The Sixth Republic - Will we or won’t we? That is the question! #solidarity

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You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff. Baiters and bashers can jog on somewhere else.

If you are NOT staff and just have a general education query please start your own thread.

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Other requirements for staff room entry include the ability to find the staff room, the ability to find a clean mug in the staff room, knowledge of the photocopier codes, and the ability to sniff out where the toffee vodka is hidden.

In the other staffroom, there is rhubarb & ginger gin, along with tea and coffee.

We have not been asked to phone any students (no doubt that will be next!) ,although I do rather hope HoYs are ( I get no vibes they are, mind) as otherwise I might question what they are doing for their lower teaching load and higher pay (ex HOY, am allowed to say that!) - but a question.... if teachers are using their own mobiles and hide their number, does that not increase the likelihood that a parent won't pick up?

But, oh no, we're all not doing any work (especially not in the middle of the night!) and should all be sacked .

Cheesecurd - interesting (and shocking) what you report about parents telling kids not to do any languages work. We can access the spreadsheet where we're tracking every single piece of work submitted by all students for each subject and, at our school, maths, science and languages are right up at the top - I assumed because the work is accessible (ie. set on other inreractive platforms and easier to chunk). Next they're doing loads of the more creative subjects, art and drama and the content/written heavy subjects - English, history and geography - are having the lowest level of submissions. This is all KS3.

Cross posted with Piggy re the Teacher Tapp survey. Yes, our students aren't quite following that. But, I imagine one "piece of work" for MFL could be a 10 min quiz, whereas,for English, few tasks will take less than 40.

Re phone calls - each family gets a call on a set day per week so parents are asked to please answer from an unknown number. They mostly are, though some phone back to school after listening to a/p message, and the person on the phone that day will do the welfare check.

HOYs in our school only get like two extra frees max for hours and hours of pastoral issues - they work like I don't know what. I was communicating with our Head of Yr 7 the other day who said that the smallest number of emails per day from parents/students he's had since this started was 60 .

I was thinking of my school specifically : I realise in other schools HoYs are very time poor. In my school HoYs are on about 33/50 lessons and get an extra £10k...which is great. I don't think a few pastoral catch ups would be unwarranted. I know they are getting emails form parents about issues still. But, for example, they aren't gathering lists of kids doing no work, which would be sensible, imo!

@cheesecurdsandgravy if it’s any encouragement in a wider sense, my yr8 son and quite a few of his friends are using duo lingo to try out other languages - he’s been learning a bit of Greek and his German lessons seem to be the ones he is completing most consistently

What is the answer for English, I wonder? Because I am not sure live teaching isn't the hardest in English and related subjects too.

fwiw my return rate form my English work is really good, for my option subject it's pretty dire.

It's hard to do any worthwhile English unless they write or read a fair bit. Kids who like english do.it. others, not so much. K I ds like tasks they can click on. Quizzes are fun, but the.stuff I need them to know needs more effort than. A quiz.
My 6th are engaging. Only about half my top.set yr10 though. And work rarely in on.time, so whole .class feedback is a pita.

Cultural aversion to MFL, in the UK? Surely not

Interesting that different schools seems to be getting different rates of return across the subjects. At least someone, somewhere, is doing their languages work... Haha

I can’t say exactly what we set, as I don’t want to be outed, but we deliberately set tasks that built on cultural knowledge (including other languages and stuff like duolingo) for KS3 and those in Y9 that hadn’t opted (although, we were expecting them to ignore it!) because we didn’t want to put off our learners and their parents with loads of words they didn’t understand, but it was all designed to be “fun” and interactive. So, it pisses me off they won’t even open the file to see what it is, and dismissed it out of hand!

Most parents pick up an unknown number. The few that didn’t the first day I left a message saying who it was and that I’d call back at X time - everyone answered then. Now I tell them which day I’ll next call on so they know to expect me. Not had any problems in that respect thankfully!

It's been.odd recording my ppt voice overs cos I'm not sure what questions kids would be asking me or when I'd go off in a different direction.

I'm not getting work returned as it were but I can see if they have completed quizzes. It started off well with just one or two per class not doing them, but now it's probably a third not doing them.
Some have found it too difficult so I set them alternative work and asked them to photo and email it in, but then I never received it back. But those are the students who put their whole message in the subject header, and find all school work generally difficult (low literacy etc) so I'm not surprised.

Regarding the low return rate for English, I know it's not the same but I've had more wailing and gnashing of teeth from my 6 year old about having to do some writing than anything else - it's like I'm trying to murder her!

Utterlyperfect - glad you found Google Lens useful. I downloaded it a while back of the pdf to word doc facility, but not really used it much.

It's a good scanner, though!

It's effort. Which is why most of my lessons are spent chivvying kids along. Trying to get them.to get started/write more than a paragraph. Same reason I work harder in a gym.

Absolutely.

My subject is English and I’m definitely finding a low return rate for work. My new S4 class (just starting Y10, I think?) aren’t really handing very much in and my new S5/6 Higher class (mix of Y11 and 12?) aren’t much better. The same ones are handing it in every time. The marking is tough because stuff I would have done verbally or informally as I walked around is now having to be done in writing.

I’m setting lots of Teams quizzes because I can specify how many marks it is per question and then type in how many they got when I mark their answers. It’s a bit more manageable that way and I can also get a breakdown of how the class did overall on each question, which is quite useful.

Thanks for the Google Lens tip .

Good morning everyone, especially Primary folk- it looks like this is the last week of remote learning for some of us.

Do you know what your school ‘return‘ is going to look like?

So it begins - article in the Daily Fail (not linking to the fuckers)

'Risk of spreading Coronavirus between teachers and children in schools extremely low says major new study'

Who'd have thought?!

So,we have just had the fit to return to work email. Looks like I'll be forced in. I think I am actually more bothered than my DH by this.

When on earth do we think the DfE will clarify what they want for 10/12? I am worried that y SLT are like the DfE and don't consult, or tell us what they have planned until very late. And what they have planned will be nothing like what the govt seems to be implying they mean... form what I gather they are working on timetables for teaching by now.

I know we are cross with the BBC generally because of their deliberately Pro-Denmark model reporting, but has anyone had a chance to read this?

On average poorer students are seven days behind their better off peers in their “lock down learning”. I’m sure some people Another Lord “he who shall not be named” will use that as a stick to beat us... but I just wanted to say WELL DONE US! We are working, they are working, and the gap whilst present, is NOT as horrific as many in the media and on AIBU would paint.

On average poorer students are working 4.5 hrs a day! That’s more than the average student works in a day at school...

Damn, forgot to link article.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52701850

I know! I saw that affluent pupils are working 9 hours a day : that is ridiculous!!

Who on earth is this man on BBC1!!??