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.

Until last term our area had hardly been touched by COVID apart from a few random areas. We were constantly one the lowest infection rate areas. All change last term, we had the highest infection rate in the country for awhile. So if you haven’t been impacted much at the moment, that might just be luck. Our luck ran out last term

I imagine school resources will be targeted at exam years

Yes.

Let's hope that the omicron plateaus soon and will start to decline like it is in South Africa right now!

So yes, it'll be a difficult January, but hopefully more ch better thereafter.

I would prioritize exam years and the youngest kids.

People doubting the 25%....we are a 2 form entry primary school with 14 teachers. It isn't inconceivable that 4 teachers might be off with covid at one point, is it?

There is so little money that education staffing, like the nhs, has been squeezed and squeezed.
Our ks2 might have a teacher and a TA but our junior dept doesn't. A yeargroup shares a TA who often also has other roles to cover. Many of them are employed at a level of pay that means they are allowed to cover classes. Some of them are part time so no TA ie available on certain days.

When I had covid in Dec it was impossible to get a supply teacher. We broke the rules by allowing a student teacher to cover (who is supposed to be supervised at all times) as well as having TAs cover who shouldn't have. At one point the head teacher had to step in too.

@blameitonthecaffeine

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.

Great post.

The implication from @blueshoes that staff in state schools are somehow workshy is rather galling.

Secondary state school teacher here. I, and others in my department, have been at breaking point constantly last term. Behaviour was awful, we are already doing mandatory lunch duties, looming Ofsted meant random deep dives by SLT to 'prepare', our workload has increased just to add some pointless shiny initiatives to impress Ofsted when they appear, and staff absence created chaos daily.

Next term is shaping up to be this but magnitudes worse. I cannot see how school staff will cope.

I'm constantly amazed at the number of people who believe primary schools to be awash with TAs who have so little to do that they can step in and teach classes of 35 children. I'm a higher level ta and am happy to do this but my level 1 colleagues should not be put in that position- they are paid a little over minimum wage , most are part time only and are timetabled for large parts of the day for 1:1 or small group work with children with SEN. The days of a full time TA wafting about doing displays and cutting things out are long gone!

All this talk about TAs covering the classes. - but TAs are NOT non-teaching staff.

Either the education sector doesn't understand the role of school staff in the sector he is supposed to manage or he doesn't mean TAs, but support staff such as admin, maintenance, lunch time supervisors, etc.

And in infants, combining classes - so we ignore legal numbers for classes and supervision then?

And how do we fit all these children in one room? We have a hall but does he seriously expect us to move two classes worth of tables and chairs in there and have 4-7y sat down, facing the front at desks all day working whilst being supervised by the admin manager?

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

Hilarious. We have been doing 1. since September 2020. It’s hardly rocket science.

1. Sure, cancel holidays. Because no ember of school staff has already booked anything and no parent will decide that they deserve a family holiday and take their child out for the summer.

@greenteafiend
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
Hate to break it to you, but educating your child is called being a parent. TA’s aren’t there to provide you with free babysitting services so you can sit at home in a safe environment and get on with your work.

put the kids of working parents into childcare centers

I don’t know about yours, but my kids are human beings…

@Isolated101

Why is it so crazy to suggest teachers WFH if isolating? If you are very unwell that’s different, but myself and many others I know have had to isolate for 10 days and WFH the majority of it as symptoms were fairly mild.

We tried this and it doesn’t help very much. Yes, absent teachers can set work if they feel well enough (many were very ill) and, yes, colleagues would drop off books to mark (and collect them if the teacher was ill post-Covid and no longer infectious). What didn’t work was ‘projecting’ teachers onto whiteboards to ‘teach’. Sound was poor, vision was poor, wifi was often shaky - then children got distracted and it became stressful for everyone. Absent teaching staff made themselves deteriorate by trying to do this. Nether did this approach work when staffing levels dropped as the classes still needed supervising and there was no one left to even sit with a class. We also has issues with prepping work as there was no time to organise photocopying worksheets and finding books for absent colleagues’ classes. I guess the equivalent for me would be expecting a traffic warden to work from home if they were sick!

There's no way our admin staff would (or could or should) sit with 32 teens in a room while a sick teacher dials in. Same for secondary TAs; it would be carnage.

PPs have described the problems with dialing in. It works for small groups only.

