Schools still a covid shitshow

[noblegiraffe]

"Schools have been forced to send year groups home this week because of "rapidly rising" Covid rates among staff and an inability to find supply teachers, it has emerged.

The removal of the need for Covid testing among staff and pupils was making the situation worse, with some schools now experiencing their worst absence levels of the pandemic, a headteachers' leader told Tes.

Heads warn that some schools are having to send year groups home on a rota or combine class groups in an attempt to protect exam year groups from more disruption."

www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/covid-schools-absence-send-year-groups-home-cases-spike

Some will claim that getting rid of testing would improve the situation, but clearly a situation where lots of teachers are getting ill and requiring a few days off school to recover, regardless of isolation rules, is not 'getting back to normal'.

The teachers that I know who have had covid recently would have required a few days off school despite it being 'mild' even without isolation guidance, even though teachers are well-known for dosing on Lemsip and turning up to school regardless of illness because setting cover work is worse.

Still, the covid catch-up effort has basically fizzled out, and it's looking like zero effort will be made by the government to support children in recovering their education from the impact of absences and lack of teachers.

Exams start in a couple of months for kids who are having an extremely disruptive time. The government has fixed the exam grades so that they will come out with better results than the 2019 cohort, this will basically cover up the impact on educational standards. How this will play out down the line at uni/college/sixth form is anyone's guess.

Roll on Easter. Its like a 6-8 week rising horror show followed by a fire break... I think that is actually the govt plan for education. "Well, there's a holiday every 7 weeks or so when we know it goes down s bit again. Job done."

It's a bit unpredictable for this holiday though. Everything is fully open, there's no other measures so the kids can take covid from school to their holiday clubs, then to the grandparents and family at Easter. There might be a scramble for tests like before christmas - I hope the pharmacies have a stickpile they don't run out when people are looking for them.

And after Easter we're in to Summer term where going on last year it really calmed down. Although as I remember we still had some distancing and mask measures in place so who knows what to expect? Secondary schools didn't have public exams to organise so had more space to spread the other years around the school during June/July.

But there was testing last summer term

@Watapalava

Funny how this new variant is making school staff so unwell when most others are fine

Almoat all people I know who’ve caught it are fine

Everyone I know tells same story

This is a milder variant not worse

Coincidently are these rises due to no pcr as no one has to prove covid now do we? I’m guessing many are not genuine absences -

Most others are not fine though and it is not milder. I have a 10 year old who had covid at Christmas and had only a headache, he tested positive yesterday and is really unwell with his chest and breathing really affected. I work across 9 schools and every single one has collapsed year groups over the padt week. One school shut for 3 days completely. I have never seen so many teachers absent in 20 years of teaching.

Half of my class are not in today due to covid.

@BeenToldComputerSaysNo

'So until I asked directly if she was having cover lessons she hadn't even thought to mention it as it's normal in her world view.' Food for thought.

Same.

DS is Y10 but in Wales there's a lot of GCSE exams this year for him including finsishing one GCSE this year.

They've also lost a lot of staff on top of covid and struggle to get any cover. I know he's worried in a few subjects - one that's doing GCSE in 12 months he top set but had supply since Christmas and is asking for us to help.

Youngest child - has a lot of supply I hear nothing about unless I ask.

They've only just dropped mask in classrooms, windows are all open and they're outside rain or shine for break and eating lunch, vaccination rates are high and currently community rates are low but everyweek there's a postive test result in my two's year group and more down with it.

This is not good.

If you know anyone eligible, tell them to get their booster ASAP.

Rates have never been this high in the elderly.

I spoke too soon about my school. Yesterday we only had one teacher ill. Today we're up to 6, which is a whole department.

Just seen this post on a thread where a school had asked parents to test a child as an identified close contact.

Totally unacceptable on the let of the school. I suspect it will be down to a union rep or similar trying to find enough cases to close the school.

The attitudes on the entire thread explain exactly why we are here now.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4512134-15-year-old-close-contact-school-have-told-us-to-test?watched=1&msgid=116126918#116126918

@Feenie 😂 yes we have to try and find cases. Over 25 teachers off today and loads of kids - we are not even counting anymore. We now have to shut 2 year groups as we do not have the legal number of staff on site anymore. It is all so so sad.
But hey, let's all pretend it's all because teachers will be having wild parties this weekend. Personally I'm so knackered I will be sleeping for all of it.
Happy Friday 🤬🤬🤬

People are nuts! Hope you have a restful weekend, mumsneedwine x

@Feenie you too. I intend to drink wine, sleep in the sun and not do any work. What I'll actually end up doing is trying to work out how we staff Monday and mark year 13 mocks 😊😊

Hot yoga then 🍷 for me 😊

My yoga studio has an air filtration system so is actually safer than school!

@Feenie God this is sad. Yoga studios are safer than schools.

Chin chin to all the overworked, unappreciated teachers. Have a good weekend and make sure you do something for YOU. Gym class, night on the piss, paint your nails, whatever floats your boat x

Well year 13 DD had yet again lost a supply Teacher in a subject she had an exam in June. .Got COVID and apparently won't be back. The other teacher is run ragged covering half the lessons but that's it. Her original Teacher got a new post.
But yeah let's just ignore COVID and send kids or have Teacherd in knowingly positive who than pass it onto others and more disruption.

Yeah those that ai know who had COVID recently likened it to bad Flu. These are 40 something vaccinated individuals.
Even floored two kids I know. Fatigued for days.

@Eyedropeyeflop, Stop. Just stop.

Just have a quick read of the actual informed posts on this thread. You know, by people at the chalk face.

Rtft!

In case anyone thought Ofsted would lay off results during - or even after, for the looney tunes - a pandemic:

schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-will-use-2022-sats-and-gcse-results-to-judge-curriculum-impact/?fbclid=IwAR2LKTm-KuhFfW2z47hIBvEp6Stz8wSinAa4eHVCPCxFMCSWvWIza9q-rTo

Just caught up on thread. Some posters seem to have made a whole mn identity out of teacher bashing and gaslighting about covid over the last couple of years. You see a username and know exactly what they're about say.

Did lol at the idea of people having to 'look' for covid cases.

We're still having some protection from the fact that so many of our kids were out with it before Christmas and in January so only about 20-25 kids a day on the covid register at the minute. Was over a hundred for weeks a couple of months back.

We've also just had ofsted a couple of weeks ago which was exhausting but on the plus side we no longer have that looming menacingly over us (reading between the lines of very positive slt communications and faces we were judged to still be good) anymore.

One week to go for us till Easter break.

Just to add my voice to those trying to explain how much teachers dread being ill - it's not just the having to set cover which is bad enough, it's also the having to come back and have your job be harder than ever because behaviour has gone to pot, your classroom is trashed, all of the work you painstakingly set has been ignored and you've got to do a load of assessments and mark them in double time because you're behind on that and getting nagging emails about gaps on your marksheets and missing data etc.

Seems to be more generalizations about parents than about teachers on this thread. Howtomoveforward, I get that you're feeling frustrated, but would be be OK with someone making blanket statements about all teachers? We're all frustrated with the situation and there doesn't seem to be any kind of easy answer.

Most teachers on here are also parents just to state the obvious. And I challenge you to actually go through the thread and tally up the generalisations about parents and those about teachers and still say there are more generalisations about parents. There are not.