First ministers briefing

[Trichford]

Is there one on today? If so what time will it be? Thanks

If you read up on the usefulness or otherwise of homework, posters are apparently a waste of time. A lot of students will just cut and paste information from Wikipedia. There's no analysis. But the school uses posters constantly. It's lazy.

If you say but we areeeee working! I'm about to log onto seesaw where today's activity is about pairing socks. By anyone's standards you uploaded something. I will be doing your job today.
You're not doing my fucking job. I've had a virtual department meeting today, learnt how to use yet another part of Microsoft office, set work for classes, answered emails from parents, produced another document to be used for the SQA, marked work and given feedback. I've taken odd break to set up the work sent from school for my own children and helped them send it back to school. I'll be back on tonight doing more marking as I want them all to get it back today.
For recreation, I logged onto Mumsnet, fool that I am.
I'm sorry if your school is doing less, but you replied to me not to them.

Ok, fair comment spottedelk. Also, if it’s repeatedly given out then yes it’s lazy.
Seems like luck has a lot to do with education provision at the moment; so much for the meritocracy that we’ve been sold.

My youngest has just left school, S6, and can understand how frustrating and worrying for parents this is with the inconsistency in learning across Scotland. My sisters who have younger children in primary and there seems to be great differences between schools even in my council area.

I think young people from senior phase at secondary school upwards are really getting a raw deal at the moment on all fronts and the sacrifices they are making have not been acknowledged enough. I felt so sorry and sad for the young woman on bbc radio Scotland (on Kaye Adams program) today not being able to see her partner. It’s been really hard on them and seems like it will continue to do so.

Oh and I’m fed up with the condescending tone of Jason Leitch (did he really go to a stereophonic concert just before lockdown?), Nicola sturgeon and the ‘dae as yer telt!’ badge wearers.

Any chance we could go back to using this thread for chat about First Minister's Briefings, and take the teacher-bashing somewhere else where those of us in education can leave you in peace to get on with it?

You'd think we'd be used to it by now, but do you know what? We've lived this pandemic too. We've worked our socks off like everyone else, we've supported our own families at home like everyone else, some of us have lost family, friends or colleagues like everyone else. And we are processing the easing of the lockdown and what it means for our schools and the children in our care, just like everyone else is. We're also quite concerned for our own health and well-being too, like everyone else.

Please, take the nasty, Daily Mail-type snidey comments elsewhere.

In what way is criticising John Swinney teacher bashing?

Swinney etc I think are appropriate and relevant to the thread as they are really part of what should be in the briefings. What individual school are doing are probably worthy of a different thread as I am sure parents will want to compare and I think like many things, there is a difference in quality of provision. There is probably learning and best practice that can come out of such comparison.

As always it's the people on the front line here that are getting a bashing.

I've had very significant issues with individual teachers, school management and Local education departments. However, I never extrapolate that to mean that all teachers, heads and schools are poor or even that these individuals were always poor.

I've never had anything less than help from any teachers in Scotsnet.

Well said Superjaggy and Wax. Some of today's comments were teacher bashing. And I certainly was told "not to get professionally offended" for pointing out when posters made comments that were really insulting.

@Lidlfix, I have to say, I do wonder how the teachers spend their days... (Primary level). I have experience of 2 and I don't see how their workload goes past a couple of hours tops.

• Prepare some assignments for the next day (which hardly anyone bothers with and hardly ever gets marked anyway),
• post them on teams and...
• Do some paperwork I suppose.

I can think of nothing else. If there is, perhaps the way their time is organized and what they need to spend it on is not really geared towards optimum results. One of the two teachers (a very young woman fresh from teacher training) is more visible, but the other one (an ever so slightly less young woman ) is really invisible and, I have to say, looks quite awkward at operating behind a screen.

I can think of nothing else
Hardly their fault if you lack imagination.

What about all those teachers who don't have young children at home? Are they really working 35 hours a week? It's very hard to see how they can be.

Shall we lynch them?

Not suggesting any lynching. Just trying to understand.
I find that mine is both idle curiosity and a relevant question.
@Mistressiggi, are you saying that since some teachers have young children, that all teachers should behave like they were in that situation?

Or you could help us to understand how sending out a few maths exercises or telling children to spend a month on writing an essay equates to a full time job?

Well said @WaxOnFeckOff and @superjaggy I am not a teacher but I dont think all parents appreciate the stuff that is going on behind the scenes and may not be visible. As well as teaching preparing lessons etc schools and nurseries continue to provide support to vulnerable children and their families via regular telephone calls I know the nursery in the area I work in has been dropping food and activity packs to vulnerable childrens homes. When I and nusery staff couldn't get in contact with a family we did a welfare check at home in PPE to ensure their safety.
Child planning meetings are being organised and conducted virtually and I can only begin to imagine the nightmare of planning this blended learning.
It's easy to criticize but I would say walk a mile in that person's shoes first. Virtual hugs to all the teachers and nursery staff I for one appreciate all you do. For the record I also have a senior school child affected by this with exams cancelled etc.

