I will need kids to have access to a stable WiFi connection and a suitable device to work on whilst not being ill themselves or worried about a sick family member, not supervising younger siblings or playing Xbox.

Staff absences are not an issue at 2 separate independent schools which my dcs go to and never were

Yeah, covid knows not to pass the threshold of the private schools. It’s clever like that . There may be more goodwill in the independent sector with staff more used to doing their own cover rather than relying on supply but there will come a point where they will also close.

I think sometimes people think we can "leave plans" for what we do any any old bod can then teach. That isn't the case. Another suitably qualified specialist in my subject might be able to, but someone else could not actually teach it just from my "plans." Teachers actually teach. Not just set work or hand out worksheets.

So agree with above there could be "something" subject related left but it isnt the same.

What is also tricky is having a different 20% of the class off each week...

TAs aren’t meant to take whole classes, they certainly aren’t paid to do so. They should and could refuse to babysit these classes

Well, parents are not qualified (or paid) to be teachers, yet we were expected to homeschool during the previous closures. The reality is that in a pandemic, sometimes everyoneteachers, TAs and parentsneeds to accept the need to do stuff that is not usually part of our remit.

What do teachers want? Monitors and filters in every room as well as the mask mandate. This should have been in place after the first lockdown.
Most of my rooms are well ventilated though so that isn't my main concern.
My main issue is that the government don't seem to grasp the staffing issue in the NHS. It's not about how many beds we have (although we should have more we don't compare well to other countries). We could have thousands more beds and it would make no difference. Why? There's no staff! The price of the 'hostile environment' and Brexit combined with poor pay and conditions.

By the way:

I am pro "better ventilation in schools, " not least because there is evidence that it is beneficial for both kids and teachers in the long run anyway, regardless of covid.

However, I wonder if we are all prepared for the grief, anger and disillusionment all round that will ensue when it becomes clear that ventilation is something which, at most, can slow the spread and severity of omicron a bit, and does not magically make it go away?

I just think there are a lot of people here with some seriously exaggerated ideas about what "better ventilation" is actually going to achieve. The discussion on here seems to suggest a fond belief that it's going to make omicron disappear in a puff of smoke.

I'm support staff in a school (over 2000 students). Boy am I glad I got that booster before Christmas. I've so far not had covid or needed to isolate. I'd love to keep up that lucky streak!

@greenteafiend

No but parents have the responsability for the children the have.
If you were a cleaner in a hospital and they were short staffed would you be happy suddenly expected to start taking bloods and injecting people without the skills, training or pay?

At the end of the day children are perents responsibility 24/7 we live is a world that in general times we can outsource care of our children and the responsibility of education to others by either paying for the service or by opting into government services but the if that isnt available or inaccessible the responsibility lies with parents.
If a child is sick you keep them home if a child has a contageous illness you keep them home.

Couple of points:

1. A friend of mine who teaches in a small private school (not in the UK) had to isolate (not symptomatic, just following the isolation rules); she basically Zoomed in laptop while an admin assistant did the classroom management aspect and reinforced what she said for the kids. It was not ideal but it worked OK for the moment. She was not pressured to do this, but preferred this rather than the hassle of trying to catch the kids up after she got back. Not possible for people who are sick, but might be doable for asymptomatic people.
2. Other option is to cancel school altogether for six weeks, put the kids of working parents into childcare centers, and cut vacation time for the rest of the school year.

If you were a cleaner in a hospital and they were short staffed would you be happy suddenly expected to start taking bloods and injecting people without the skills, training or pay?

No. Because that would be dangerous.
A TA taking the odd class does not involve threat to life or limb, and is probably safer than thinly supervised kids running around the house while parents try to "work."

I guess we just hope it doesn't come to that.

I hate that this is our national approach to every stage of covid.

I would prefer some planning and mitigation, but crossed fingers is all we get.

@CallmeHendricks

Every workplace/organisation will have its own challenges and solutions, even if they're cobbled together. What I don't see happening is people who have no fucking idea piling onto staff in offices/supermarkets/hospital with half-arsed ideas that won't work in a million years and then get arsey when the people who work there and know what they're talking about point out it cannot happen (for bloody good operational/safety reasons). Nor do they get accused of "negativity." WHY does the whole world think they can run schools better than, oh you know, the professionals whose job it actually IS?

@CallmeHendricks you are so right. Having been to school doesn't mean you can run a school. It's a complex organisation where budgets, safeguarding, health and safety, IT resources, catering facilities, cleaning, site management, teaching resources, risk assessments and a million other factors have to be taken into account.

If a child is sick you keep them home if a child has a contageous illness you keep them home.

Well, yes, obviously. My post was not even about the need to isolate when sick, so I'm not sure why this was even brought up.

@greenteafiend

TAs aren’t meant to take whole classes, they certainly aren’t paid to do so. They should and could refuse to babysit these classes

Well, parents are not qualified (or paid) to be teachers, yet we were expected to homeschool during the previous closures. The reality is that in a pandemic, sometimes everyoneteachers, TAs and parentsneeds to accept the need to do stuff that is not usually part of our remit.

It isn't the same at all.

Parents are parents all the time.

I think people would be surprised to know how badly TAs are paid.

Parents are parents all the time.

You are missing my point, which is that TA is better qualified to teach a class on an academic subject than the average parent.

If you don't want TAs teaching classes, rruth, you need to explain exactly what you want to happen instead.

And "ventilation and masks!! because these are magic and will make omicron disappear" is not an answer.

I am pro ventilation and don't mind masks (kids in my country wear them anyway), but they are not going to do much more than "take the edge off" the spread of omicron. Omicron appears to be almost as infectious as measles.

Classes can’t be blended, non fully qualified staff can’t help out, online teaching won’t work because covid + teachers won’t continue working although most of the young people I know who have had covid have continued working from home. It’s so relentlessly negative. What exactly do they suggest?

Most of what you list here happened in the last term. We had classes taught from home, we had doubled up planning, some schools had caretakers babysitting classes. People talk like the government plan is something new. It isn't. It's the government FINALLY acknowledging that school is primarily childcare. If they were bothered about actually educating kids, they would have a better (and funded) plan.

In secondary there is no chance TAs should be teaching classes. The behavioural issues would be unsafe for students and staff.