Thirteenth Republic - School’s out for summer, no more pencils no more books!

[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

Love that piggy!

I’m sitting on my hands - the study of one child and one adult is being interpreted by the head in the clouds/fingers in ears squad as proof that children don’t spread - a study of ONE CHILD compared to ONE adult. ONE. FFS

I don't know why I engage. I spent days not but some posters are so patronising.

I just cannot not react to the ones who tell us schools are safe, well ventilated, easily to social distance In and comparable to the office spaces that no one is even fucking working in.

Even Teacher Tapp annoyed me today with its optimism!

I come back to MN for the safety of healthy cynicism (or hysterical handwringing , you choose!)

Teachertapp was odd today I thought. Did you get all the Qs about smart boards? No option for "projector and whiteboard" which is clearly the best option (if you don't have a visualiser).

It makes me so angry that the people who have to work in this unsafe environment are dismissed so rudely. Ultimately if we’re right and they’re wrong the schools will be closed because there won’t be anyone left to look after their kids. Well, maybe the last wo/man standing in front of 1500 kids - how happy will they be with that?!

Yeah, no option for 'we don't have any'!

It was rather more the high % of teachers who think their school is safe that alarmed me!

But then Teacher Tappers do tend towards the class swot end of the spectrum

Either that or I need to go find me these safe schools!

We don't have any Smart boards, nor in my last school (except in maths) nor in the school before that one.

@CarrieBlue

I’m sitting on my hands - the study of one child and one adult is being interpreted by the head in the clouds/fingers in ears squad as proof that children don’t spread - a study of ONE CHILD compared to ONE adult. ONE. FFS

What study are you referring to? Not that one in the Times???

Our building is crumbling round our ears and we are way too small for modern numbers but we do have laptops and smartboards. Not that they’re all that smartly used. They are just a big screen and mic connected to our laptops.

Really don’t know how you cope without laptops. How do you get at resources and presentations and reports etc from home?

I assume most people without school laptops buy their own?

In my last school media teachers brought their own as they needed kit that was higher spec than the school could afford. And even in the indie where I now work a couple have purchased higher spec machines for work related stuff in music tech.

Most other teachers get the minimum spec that the school can get away with.

Wow. (This is now a months old circular convo on here but haven't come across a school that gives staff IT in my county ever )

@CallmeAngelina - this one

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20156018v1.full.pdf

One child traced. One.

Yes I think we have had this conversation before as I remember being shocked that they let staff access confidential data on their own laptops whose security isn’t managed by the school.

Have been searching for stats but best I’ve found is from 2017 when 73 per cent of adults lived in households without children. No breakdown on the other 27% except to say it includes adult children.

So if some are only adult kids and some are teenagers actually the percentage of workers who need childcare to work is actually very low.

I don’t think the schools must open so parents can work or the economy will crash idea holds much water. There’s a large percentage of workers available who don’t need childcare and a pretty large percentage of jobs being made redundant.

I was trying to find some evidence for the 8% of households with primary age children but that was as close as I could get without subscriptions.

Honey - but you access the school system via a virtual desktop so it doesn't store anything locally. Phones are a bit different, I think, but everyone's expected to have school email on there... I know two of our TAs had to buy themselves laptops during lockdown to be able to do anything at home. They're older and don't use one ordinarily (or their adult children's, I guess).

I'm sure 8% is an accurate figure for households with primary aged children. Sounds about right. The economic argument is true. The govt (or the economy) doesn't care who is in the working population just that enough people are. Parents of primary aged children will be at risk of losing their jobs if we can't have full time in school offer or an alternative. (Hopefully this won't affect teachers...) But the economy would be much worse off if everything closed down to allow schools to open fully.

Our place has only desktops.

Lockdown it was assumed we had our own tech. To be honest most people did to plan at home.

My laptops getting slow now so I'll probably need to buy another if we get another lockdown. So many teachers prop up the system buying their own stuff.

Totally. I think I spent at least £200 since March on various bits to be able to wfh.

(And then when I went in on the rota for KW children, I had to buy soap for the toilets and staffroom...in the middle of a health pandemic...)

There are 8% of adults dependent on childcare to work, which isn't quite the same. I have looked and looked and can't find this data again but it was on Twitter. This includes parents reliant on nursery and then up to top of primary who have both parents working (or are single parents) and no other routine childcare. It was a survey done by one of these nursery associations for some reason to do with the dilemma of benefits versus low paid work.

I am sure more than 8% of families need childcare since this included childless adults and people with grown up children but it is still a useful stat and will have changed now that more people are able long term to WFH , although I a sure they would still want childcare!

That Finnish study is crazy! But in any event it does show that adults run risks to other adults and children in schools.

This is the key bit that they will always cling on to :
but other transmission chains were plausible

Unless we lock kids and school workers up and allow them out only to school, using only school transport , no one will ever be able to prove school is a vector. How convenient.

@CallmeAngelina

Ffs, how many more people are going to quote that fucking Times article about no proven cases of children passing it to teachers.

I have requested that posts quoting this study were removed. I had a long reply back telling me that debate was healthy and asking if I needed help to hide the Corona board!

Wow, how patronising.

I did consider contacting The Times, but considering the rest of the MSM (and even The Times itself) never really ran with it, I let it lie. An Us For Themer has obviously promoted it, but The Times knows Woolhouse is a source who can be pulled apart, hence it was a very small story in the first place.

I am cross actually. The Corona board is in 'Health'. If they want o justify it being about 'debate' it needs to be in AIBU. I know scientist don't always agree but inaccurate or unproven science is dangerous, especially when it misleads for political purposes.

Any post which say children do not transmit or catch CV should rightly be deleted. Otherwise, UFT go around merrily telling people who have presented facts that they are wrong or doom mongering, and use entirely out of date or non credible sources or beliefs as their evidence. Bit like the old catching AIDS from a toilet seat thing. It is too easy for the ADs and the Us For Them tribe to just sneer or bully or character assassinate. Very few people fight ClimbDad on an analysis of his science, for example.

It's worrying because it leads to irresponsible or potentially even dangerous decisions : corona parties anyone so that all the children can get their 'mild cases' and get 'lifelong immunity'?

I often wonder how differently this whole thing would have been treated if the young had been the most affected. Thank God this is not the case, but the decisions made would have been entirely different. But are there any plans for a mutation or a different pandemic that hits the young? I very much doubt it.

Anyone else noticing a vibe in the media, esp the bbc, of using schools as the reason why everyone must adhere to the rules; threats to not fully open if cases spiral?

They wheel us out and use us to their advantage.

Re: tech for staff. It quickly became apparent at my school that a large number of staff DIDN’T have tech at home or that it was ancient or shared between a number of people also trying to wfh.

Glad to see MPs got all
Those thousands of £££s though you help them wfh 🙄

We have a laptop each which is probably a bit outmoded as a thing these days. The pay off for this is absolutely no tech in schools. The majority of classrooms have no computers, we have no visualisers, on IWBs. About 4 classrooms outside IT rooms, graphics and music tech have computers for groups of students. I'd be tempted to swap my laptop for better facilities in school . Especially since the laptops they now give out to staff are so limited on what you can add and what you can do with them. My subject has been massively limited by lack of technical equipment.