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

I just heard him on the radio. Ranted on another thread. His tone was SO aggressive. Who is he anyway??

riga what thread are you on about holidays? I got my money back (twice!) and happy to offer advice and a strategy!

@Piggywaspushed

I just heard him on the radio. Ranted on another thread. His tone was SO aggressive. Who is he anyway??

Think he is the MP for Boro. What a clown.

Loads of furlough bashing on Jeremy Vine that Pimlico Plumbers guy another weapon.

@Piggywaspushed

riga what thread are you on about holidays? I got my money back (twice!) and happy to offer advice and a strategy!

The Ryanair one. I am going to lose £895 hopefully I can claim some on insurance.

Morning! Just place marking really so I don’t lose you all again.

Had a long chat on the work WhatsApp last night about how the changes to English Lit GCSE night work. I still think they aren’t going to change the papers because it would mean retraining markers. The exam board will want to avoid that at all costs.

I will toddle over. Is it on the corona board?

@Piggywaspushed

I will toddle over. Is it on the corona board?

Think its AIBU

' to be annoyed at Ryanair screwing people over'

Loads of furlough bashing on Jeremy Vine that Pimlico Plumbers guy another weapon.

Ah yes, saw him gobbing off about ‘enough is enough’ on Ch4 News last night. From a remarkably tacky pad in Marbella, mulletted fool of a cliche that he is.

A bit of unrest about Scottish results. Some MNers DCs with rogue results...

Piggywaspushed

I founf the most telling bits form your article the "we assume" bits.
We assume that kids don't spread it
and
We assume that they won't socialise outside of school

So its pretty much worthless.

Do we think there is just one really persistent name-changing TB on MN? /50/OPK?’ Or are they separate?

I wonder what job they have to allow them to devote so much time to their TB project?!

I can really see the shit hitting the fan with schools next month and the government panicking and refusing to let schools close. I wonder what actually happens in that situation? Presumably as cases rose, the parent WhatsApp groups will find out and start to explode-would heads be allowed to just close or would they be forced to listen to PHE forbidding them?!

Would parents be fined for keeping children off in that’s situation?!

@BelleSausage the guidance for lit also says 'Shakespeare' is core but leaves it to the boards to decide what the rest of the core content is.

I'm happy to be retrained on my papers but there is an imbalance in the lit papers anyway - unless they make it one Shakespeare paper and one "do two of these three questions" paper, AND rebalance the marking allocation, it won't be that easy. AND we all know some students answer all the questions even when they don't have to normally. I've marked papers where they've made a passing attempt at every question on every text!

50 is a private school teacher (was udner aprevious anme to do with a South African locale...) . works in some form of NHS therapy so not the same.

I get so MAD when those types says define outbreak in order to try and dismiss the significance of an outbreak. According to one poster whole classes and teachers need to be struck down to for her definition. No... that would be a 'large outbreak' which would have been preventable had anyone spotted the 'outbreak'.

Anyone posting bollocks about schools should date first their level of knowledge , whether they have school age children, and any other factors.

Good questions @Appuskidu. Obviously if there are no longer enough staff in school in order to open safely the decision is easy and not arguable-with.

I can really see the shit hitting the fan with schools next month and the government panicking and refusing to let schools close. I wonder what actually happens in that situation? Presumably as cases rose, the parent WhatsApp groups will find out and start to explode-would heads be allowed to just close or would they be forced to listen to PHE forbidding them?!

well, if there is a lack of teachers in school to open safely, and supply can't be found, schools won't be opening. This happened in March and will, presumably, happen again. Many local schools to me that last week closed to some year groups because so many staff were off. The issue is not necessarily going to be outbreaks in the schools where we personally work, but the fact that many of us have children and partners who are coming into contact with lots of people and who may have to isolate because of mild symptoms and who will then drag us down with them!

This new 90 minute test will be a game-changer, hopefully.

