First ministers briefing

[Trichford]

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

This situation is ridiculous. By August we should be aiming for DCs to be back in full time education, ideally with no social distancing, but if it's deemed that is required then 1 metre is a reasonable compromise.
It feels like a bloody oil tanker and it's too late to turn around once motion has started.

What if we get to August and death rates and new cases are in single digits or stopped ? Do we still continue with the systematic destruction of our DCs education and wellbeing? Because it feels very much as if that's what will happen.
Thank goodness DS goes to a private school paid for by kindly GPs. Whilst their teaching this term for him in S2 has been fairly mixed and far from ideal, they are planning to have S1-S3 back full time with 50% teaching and 50% supervised study. It's far from ideal but much better than him trying to learn from home. If the private schools are forced to come up with solutions because otherwise parents will take their DCs out, then all schools should be able to try to see what they can do.

So much for Nicola not wanting to make things political

Who will pay for longer furlough??

So Fiona Heslop is urging the Westminster government to continue the job retention scheme and avoid unemployment, while the Scottish government refuses to speed up the easing of restrictions and kick start the economy themselves despite falling infection rates? Do I understand this correctly? ‘We’re going to be (over)cautious on infections and we acknowledge this is causing an economic catastrophe, but we expect you to pay for it’?

I wonder of big bad Westminster will be given the credit it’s due for keeping people’s heads above water financially next year in the election campaign? After all, without the furlough scheme and the billions in financial support we’d be up the proverbial creek by now and certainly not in a position to take our sweet time with reopening the economy and schools (which need to be open to restart the economy). Somehow I’m not holding my breath.

"Concerns that young people with no internet access may fall behind if home schooling continues".

Who would have thought it. In other news, the Pope's a catholic.

Hospitals are closing Covid wards and testing centres are being closed as there are no longer sufficient cases to warrant these being in place.

There was resource to build a new hospital which is now lying empty and unused

There are 20 odd people in ICU in the whole of Scotland.

Deaths are consistently in low single figures

4500 and dropping people in a nation of 5 million people have the virus

And yet our kids are getting shat on

Not good enough. Not even anywhere near.

Swinney should resign. He has not got sufficient talent or ambition for the children of Scotland to drive education policy and practice

It’s not just internet access that is the issue.

The internet itself is part of the problem. I’m not letting my kids loose with an internet enabled device. You have to supervise them to make sure they understand the task and are actually doing it and not just pissing about with YouTube or god knows what else on the cesspit that is the internet,

Well exactly. Parents have had so much po faced judgment and finger wagging for children being on screens excessively but now it’s government mandated it’s fine.

Overall, if parents treated their children like this of their own volition it would be seen as abuse. But yet this is fine?!

You should be able to get printed resources, just need to ask the school and go pick up. 👍I'm anti screentime also.
Also come Aug, we're looking at lessons being live screened / children being able to ask Qs in real time so that might put some of your minds at rest.

I won’t be happy with anything that’s offered until they’re back in school full time. Nothing else is acceptable to me.

This is an utter fiasco. Swinney needs to resign and Sturgeon needs to get a grip of the entire situation. I don’t want to be made redundant purely because she is (yet again) grandstanding.

The so called clinical director is a moron as well. He’s a dentist ffs

It feels like a bloody oil tanker and it's too late to turn around once motion has started

This is what's concerning me. All these plans have been made for August, so I'm worried that no one will have the guts to say 'actually, scrap all that, folks, we can actually continue as normal.' As I've said, I genuinely felt like I was the only person in my school the other day thinking 'but let's hope this is a plan B'.
And I'm not sure where you're getting the notion of live lessons and real time support in August, unless you mean during the time children are actually in class. Feck knows where they're going to get the staffing to support pupils not in school if all teachers are teaching full time, with virtually no breaks or non contact time. (No deep cleaning Wednesdays where we are!)

Has anyone joined the us for them Scotland group?

I also wonder who is actually STILL in lockdown. I have just taken the car to the garage and walked back home. Quite a few shops that used to be closed are now open. Even a sign shop is open for business.
The traffic is (almost) normal. Where are all these people going, to beauty spots?

Me too @SamSeabornforPresident. Teachers and schools are putting a huge amount of effort into trying to make plans for next session and therefore everyone seems to have become completely tunnelled visioned that blended learning must happen no matter what the situation is in August.

It seems that the going offer is 2 days for primary and 1 day for secondary, and once the reality sets in for parents as to what that actually means I’m worried it’s going to cause a massive breakdown in relationships between schools and parents.

Please remember that this is not teachers doing. This is just as hard and impossible for us as it is for you. I need to go back to work ft in August. Just now I have just about managed by working 7 days a week and fitting work on at odd hours around home schooling and life. Just like most of you. DH cannot work at home but we are a one key worker home with no idea how we manage childcare. I cannot manage this for much longer. I despair at the fact they we are part time in August.

We have just had an email from school telling us that the plans for what WILL be happening in August will be communicated before the end of term. Not a "this is a contingency".

On the other hand, there will be plenty of parents at home to look after kids if she keeps us locked down as unemployment will go through the roof.

Also had a response from my SNP MSP. The stand out phrase is:

"Unfortunately, some form of social/physical distancing, according to medical science advice, is here to stay until a cure for Covid-19 is developed."

And then he says that basically it's the Council who decide on what happens in schools, nothing to do with him. Goes on to say what an amazing job they've done getting the rate down blah blah blah.

Load of old waffle.

What if a cure is never developed? FFS the SNP’s disregard towards education is staggering.

Argh! Children are more likely to die in an accident on the way to school than of COVID. This is nonsense!

Swinney now saying exams may be affected, educational outcomes may be impacted...so that’s just OK is it? You’re the education secretary, and all you can do is shrug your shoulders. The man is a fucking imbecile. He needs to resign

He needs to resign. Standards had already plummeted with Curriculum for Excellence but this is really Is the cherry on the cake.

Also come Aug, we're looking at lessons being live screened / children being able to ask Qs in real time so that might put some of your minds at rest.

Ds is going into primary 1. That just isn't an option for us even if they considered it for children that young. We just got an email from the LA talking about independent learning...yes, a child who can't yet read or write (fluently) can work independently apparently. We're "lucky" in that I'm a sahm but juggling my other commitments (final year of a University course, lots of voluntary work in sectors heavily impacted by the virus and a 2 year old) will mean that next year will be interesting. Especially given that ds won't engage with online stuff unless it's a video game or documentaries of things which interest him, dinosaurs, sharks, tanks and aircraft carriers.

Everyone I know is furious and I imagine that's only going to get worse as plans become clearer.

The EIS has social distancing as one is its conditions on schools reopening it seems.

Ok, now I have just noticed that even the chiropractor has reopened. He must be one of the Fantastic Four to be able to keep social distancing...