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

2.50 for Swinney.

My DM is 'really left wing' and my DF is a proper old fashioned liberal. My DSM is very SNP. My DM made me who I am really but , in her old age, she ahs become very reactionary and quite hysterical about BLM , for example (she lives in NY) whilst still claiming to be left wing.

Boris just said all schools and pupils needed to remember Hands FACE Space.

LOL Boris , you twat.

He was really floundering under some questioning on a building site. He was very hot.

Fuck me. Our middle-aged friend has just advised someone on the "MNers are horrible" thread to ignore goady-fuckers!

Que!?!

We aren't going to learn a lot from Scotland atm are we? The Borders and Shetland?

When do Inverclyde, Aberdeen etc go back?

I think I thought you meant a 'teacher bashers are horrible ' thread!

News now has eventually mentioned the PHE debacle.

@Piggywaspushed I believe all authorities are having students in from tomorrow. Many (all?) will be doing a 'soft start'; all year groups are only in for one day this week and full cohort next Monday. No lessons this week, only health and wellbeing.

My money is on the ‘new’ guidance actually saying nothing new. The posturing these last few days is a sign that the government are digging in hard so that they can claim the supposed moral high ground when it all goes tits up.

Gavin and the unions are the sacrificial lambs. Johnson has set it all up.

Interesting :

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/11/england-results-exams-fiasco-ofqual-inequality

So, the press is obsessed with the results 'fiasco' but now appears not to be reporting the press conference?

Oh, he's on now!

I'll tell you what is PISSING ME OFF at the moment here on MN, and it's all the faux concern about kids' mental health whilst being out of school. This is from people who have never given a shiny shit about such kids, who now see fit to use their plight to try to tell US, who have been trying to help for years with our pleas falling on deaf ears from the government, and funding cut year upon year, that we should go back to (Covid UNsecure) schools because it suits their personal agenda.

Preach!

Exactly Angelina and from the same miral government that did want kids to have meals through the summer.

I can see that the results seem like a fiasco. The problem is all the inequality was still there when they sat the exams in 2019. The grade boundaries are still adjusted and private school kids on average do better.

The people discussing changing the system pre 2020 I have some time for. The people outraged now I have far less time for.

This year looks more unfair because you can't apply a statistical model accurately to a single child. It has to be done at a cohort level. It looks more unfair because the data going into the system was from teachers and not the students themselves. The process is incredibly similar.

I haven't seen a solution that beats exams in terms of eliminating unconscious bias. Coursework was riddled with problems (mainly teachers having to do the work).

The government didn’t care about kids mental health when it cut CAMHS funding to the bone. Or when it cut funding for EdPsych or when it cut funding for all adult mental health services.

Where was al the worry then?

because it suits their personal agenda.

Yep. And the ones suddenly telling teachers that there are vulnerable kids out there with terrible homelives because they want their kids in school.

To summarise : Swinney says they forgot it was 2020 and could have showed more compassion.

Right, so all the downgrades have been put back. Oo er.

Saves the hassles of the appeals!!

But then you end up with ‘because it’s 2020, we’re just going to let everyone pass this year’.

It’s unfair to say to some kids ‘well, you wouldn’t have passed last year but we’ll let you off this year because 2020’, and then say to other kids ‘yeah, 2020 just got even worse, you failed an exam you didn’t sit where we let other kids off’.

Had this conversation with friend at lunch pointing out we can refer till we’re blue in the face but it won’t make camhs or ss magic up services and capacity that have been inadequate for years. Our local authority is literally bankrupt and ss and child services have failed ofsted and been deemed unable to keep children safe.

What safeguarding do they thiink schools can offer in that context.

Pretending to care about at risk children or young people’s mental health is beyond insulting

My school carefully moderated its grades before submitting them. Teachers’ estimates were much too generous (human nature, of course) and we knew they’d be moderated down otherwise.

If England does what Swinney has just announced our students will now be at a disadvantage. I imagine there are schools in Scotland in the same position.

What a mess.

Scotland tries too hard not to be England sometimes.

If you listen to what he said it is all very interesting.

That said I'd get rid of exams tomorrow because I think they embed disadvantage and I am now happy that many children's life chances have improved. That is overall good for society.

He is also now talking about next year and suggesting all the things that could happen to next year's pupils, including all the stuff Ofqual ahs rejected for us!

There will also be an independent enquiry in Scotland.