The lancet one covers the obvious consequence that 50% on off weekly will remove those connections on the spread in workplaces. So opposed to the ppsters saying the gov will want the parents back in work.
However BJ doesnt seem to follow logic. Sending workers back into the office. Shielders back into work. Promising FT school.

Also a peak in dec twice as high would mean it starting in what nov anyway.

Imo the docs are saying if there is another peak it is to do with t&t failures so gov fault. Though it does seem people are not being contacted by t&t as much in england as rest of uk. Would think language issues more a problem in England.
So ultimately school is unsafe because gov couldn't sort out the app. (Are people having to download the EU one when they travel?)
I agree people dont understand exponential. But cant they see how fast it built up after feb half term to schools shutting mid mar. Not sure but about 20d and should have been a week less.
Obviously there are now a lot of mitigations so i can see it wont grow as fast.
It's now not dropping even without kids in school. (And likely all those parents off work minimum 2w).
Swine flu did drop over the summer. But i guess this has a longer incubation period so would take up to 2w. Of the 5 to get ill then it does around the family.

The Lancet report is being ignored on every other thread. People keep posting it.

It isn't really a report about schools so everyone should be alarmed and angry : it is about the consequences of a woefully poor track and trace system. I don't get what people don't get.

@user1471525172

I reckon the problem would be with the organisation to re-write the papers and re-train examiners. I suppose they have enough time, just about.

I am an ex-marker too. I would suspect that lots of centres will choose to skip the poetry. That paper is the most taxing just because of the lengths and number of tasks. Shakespeare could be on a separate paper with the others on another.

The big questions is whether they will keep or drop the unseen poetry. So that there is only one poetry section.

@BelleSausage we teach the poetry in year 10! My preference would be to leave it as it is, make a statistical adjustment to the weighting to bring all sections in line and choose the best 2 of the 3 remaining sections. And ditch the bloody stupid unseen poetry.
I have a top set 10 and a very mixed one going into 11 and most of them have engaged well online with the Shakespeare last term. I'm worried that we'll end up redoing things which will put the able and the keen off (one of my most keen and hardest workers has a 2 target and has soared in lockdown. And I know it's his own work)

@Piggywaspushed

The Lancet report is being ignored on every other thread. People keep posting it.

It isn't really a report about schools so everyone should be alarmed and angry : it is about the consequences of a woefully poor track and trace system. I don't get what people don't get.

I feel the same

@Piggywaspushed

tax the feeling is that Unseen will remain which will be a bit hard if they haven't done at least some poetry, plus the anthology is free of charge.

I think my school will drop the 20th century text because we haven't taught it yet.

It's actually a clear move to free up more Eng Lang teaching and I , for one, will find year 11 very dull now. Lots of time built in now for Eng Lang and revision. Yawn.

Whereas in my other subject , I will be having a nervous breakdown.

That’s a bit pants isn’t it, as it effectively means that schools can’t drop poetry. How strange and yet unsurprising!

We’ve already covered all 3 texts (the last one mostly remotely though) so now kids will have to drop one that they’ve started studying.

Definitely agree with you about the boredom of English Language. There’s just too much content in it, and it’s turned the exam into a test of memory and regurgitation of key words and phrases. I had a lot of EAL students a couple of years ago and the overload was awful for them.

@TaxTheRatFarms we just have the c19 text left and we're done with lit by October half term with just paper 2 Lang to teach. If we drop the lit text, I may have a breakdown by then! We've also been given an extra period a week - I cannot think of anything more dull than dragging them back through everything they've done for a whole year!

is about the consequences of a woefully poor track and trace system. I don't get what people don't get.

I've been banging on about that for yonks.

When it was announced by the gov that the ttt was actually launched and working, they failed to add that it was in 10 councils who had been given funding to start pilots and the actual nation wide one would be in September.

This was the end of May. Threads here had people trying to navigate the training in the weeks after. But those in power pretended it was happening.

www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/newcastle-confirmed-pilot-location-test-18298138

Yuk so much deliberate misinformation.

Off to look at lancet and cnn report.