The fourteenth republic - watching Scotland and ever changing DfE guidelines

[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

Yes in fairness it didn't come from a bad place (apart from the design with the rainbow hearts).

Can someone post or pm me the poem?

Ok yes I agree well meaning . Probably written by the type of person who posts sunset footprint memes, or has cute kitten inspirational posters

Best of luck to all Scottish teachers!

Found it.

Very trite.

Also misses out that they had pretty much the entire nations support and people making ppe for them.

Just popping on to send best wishes to the Scottish contingent. Hope you manage to get some sleep tonight x

Bloody awful poem, good luck comrades north of the border

From the mirror
What Europe is doing...
GERMANY

School holidays are staggered – but some 152,700 children returned to classrooms this week for the first time since they were closed in March.

Officials have called for regular classes to take place where possible but for children to get at least four or five hours of contact time each week. Masks are not mandatory but strict cleaning regimes are in place and free testing is available to teachers.

FRANCE

French schools started to reopen in May but pupils were only allowed back in limited numbers – and attending in person was optional. But from June 22, rules requiring a 4m square of space per pupil were relaxed as a return to education became compulsory.

SPAIN

Spanish schools will reopen in September after one of the strictest lockdowns in Europe. Primary classes will be capped at 20 pupils with children grouped in “bubbles”.

And students will also be encouraged to wear masks and keep 1.5m apart.

ITALY

Italian schools are set to reopen from September 14. Students will be urged to stay 1m apart and wear masks. And some lessons will take place outdoors and in different premises such as cinemas, parks and museums in a bid to reduce the concentration of children in school buildings.

The Italian government has announced some 50,000 extra teachers will be hired to cope with the changes.

GREECE

Schools in Greece started to reopen in May after a two-month closure. They are expected to start the next term early, on September 7, in a bid to catch up on missed lessons.

Class sizes have been reduced to around 15 and pupils have been told to stay 1.5m apart.

THE NETHERLANDS

Dutch schools reopened to all pupils on May 11.

Class sizes were cut in half, with rotating “bubbles” of pupils.

However, social distancing has not been enforced for children under 12.

Main headline today: ‘Little evidence of school transmission’.

Feel so despondent. I guess the government’s strategy is to beat us into submission with them science’, cast us as the villains so we’re beaten by the parents and ensure unions are demonised so the won’t stand up to heads (already happens in my school).

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53718066

On another note, good luck to the Scottish teachers on here.

All the best Scottish teachers!

That bbc report is notable next to the absence of any report about the number of cases hitting 1000...

Spin, spin, mouthpiece of the government ....

Good luck to the Scottish teachers today.

I’ve just seen that story, motherrunner. It feels like a dead cat. I wonder what we’re not supposed to be looking at today if Gav’s having to push this story before the study has even been published.

And that’s assuming that the study will say what Gav says it does and the authors have pointed out that whatever they’ve found has limited use in predicting what will happen in September.

There's just been a professor on R4 stating that schools have very little transmission and the biggest risk is staff bringing it in.

For me that's the issue though; it's the level of local infection that could affect the schools ability to keep going. And he skirted around the teen query completely, citing mental health and weighing up risks etc.

Christ the spin at the moment.

This media campaign is going to be here and getting worse till September.

I've found this interesting. The research is still going on regarding infections in schools. Any results from the summer term were in a different context.

1. *sKIDs COVID-19 surveillance in school children

PHE has initiated enhanced surveillance of COVID-19 in staff and students in May 2020. This study aims to recruit 100 schools across England during the summer mini-term (May to July 2020) into 2 separate studies: Serosurveillance In some schools, we will be taking nose swabs, throat swabs, saliva swabs and blood samples from all participating staff and students attending pre-school, primary school and secondary school. Three sets of samples will be taken: at the start of the study, at the end of the term and during the autumn term. The samples will be tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and for antibodies against the virus. We will also collect information about the participants’ health and illness during the course of the study. Weekly swabs In other schools, nose swabs will be taken from all participating staff and students on the same day every week until the end of the summer term. The samples will be tested for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. We will also collect information about the participants’ health and illness during the course of the study. More information about the sKIDs study can be found in the sKID protocoll_ (PDF, 3.72MB, 83 pages).*

www.gov.uk/guidance/covid-19-paediatric-surveillance

This magical PHE report is being delayed isn't it? They seem to know everything that is in it but it will be released 'later this year'. Why? Surely give people the facts now! What on earth could be so secret? Other reports have been rushed out.

They are going to wait , and release it when the second wave starts and use it as evidence that schools mustn't close.

I can imagine the conversations they are having behind closed doors and it is not about safety . It's about how to spin spin spin and control the masses.

The government ministers (and therefore the press0 have been told there needs to be a new emphasis on mental health : but there are no studies to prove that either. And teachers are not the sole protectors of a nation's mental health. What is the roles of the parents here?

neuro , that's the PHE study they re talking about, AFAIK : that's the one my friend's DS did.

I'm just reading about how teachers have led to societal decay Very stupid to go on MN today!

@Mistressiggi I’ve reported that post. That poster is very hateful.

Ah I see piggy - but it's not finished?!

It's continuing in the autumn. And the summer data was only on which ever pupils made it in then! And potentially lower cases then too. (Hard to tell sue to testing.)

If the phe report is based on that study, they don't yet know the results?

Are they basing it on the studies done in June and July?

Wow, that poster is a peach, isn't s/he?!
Thought the 'z' one was bad enough and reported. Not going to engage with this one. Too 'hot.'
Good luck Scotland.

Annoying prof (Viner?) on Sky just trotted out the usual about 'we must get them back...owe it to them... little evidence they suffer/transmit...' but when pressed on whether the evidence could be flawed because schools haven't been fully operational he admitted at once that it might be (why isn't that the headline then?) and said we need to be more careful with secondaries as teenagers react to the virus very differently from young children- again, why isn't that detail fronted instead of being buried in the interview?

Delurking after months of reading silently. Am delighted to hear that COVID does not transmit in classrooms. What could possibly go wrong?
Thinking of you, Scottish colleagues

@NeurotrashWarrior

There's just been a professor on R4 stating that schools have very little transmission and the biggest risk is staff bringing it in.

For me that's the issue though; it's the level of local infection that could affect the schools ability to keep going. And he skirted around the teen query completely, citing mental health and weighing up risks etc.

Christ the spin at the moment.

I can see this is the way it’s going.

Whereas NHS staff got rainbows and claps-from September it’ll be ‘hiss at a teacher if you see them out’ as they are clearly out in shops and pubs with the sole objective of trying to catch covid. Once caught, they can then pass it onto everyone at their school because they are subversive workshy Marxists trying to deprive kids of an education!

That PHE study sounds bizarre-why not just release it?!

I can see the next three weeks is going to be a hate campaign-it feels on here a bit like it was during the height of lockdown again. Am sick seeing the same familiar posters with different names, saying the same venomous things-the TB is just awful. Why does MN allow it?

Probably the same reason that no journalist seems to challenge any of the ‘news’.

Also, if it’s all about child mental health-why not invest some fucking money into it, instead of just saying ‘get schools back’. Who do they think we are going to refer the kids to? There was nobody there before, there won’t be anyone now.

why isn't that detail fronted instead of being buried in the interview?

The journalism thread has an interesting comment from a poster. Her dh is a journalist and knows exactly how much sway the government have over this. Which is a lot.