The Ninth Republic - stand by for the return of Year 10

[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

If you come with a stick to beat us with then please do so elsewhere and not in the staffroom.

@Piggywaspushed

Nice to hear of a head showing leadership and being open. wistful sigh

mine goes more for the ostrich approach.

He wasn’t particular open about his relationship with a student.

I hate that everything gets dropped in via the media. I hate this government. I spend about 90% of my time atm working out where we could emigrate to.

Oh really?

I did spot some smugness and Messiah complex , must admit.

Maybe not Ruskin.

Almost certainly a paedophile...

Do we think that they could say schools are fine to go back 30/35 to a class with no SD or PPE needed at all in September but everywhere else in the country and all other work places must comply with a 2m (or 1m) limit? Where would that leave us from a legal POV?! Safety in the workplace etc?

@appu - did you think they'd do anything else? I'm assuming we're back as usual. If individual schools have issues, then that's the school's problem and will be left up to heads.

I'd like to see my class for a week (half each over a fortnight). I'd just do science and art for a week. But I'm not bothered if it doesn't happen now.

I think a lot of parents thinks schoolchildren shouldn't SD , just the adults. To have such a basic misunderstanding of how teaching works, how being a TA works, how catering works, how offices and workspaces are created and set up... and how few and far between handwashing facilities are... all speaks volumes.

I know the local secondary MAT is planning to open on a fortnightly rotation in September-so pupils are split down the middle and either in for week A or week B only and staff repeating all lessons.

Obviously depending on further decrees from above.

@Piggywaspushed you’re very perceptive

Surely we should honour Michael Gove for his glorious contribution to state education and name the new schools after him?

This morning John Swinney said that a return to normal in Scottish schools is unlikely for the the next school year and 'blended learning' would continue for some time. Great. The exam board are bringing in some form of continual assessment model in addition to planning exams for 2021.

Surely we should honour Michael Gove for his glorious contribution to state education and name the new schools after him?

*Brilliant! Even better Williams too.

The Gove and Williams marquee of wonder.*

Gove's Gazebo of Grief

I know the local secondary MAT is planning to open on a fortnightly rotation in September-so pupils are split down the middle and either in for week A or week B only and staff repeating all lessons.

That sounds like my child's school. Sounds shit for lots of parents, but is good to have some idea of what we need to do to prepare. Ie, mother in law and we will split the cost of a long term AirBnB locally so she can come and do alternate weeks childcare. She is desperate to do this. I am desperate to not have her in my house long term, so that's a good compromise.

I think that's the direction my own school would go in too, because that's what is happening with current returned year groups.

We appear to have moved in to the answer bring local hotels and leisure centres.

Someone had better tell the leisure industry that it's being commandeered.

I think rota wise we could have a 1/4 of each year group in at the same time - so Mon, Tues, Thurs and Fri. Each cohort getting one day a week with Wednesday as cleaning time and online learning planning and monitoring. Monday quarter would have a lesson (currently we for year 10's now we just have Maths, English, Science and History/Geography but if it was an ongoing thing they'd have to add in more subjects) and set up to do home learning for the rest of the week. The next lesson would presumably be marking together the work they'd done at home and ensuring understanding (though with mixed ability and only one hour god knows how you'd achieve that) and an intro to what they were doing at home the next week.

It's far from ideal obviously and whilst might be ok for ks3 it wouldn't address GCSE options subjects however those teachers wouldn't have classroom teaching other than cover so could provide good quality online lessons for their subjects? Maybe some could do wednesday half days - eg. half of Food and tech in on a Wednesday morning, half in the afternoon? PE having half their GCSE option students on similar rota? I confess I've no idea how large the cohorts are for gcse but just taking years 10 and 11 would slim numbers down?

I can see it being very centrally produced (my HOD would want everyone doing obsessively the exact same thing - her idea of heaven and she'd do her usual thing of dividing the number of schemes needed by the number of staff and tell them to plan them for everyone disregarding whose full time/part time/nqt/some poor fucker who stopped in for a cup of tea when she was giving the work out).

Oh it's a nightmare isn't it? I would want a big print out of the school and the space and the staff on little flags and a large bottle of gin and the whole floor of a classroom to try and work it all out.

I'm only partly kidding btw - we've had student teachers being made to write schemes of work and people on maternity leave and she's scary enough that if she asked the cleaner they'd probably go home and do it. I'm the only fool who has stuck my neck out and said no before and it wasn't pretty for me.

Does anyone know when the announcement is being made about the amazing catch up plan that is currently being hastily written?

There's no catch up plan. They're again hoping everything will be back to normal soon and they can just leave school's to get on with it and take the criticism and bashing and not have any extra funding or resources to try and deal with things. It's all bluster and bluff imo.

Presumably Gav has been hastily drafted into a briefing this coming week. We should set up advance bingo.

I bagsy ' dedication' , ' catch up' and 'army of volunteers'.

What about extending the school year to Jan 21? No one moves on, back to old classes and teachers and timetables. Schools do what they want for the first month in terms of rotas etc - check how it goes, make changes, aim for everyone in by Christmas.

Apart from flu season and the weather n that.

goats well, apart from those pesky universities and nurseries that plan based on a Sept to Sept school year.

What with all the whataboutery when a teacher finds a flaw in a suggestion, I reckon it's not long before we are told we don't need soap and washing facilities either.

Children need to build their immune systems.

John Swinney says he doesn't want blended learning to go on "a minute longer than is necessary" but things are "unlikely" to return to normal before the end of the school year

There's a thread on this just started.

No one can win. The Scottish government prepare parents and employers and people wsil. We get no info at all in England and people complain.

Either way , someone called user comes along and blames teachers and the unions.