I can only speak about my own experience, my own school. What is the result you're looking for? Pay them less? The child free staff I know are doing more than others of working with the keyworker children. No doubt your experience is the opposite.
Pick away all you want, my skin is getting thicker as the lockdown continues.

just spoke to MIL who is a primary school teacher.

They've been told to keep work light because kids will be confused and overwhelmed and parents will be busy with WFH. Also not to chase up those who do not do the work - it is optional.

This probably explains why DD has had hardly any work but imo their overall learning and education is going to suffer through this approach.

DD is more upset by the lack of school, lack of things to do, and not seeing her friends, than the lockdown itself. I think if she was actually kept busy, it would be easier for her.

I can absolutely guarantee that there will be teachers that aren't doing a full time job and yet getting paid for it, same as there is in every walk of life, including the NHS staff that you are out clapping for every week. That's human nature. In any job, there are some going above and beyond, a bigger group doing a decent job, a further chunk doing just what they need to and some doing less than they should.

I'm working from home, some days i'm run of my feet and doing much more than expected, others i might be distracted or in pain from sitting at a tiny laptop 7-7.5 hours a day and need more breaks or whatever, but I have an overall job to achieve and I do a decent but not exceptional job, that's fine. Some days I log on to do something in particular and end up on conference calls for the best part of the day.

I think you'll find exactly the same distribution of commitment from teachers as you will have from nurses, care staff etc.

I don't have any DC still in school so can only go by friends experiences. One was finding her DD (P7) completely overwhelmed and upset in the first few days, it's calmed down now and she had Maths and English tasks that take about 3 ish hours a day. I think when you deduct off breaks and distractions and PE and all the other stuff they do, that's probably not far away from how much actual work they would get through in a day.The main gripe seems to be about the transition and missed normal P7 activities from a couple of friends with P7s. I think one school seems to be trying to pick that up a bit better now after some feedback and the other not so much. I think first friend was a bit disappointed that the day s that her DD was meant to be up in high school weren't acknowledged in any way by either primary or secondary school. Not a big thing in the grand scheme of things but DC seeing that on the calendar were sad and some acknowledgement would have been nice. All the high school DC I am in touch with are S6 so not really expecting anything but obviously disappointed that they have missed out on finishing their school time properly.

Medical staff have less leeway over what and how much they do.

Medical staff have less leeway over what and how much they do.

Some maybe. DH has been a nurse, obviously a student nurse and worked as a nursing assistant as well, he's also an ambulance driver. There are some roles such as working in intensive care which is very regimented and all staff will need to work at a certain pace and with certain commitment, other roles not so much, a task can take different lengths of time depending on whether someone is trying to avoid other work or if someone is slap dash. There are lazy folk everywhere. Currently there are wards where there are double the normal amount of nurses and half the patients since most routine activities have stopped and there aren't that many covid patients and longer term patients were shunted into care homes. Most of these are probably hard working people but not so much at the moment. DH much the same as usual in terms of journeys but that's because they are only allowed to take one patient at a time instead of up to 8 and each task takes longer due to PPE changes.

I'm not slagging off anyone here, just pointing out that even the professions we are currently revering have staff that do less than they should.

We could instead have a bash at the furloughed? Tax payers paying 80% of their wages while they do feck all?.....except of course worry whether they will have a job to go back to on top of all the normal worries.

It's true that some furloughed people are better off than before furlough.

This from one of the teachers' unions. Not Scotland specific. Amazing in the context of full pay:
"Schools are expected to encourage pupils and families to continue to engage in education. While schools may provide resources to support pupils to learn at home, the Government recognises that this may not be possible. There is no requirement for teachers to continue to teach their pupils. The Government has published a list of online resources that children and families can use to support their education, including BBC Bitesize and the Oak Academy."

I don't think you've read what I've written spotted

I wasn't saying that furloughed staff necessarily have a good deal. DH and I both working full time, would it be nice to have time off to clean my house and do my garden? Yes. Would I rather have security of employment instead? Yes of course.

It's all very well having time off but maybe hard to enjoy it when you are the only wage earner and have bills and a mortgage and kids and maybe no idea whether your job will be there at the end of furlough.

there will always be some winners of course but not as many as you might imagine.

Sorry is this still Scotsnet, or anything-that's-negative-about-teachersnet?
I appreciate your very reasonable posts, Waxon.

Sorry Mistressiggi, I'm just trying to give a balanced view, i think it's wrong to revere all or denigrate all people just based on what job they do. people are people. If folks think teachers have it so easy then I'm surprised that more folk don't go into teaching. It's not a job I would want to do and it's a job that I think you should have a calling to do, but like all jobs, sometimes people get ground down.