The Eight Republic - half term over - primaries under pressure- solidarity

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

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.

You can play here only if you are a member of one the following groups-

-ABBA - anti bashers and baiting association
-SWAB - school workers against bashers
-SWOT - school workers opposing teacherbashers
-STARS - schoolworkers together against ranting + slurs

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.

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

Woohoo - child at school, me at home actually WORKS! I can get stuff done. Already done more this morning than I've been doing in a whole day. Easy to plan lessons when it's just you in the kitchen with Radio 3!

Great stuff pfrench I'm glad to hear you can get more stuff done.

Whereas my 80 year old spleenless DF isn't shielded.

Its a strangle arbitrary list.

But who cares now, eh? Plenty of beds available.

How as a country have we allowed ourselves to be nudged towards the viewpoint that it's OK so long as there are beds available for people to die in

In other news, I have another stat:

year 10s by the end of July, if they have had no education at all, will have lost 3% of their total learning time.

yep plenty of beds is the key.

My dad is shielded and was pleased they’d realised he needed to be able to go for a walk. I pointed out they just don’t give a damn if you get sick now because they have bed spaces.

It’s never been about human life just not overwhelming the nhs.

And they want those beds half full again to get another wave done and dusted before flu season. There’s little room for morality in late stage capitalism.

Who's DC was reading Animal Farm this term, I'm just reading through my DDs set work. It has a Castle View school logo on it, wondering if her teacher has noticed (obviously doesn't matter to me! )
On an aside I was in school yesterday with KW, babysitting not teaching, it was lovely to see them. And I found out that I'm going to be teaching 2 more days from Sep, mainly FT, ICT, PSHE and RE (any more initialled subjects I could take ? )
Sorry I've been off here and not supporting you all, I moved house last weekend.

RS is great when done well-so much discussion and big ideas and exposing them to different world views. Shout if you want help as it’s my specialism that I’m really hoping I’ll be teaching again if they let me out of the science department.

It’s my son doing Animal Farm currently

You need to be shit hot on answering why do we have to do RS hecklers though so start working out and practicing your answer

I've been dealing with that for 20 years I think it's got better as more and more parents have had "modern" RS at school the attitudes have improved.

Ha! Thanks, I will definitely give you a shout out!
I've got Jigsaw to follow for PSHE and Discovery for RE (I've got Y5-8 so they're schemes of work) and Rising Stars for Computing. Fingers crossed

MsA, the Gp said really it's more about individual risk factor depending on other issues you may have so that sounds right.

The gps should have been asked to work through lists too.

Aah ks3 is a bit dull if you don’t spice it up with things they can relate to. I started out as an RS teacher in an upper school and loved the ks4 stuff. I went into my career straight after 9/11. Interesting times.

Glad to hear it’s getting better reteacher. I have everything crossed to get back to it instead of science. I miss meaty big topics

Thanks for confirming he's not getting completely preferential treatment neuro. He was thinking about his friends (he's got lots of them, he's a very sociable man, unlike me) and although they are all roughly the same age or older he has the most conditions that make him vulnerable. He's taken that as he'll be one of the people who die if he gets it, and honestly I think I agree with his assessment of that risk. He's already been in intensive care twice over the last 10 years, and none of us think he would survive another stint in there.

Is he anywhere near being able to take medical retirement MsDragon?

honey he actually took medical retirement 38 years ago. He was a science teacher but developed epilepsy and you can't supervise practical science lessons while having a seizure. I only brought him into it because of the confusion about who is on the shielding list, and it turns out even I was confused about why he was shielding, lol.

@Msawesomedragon - are you sure transport aren't running anything at all? I only ask as the parent of a bus pupil as well as an LSA in a different school. At my school, any children who would normally come in on school transport due to distance/ehcp have taxis arranged through the local authority school transport department. My own DD1, rural therefore bus transport is now taxi'd in to school on the day we need her to attend. It took me a long while to sort out going backwards and forwards until I spoke to the head of local authority transport. The school should have sent a request to LA transport to arrange but claimed they didn't have the budget - the school isn't paying for this, it is coming out of the normal transport costs budget. Additionally, my DC's primary school also has taxis arranged for their vulnerable pupils to attend school where needed.

I appreciate this is not the same for every local authority but given the aim was the ensure the key-worker and vulnerable pupils were still able to attend school, I would be surprised if there wasn't some provision in other authorities otherwise they would be failing in their duty of care.

I'm reporting that thread now.

Sickening.

Is the df without a spleen definitely not shielded? I thought that was on the list of extremely vulnerable conditions and my 18 year old second cousin is shielding because she has no spleen (again, another person whose life is definitely worth living and who in normal life isn't at death's door).

People in our school who are currently at home:

Pregnant
Asthmatic
Diabetic
BAME
Some with anxiety

Which leaves not many of us!!

This is the right thing to do this term, we just don't know if things are safe. BUT, it's not sustainable. If this is still the situation in September, then we'll be in trouble - people can't stay home forever, there just isn't the work to do. PPA teachers in my school are at home doing nothing apart from CPD, they are BAME, so even though they were put on the rota to come back, they are now not coming back. But they are also refusing to do any planning etc because they are 'not year group teachers'. It's going to get 'interesting' if things go on beyond this term. In my place there aren't enough white, non-vulnerable, non-anxious staff to run the school, and no money to pay anyone else if these guys are home on full pay.

I don't really know minis. The latest email from the head implied that transport wouldn't be running, but I think he was trying to sort something out.

Our union reps have had a couple of meetings with the head now about his plans for reopening. Apparently there are certain parts of his plan that NEU have no official response to because no other school are planning on doing these things. That does sound like our head. He often has a rather unique take on what's the best thing to do.

He definitely isn't dangling. Not that is affects him as no one is going to shout at him to get back to work!

The spleen thing was written about a lot at the time. A lot of GPs added splenectomies to their letters.

It's bonkers they aren't. Any viral infection floors my DF these days and he ends up in hospital with 'mystery viruses' more frequently as he ages.

To be fair, he is generally fit as a fiddle. A hypochondriac when I was younger, but rarely actually ill!

He lost his spleen in a rugby accident when he was about 25!

I notice the "11 weeks" thread I reported a couple of days ago is still up so it must have been deemed to be "in the spirit"

A lot of weird and wonderful things seem to be "in the spirit of the site"

I think I managed to bore the teaching as a second career thread into silence. Maybe you should point me at other threads you want killed

Honey, how about the teachers what should we do thread?

I'm trying not to reply, but they're not making it easy.

Oh and the 11 weeks one of course. Apparently they're working two jobs so I can sit in the garden and get a suntan. If only :(