The Seventh Republic - the debate rages on but for some it is half term!

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If you are fed up with cakes and biscuits there is now a cheeseboard on offer

I genuinely don't know what to think

Will we get some evidence to show that the 5 tests have been met then - we were told this was a condition of going ahead with phase two?

It’s unbelievable that he announces all of this tonight in the midst of justifying what Cummings has been up to.
What about the five tests.
No mention of test , track and trace.
No mention of sage advice to start two weeks later.
Just ploughing on ignoring everything yet saying they are listening.

That's ISAGE advice, not SAGE....

That's why he's announced it today. He knows that it will push Cummings off the top slot - based on the date for primary being such a big media deal, they'll assume the same will happen here.

I'm taking all this from boyfriend, because I can't watch or read anything about Cummings - I know the basics, if I hear details I fear my head will actually explode in fury.

Track and trace will be really useful as all. Y1 primary school kids have mobiles. 🙄
DC utter cunt. So angry 😡

Will be getting 5 year olds asking for mobile phones!

Contact tracing isn't all about the app, though.

That said, the contact tracers' training has been a joke.

Oh, and if they are pushing primary on 1st and secondary on 15th, they'll have all of primary in a week or so later. Which will actually be horrific.

www.ascl.org.uk/News/Our-news-and-press-releases/ASCL-responds-to-PM’s-announcement-on-wider-openin

To be fair @monkeysox track and trace includes the human "snail" trackers too, who presumably will interview the parents and teacher rather than the 5 year old.

(Cue amusing mental pic of a littlie's answer to Who have you spent time with in the last week? (or whatever):

"My best friend Amber, and my imaginary friend Mr Bobbles, and PJ Masks, and Ted, and Big Bear who always sleeps with me, and Green Frog, and my 3 Elsa dolls and .... )

I actually can't believe the Cummings thing. So many people have had an AWFUL time during lockdown. I've got a friend living with her abusive ex boyfriend, another with 3 kids in a flat with no garden, another stuck with her parents in a tiny house because they were half way through moving house and it got halted, lots of people on their own who haven't seen anyone they know since mid March, single parents alone with a 4 year old...

.. don't even get me started on the people who weren't allowed to be with their children when they died, or their parents when they died. The image of that 13 year old boy's coffin being lowered into a grave by people in hazmat suits will be my overriding image of this whole thing.

And this arsehole goes trotting off to get some childcare just in case something happens and he feels a bit rubbish. Come on.

BBC journalist also talked about the testing available to 'all children'.

Someone needs to call them out on that. EYFS people don't get that privilege.

I’m so glad I was meditating before I read these updates.

YY to all of that pfrench. It’s grotesque that they’ve stood by him in the face of what some have suffered to follow the lockdown rules.

I have several die hard tories on my FB feed and they are all bitching about the media hounding a concerned loving parent.

Luckily enough there is a sleep and a block function.

www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-confirms-schools-colleges-and-nurseries-on-track-to-begin-phased-reopening

That's not in step with lots of Tories on the telly, to be fair.

Oh, wait a minute, that statement makes today's announcement re 1 June seem a bit redundant (imho) because it contains this:

"It also remains the case that schools will only reopen to more children if the government’s five tests are met by Thursday 28 May."

and then goes on to remind us what they are.

What do others think? I feel so much for our Head right now!

The point is that if it was only his wife who was ill when they travelled North, she should have isolated away form the rest of the family and he should have looked after the child.

He just didn't want to, did he?

So actually, is the only change he really announced to push back secondary opening til the 15th and only with 1/4 of a year group at a time? So in fact he's made a concession?

God, it's all a car crash, isn't it?

I'm in Wales, so we are waiting with bated breath to find out on Thursday whether we will be given 3 weeks notice to reopen to year 6, as Mark Drakeford keeps mentioning that (my) year group.

No mention of bubbles in anything yet in Wales, only the social distancing. I've seen the mutterings in various articles about whether to reduce it. With it, my HT has worked out we can get 7 kids in my room, 8 in the other y6 room, 14 in a larger y5 room, 14 in a larger y4 room and 8 in the other y5 room. So one yeargroup will require 5 rooms and 4 or 5 staff (2 rooms adjoin each other). And that's before you involve any staff to allow teachers to have any form of breaks away from their class without leaving them unattended.

The image of that 13 year old boy's coffin being lowered into a grave by people in hazmat suits will be my overriding image of this whole thing.

And that his mother couldn’t be in the room with him when he died, alone.
If she doesn’t march on Downing Street then she is a better woman than me.

Lovely new thread on Zoom : one poster criticising it because of teacher's monotone delivery; another saying their teacher hardly knows how to sue Word.

I have never been made to think that so many people think lack of previously unnecessary IT skills are such an inadequacy.

It's not pushing back is it though? It just said 'from 1st June begin to prepare'. At no point did anything say secondaries should have kids in on the 1st.