The Fifteenth Republic - A Level and GCSE Results storm coming!

[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 can't find Becky subject anywhere /haven't looked too hard. I'm guessing something maths/geo or social science because she's very into statistics. (in a good way!)

Becky Allen was once a teacher, apparently. She also founded Education Datalab (I knew I recognised her name.)

Mr Barton Podcast reveals all. Becky Allen trained as a business and economics teacher and worked for one year in a north London comprehensive (while studying part time for a master in education) before leaving to do something else.

Just been to buy school uniform for one of mine. Two people allowed in the shop at once, hand sanitiser compulsory on entry, huge plastic screens between us, she refused to touch the stuff I wanted to return and had to scan the bar code before I dropped them into a giant plastic box.

Yet, three weeks today, we’ll all be back shoulder to shoulder in a classroom of 30.

Covid secure...

Laura McInerney on News Channel now.

Hmmm, OK, thanks noble. One of those plucked from IoE.

Which is fine but I do find all these people very 'London' in their ways...

Laura just started a sentence 'In fairness to Gavin Williamson'

NO LAURA! HUSH!

It's all about persuading people it's fine, isn't it? Which nobody seems to think parents need.

I went on campus to record a lecture and I had to go round a one way system (there was NOBODY there when I got there, I passed one person in 5 minutes, at distance) and I had to touch more buttons to go round the automatic doors on the one way system than I would normally.
I was supposed to wipe everything down (is it good for keyboards to be sprayed with antibac?) and no eating or drinking. Two hour gap before the next recording session in the same room (I am not sure if they are cleaning it or if it's just because they know we are all really poor timekeepers?)
Campus was totally deserted and they could actually just let us back in our offices (as long as they tell us which loos are functional) because we are the only one in there but we aren't allowed in.
Yet if you read our academics prep thread one person is saying they will have lectures of 250 and of course nobody is going to adhere to the "don't go in other people's flats" rules in freshers' week.
Still, I suppose we have a month after schools open for you all to be guinea pigs.

Sorry, that was a very long winded reply to @Appuskidu

@worstofbothworlds, DH had a similar experience when he went in a month or so ago. He had to make an appointment, phone Security on arrival who escorted him to his building (from a safe distance, in mask and gloves), he could be the only staff member on any of three floors and had to phone Security again when he wanted to leave.
This was when I was back in Primary with little to no SD with up to 15 kids and multiple colleagues all at close quarters.

Piggy He’s the assistant head at the primary of Reach Academy, although he also teaches A level, I think.

mobile.twitter.com/jon_hutchinson_/status/1293215312620519425

I don’t know how many people would have seen it if Julia Hartley-brewer hadn’t retweeted it.

@noblegiraffe

Important for Y13 teachers to fill out Teacher Tapp today, they are asking what you did for A-level mocks (e.g. full past paper, partial spec)

It will help Ofqual decide what counts as valid, I’m sure, as Becky Allen of Teacher Tapp consulted with Ofqual on the statistical approach.

Done.

The cynic in me thinks they’ve made this ridiculous mocks announcement to bury the news story covered in the Times about over-10s being as likely to spread COVID-19 as adults.

Well I've finally taught a class after many months of lying in the garden supposedly
Just new secondary pupils in today so very small numbers and small children. Still coming home and changing my clothes though. Wore mask some of the time, none of the children were though.

MN have deleted a reply to a post I wrote on the covid board. Seems like they might be starting g to get on top of it.

Apparently calling the WHO a politically motivated organisation who are overplaying the pandemic is where they draw the line. Wonder who reported it.

Good.

Yes, Jon Hutchinson, sorry. I saw Michael Tidd had replied to it. He's their curriculum designer, he winds me up. They all wind me up.

'Thought experiment' Laura McInerney (which is what she says just before she suggests something preposterous that she clearly believes in), and Becky Allen who told me on Twitter that once I'd mentioned safeguarding as an issue for not running schools from church halls, that 'you know they've lost the argument when they resort to safeguarding'. Not sure who the 'they' we're, but I don't take any notice of either off them now. They are London-centric and don't speak for very many teachers that i know with their opinions. Same people churned out for all education comment nationally, annoys the tits off me.

I don't know who they are with your post OP. Whose curriculum designer? I am so not London I don't even know what this all means, or who Michael Tidd is.

Educliques don't radiate to the Burbs (or not the online ones!)

Oh, the OP on that Scottish thread is sooooo annoying mistress! What one earth is her beef anyway?

I suspect an anti Scot agenda. the giveaway is the last sentence of the OP.

Michael Tidd has written a lot about the reliability and accuracy particularly with reference to the ks2 writing. He’s largely in favour of bringing back the writing test rather than relying on the TA. I suspect if he’d written a similar tweet it would have got a slightly different response. Although he probably wouldn’t have been daft enough to put the words incompetent and dishonest into it.

Imagine if she'd posted in Scotsnet....

I shall go and look at Twitter now!

All of this has revealed how over reliant on terminal exams we ar. In subjects like maths this probably makes no appreciable difference to T and L. In English it has stultified the subject. If that's a thing.

And it has made a certain group of people powerful and more influential above others.

Me, I like Debra Kidd and the primary head Simon Smith.

Michael Tidd is the Primary head who takes all the government nonsense and tries to make it make sense so you don’t have to.

He also produced a load of free resources for the new curriculum and blogged a lot about the fuck up that was its introduction.

Simon Smith is very bad for my bank balance.

Oh, just read the tweet! It started off well with 'high stakes' ( I thought he was going to go on to say high stakes education systems..) and then went on to incompetence and dishonesty...oh dear...

Does he know his schools' results? He may get egg on his face!!

I think one of the problems is these 'influencers' are all young, pretty inexperienced in actual teaching and subject leadership, and often led (like Gove) by a preference for what they had at school or did. They deride (just one example) coursework , for example, because they never had it...