Delay Phase

[SpinachQueen]

Has anyone had any meetings, briefings or other information on what the delay phase would look like for staff?

Curious to know how many have had nothing, and what those who HAVE had something have been told.

Nothing yet in my school, but the word 'pandemic' has been used now, so who knows.

At my secondary, we have finally been given soap to wash our hands with, a few posters fo stick up in our rooms and the school are making plans to teach students en masse in the examination hall in case of teacher absence.

Well, google classroom.on the ps4 is ok. You use the internet option to go to google then as per normal. You can link a mouse to the ps4 but otherwise use the game controller to type in addresses. It's a bit laborious but doable. It would be slower to interact and type on a controller - not really manageable - but theycould certainly read instructions and access work. It is apparently possible to link keyboards and printers to a ps4 but it's a faff. I will look into it though as many of my students do not have a laptop or desktop. I was thinking they could take a school keyboard home.

I've set my ds on the case. It's about weighing up whether phone / ps4 is better really.

Having started revising fraction, decimals and percentages with year 6 today, I am worried. Apparently everything falls out of their heads after 4 weeks so that's me shafted. No pay rise for me!

Our school taking it seriously and a few pupils now self isolation. We are to plan home school packs over the next week and they've also worked out which staff are at more risk. As I say, we've already got staff absences for other things so I agree schools will probably close ad hoc before a government announcement.

We had kids in today who would very much fall under the government ‘self-isolation’ guidelines. Waiting for instructions as to what to do, presumably we should be sending them home but given the announcement was only last night nothing is in place yet.

NASUWT advice :

Schools should review their cleaning routines to ensure that surfaces and ‘touch points’ such as door handles and light switches are regularly disinfected. This particularly applies to fingerprint scanners for those schools which have them.

Hmmm

It’s ok Piggy, the fingerprint scanners will be pristine from all the handwashing that’s going on.

We've just had parents' evening scheduled in for the end of the month.

We've got Yr8 parents evening next week. I'm not in favour of schools closing yet but I really think they should be postponing a Yr8 parents evening.

We had a whole team briefing about using IT to support home learning and a survey went out to staff and pupils about IT access at home. Hand hygiene has been a hot topic for the last couple of weeks but we are struggling to get anti-abc gel.

I work in a secondary with high levels of poverty / social deprivation / vulnerable students, and we are also making arrangements to ensure that learning materials and lunches are delivered to those students most in need should there be a closure.

valancy, I just queried this on another thread.... mass gathering surely??

Teacher Tapp said that only a minority of schools had even banned handshaking at parents evening.

SuperficialSuzie, what exactly do the plans to deliver lunches look like?

We've already prepared work packs and identified those who will need paper copies.

We have a lot of students who only eat at school (PRU), we feed them without worrying too much about who has paid. It would be good to be able to continue but atm I'm struggling to find a way.

Double from what I heard, no actual concrete plans yet, this is somethintg that they are scoping.

The Head was very clear that if school closes, we will still be working and probably harder than usual, and that includes the catering staff.

SLT are kicking around ideas and what has been vaguely suggested is making or buying in pre-packaged sandwiches and boxing it up with fruit, snack and a drink, which will then be collated with the students relevant learning materials and a door drop by our transport team. The students will leave out work for marking to be collected.

We have 22% PP so it is a lot of students, but we have huge concerns for them, as we do during the holidays.

Yes, lots of plans being made but I do wonder how many will come to fruition. For a start, staff will have their own children at home, so working harder the normal isn't really likely, even if that's what's asked of us. Plus, if it's as bad as feared, an awful lot of us are going to be ill!

Head Teacher has text me ask me to let him know if I get any emails from staff planning on self isolating from Monday. It's my job to sort cover and take the calls.

Yesterday was fine, but I can think of at least 3 that'll be emailing me in the fullness of time. Our student attendance was down to 87% on Friday, I suspect that will increase too.

The School Cobra meeting (or Python - Monty Python, as I like to call it) is 11.30am Monday morning. 4 hours after I will have to have sorted cover for the day, but there you go!

(In other news, I've just been to buy flour - thought I'd make some cakes for a 'keep calm and eat cake' approach on Monday - seems the world has turned into bakers - not a bag of flour to be found!)

Our staff attendance was better last week than it's ever been Maureen

I'm not sure about "working harder than normal" but work would certainly be harder than normal with four of us in a house and the adults trying to work on computers and the dc trying to avoid it