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

We are going to be a bit stuffed as school if it’s all over 50s. We have lots of let’s called them experienced staff. I can think of at least 15.

It would take out most of our slt and a fair chunk of teachers and most of our tas, if not all, are women over 50 (funnily enough any males a bit younger get rapidly promoted to cover supervisors or year team leaders).

It would also take out some perfectly healthy low risk workers whilst leaving obese, asthmatic and bame people in mid 40’s in school. (I’m in 3 out of 4 of those categories).

Stupidly blunt tool that I hope even they’re not stupid enough to apply. Dread to think of the number of consultants and gps who’d be out.

I can’t get at all the reluctance to go with part time blended learning for secondary. It’s such common sense to reduce spread in schools and on transport. I think people just don’t trust us at all to make it work. Beginning to be a tad resentful of us all being tarred with the same brush because allegedly some schools did a poor job of it in lockdown (perhaps by following government advice whereas mine chose to go over and above).

From the bits I’ve seen I don’t think it is advocating blanket stopping over 50s from doing anything but instead using a risk assessment for them with advice tailored to them and their risk. So healthy over 50s probably no problem at all, but obese, smoking , diabetics with high blood pressure would have different advice. Which probably will be simply to avoid/minimise social contact ‘where you can’....

Yes, if we think this will magically protect vulnerable school workers, I think we are deluded.

The BBC, true to form, has hacked the stuff about unions from the Observer report whilst removing the scientific experts comments sot hat they can quote the fool Jenrick.

So they’d likely still be forced to work or get sacked. If it did protect them from being made to work or sacked it would be a bit of an insult to 49 year olds with the same or worse conditions.

I thought studies were showing that obesity takes away the protective factor of age? Huge obesity rates in the USA and I remember seeing evidence that younger but obese people infected had the same risk of serious complications as much older people with pre existing conditions.

We really still know so little for sure. I’ll try and find where I saw the obesity info.

It’s to neatly pass the blame on to the employee.
Oh well, we gave you your risk rating, you overweight/asthmatic/BAME person. But you stayed and now you are ill. What a shame 🤷‍♀️

The only other thing the times article said was that they have discussed secondary schools opening on a rota basis for students if necessary.... so maybe they’ve been reading our threads 😂

I don't want to appear to eb telling everyone off, but on MN there does seem to be a focus on overweightness (which MN tends to be judgy about), asthma and sometimes diabetes : as they perceive that these are things that may be linked to being fat, and therefore All Your Own Fault (at a pinch, you could obviously change your skin colour, too, or at least try to stop living with grandma in a culturally appropriate fashion...)

The clinically vulnerable also may have CP, CF, certain cancers, MS , Parkinsons , splenectomies, arthritis and heart conditions. It would be a push to say any of these things could be deemed lifestyle choices (although I think they'd try with a couple).

If we take out the over 50s and others who had to shield first time round my school will not be opening. We will lose most of the maths dept and half the science dept for starters

FFS. They’ve changed the wording on the guidance for the CV again. It’s difficult to keep up with knowing what the guidance is if they change it once a week and don’t tell anyone.

Our trust did a risk assessment that fell somewhere between the shielding criteria & the clinically vulnerable criteria. They backtracked when they realised this would take out about 1/3 of the nursing staff and wasn’t really workable. I can’t see how this plan is either. Isn’t this essentially the same as what happened before when GP’s added people to the shielding list and then they all got dumped off it in June?

Well I suppose if all the newly shielding were responsible for the students who were wfh on the ROTA that week/day......

Doesn't totally work but would go some way towards making it workable.... maybe??

My current school: over 50s would take out 90% of our TAs and around 15% of teaching staff (over 40 would take out all of SLT and 60% of teaching staff). In my last school, over 50s would be at least 75% of teaching staff.

Isn't smoking supposed to be positively correlated with protection against Covid? I'm sure that was the latest research. It does normally confer protection against certain auto immune conditions like Crohn's disease.

Over 50s would take out only a handful of teachers, but it would also be the whole of SLT, the senco and all but two of the TAs. Plus the site manager and all of the cleaners!

Yes, same at ours (site/cleaners) and ALL the kitchen staff.

I’d forgotten about the kitchen staff-yep, all of them, too!

I suspect this won’t become a policy for that very reason!

What does it say now rafa?

I think some secondary teachers should go and enlighten the poster on the chat board thread asking how teachers feel about going back, exactly how difficult it would be to just watch their hands after every lesson, as you are clearly never That far from a wash basin in a secondary school!

@Appuskidu I saw that thread last night. Could not face all the 'teachers' on there saying they were desperate to get back.

It pisses me off that the thread is filling up with people saying schools just need to crack on and open as normal, when the thread is asking TEACHERS how they feel about going back!

Piggy
If you have any of the following health conditions, you may be clinically vulnerable, meaning you could be at higher risk of severe illness from coronavirus. If you are clinically vulnerable you:

can go outside as much as you like but you can still try to keep your overall social interactions low
can visit businesses, such as supermarkets, pubs and shops, whilst keeping 2 metres away from others wherever possible or 1 metre plus other precautions
should continue to wash your hands carefully and more frequently than usual and that you maintain thorough cleaning of frequently touched areas in your home and/or workspace

Which is a change from last week’s ‘you can meet people inside and outside’ and probably closer to the previous week’s ‘stay at home as much as possible and if you do go out try to avoid people from outside your house hold’.

That's general guidance then rafa? Chance of DH cleaning anything is slim to zero!

Well, the housing secretary has said schools will be safe for September, thank goodness. I feel completely reassured now.

Interesting he’s said they’ve been working closely with head teachers and unions-bet that’s not true!

New thread!?