It’s all very well and good the education secretary suggesting combined classes but where exactly will these be taught? Our primary has one small hall that is already used for 2 lunch sittings - 3 when bubbles are in place. These suggestions to schools make it obvious that the government have absolutely no idea what an actual primary school looks like! D

At the point of combining classes with admin staff for babysitting I will be pulling my child out.

[quote LadyPenelope68]@greenteafiend
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
Hate to break it to you, but educating your child is called being a parent. TA’s aren’t there to provide you with free babysitting services so you can sit at home in a safe environment and get on with your work.[/quote]
Hate to break it to you, but a lot of people can't WFH and they do work while their children are at school whether you like it or not. You can shout "school isn't childcare" all you want but what is the other option? A lot of teachers and TAs WERE essentially babysitters for KW children in the first lockdown. Of course that's not what teachers are there for, they are there to educate, but that's the reality of what happened.

@Waxonwaxoff0
Yes and I'm happy to do that again if needed. While, I hasten to add teaching my own class.
Even this won't happen if schools are overwhelmed by staff illness.
What will the key workers do then?

TA’s aren’t there to provide you with free babysitting services so you can sit at home in a safe environment and get on with your work

Have you considered that a lot of parents have to work outside their home? Like teachers, they're required to at their workplace.

I'm so sick of Zahawi banging on about education remaining open and face to face teaching for all.
He should say your children will be supervised if and when absences become an issue.
He is essentially lying.

[quote twinkletoesimnot]@Waxonwaxoff0
Yes and I'm happy to do that again if needed. While, I hasten to add teaching my own class.
Even this won't happen if schools are overwhelmed by staff illness.
What will the key workers do then? [/quote]
Yes, it's of course a problem.

@BoPeeple

put the kids of working parents into childcare centers

I don’t know about yours, but my kids are human beings…

What are you imagining *BoPeople’?

You do know that nurseries, before and after school clubs are all childcare settings don’t you?
Schools are for education but they are also set up to care for both young & older children & keep them safe.
They’re effectively locked in behind fences.

Swop the word ‘setting’ for centre and you have the same thing.

In the first lockdown schools were only meant to offer childcare for the children in school, so as not to disadvantage the children at home. The curriculum was suspended at that point. Think the Government thought that schools would only be closed for a couple of weeks.

Obviously, different now with remote provision in place. But with staff shortages it may go back to little more than childcare. Which for some year groups might not be too bad but for others not so good.

I’m just struggling to understand why every other sector is supposed to just carry on, in not ideal situations, other staff in other sectors are expected to work longer hours, cover different roles, do what they can to get through, but when it comes to schools any suggestion that’s less than perfect is seen as impossible? This is only an attitude I see on here btw and definitely not in RL.

Teachers did do online lessons from home, and have continued to do so when needed, both at my children’s school, the school my parents teach in and the school my sisters children attend. People upgraded their internet package, brought WiFi extenders, or found other ways around it in many other professions. This would be for 7-10 days while a member of staff is isolating IF necessary, so none of these are long term.

@Waxonwaxoff0
A lot of teachers and TAs WERE essentially babysitters for KW children in the first lockdown. Of course that's not what teachers are there for, they are there to educate, but that's the reality of what happened.
I’m a teacher, I’m fully aware of what a shit show the whole thing was the first time around.

when it comes to schools any suggestion that’s less than perfect is seen as impossible? This is only an attitude I see on here btw and definitely not in RL.
Because if a TA is covering a lesson, Bob - who is entitled by law - to TA support doesn't get it.

@Isolated101

I’m just struggling to understand why every other sector is supposed to just carry on, in not ideal situations, other staff in other sectors are expected to work longer hours, cover different roles, do what they can to get through, but when it comes to schools any suggestion that’s less than perfect is seen as impossible? This is only an attitude I see on here btw and definitely not in RL.

Teachers did do online lessons from home, and have continued to do so when needed, both at my children’s school, the school my parents teach in and the school my sisters children attend. People upgraded their internet package, brought WiFi extenders, or found other ways around it in many other professions. This would be for 7-10 days while a member of staff is isolating IF necessary, so none of these are long term.

Um, what do you think we have been doing?

Your staff in other sectors do all that with no mitigations while working with unvaccinated people they cannot distance from? Yes?
Thought not. 🙄