The Sixteenth Republic - waiting on the GCSE results show!

[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

@fedup21 goodness knows!

Taught my first classes in five months (to the day)! All our senior students wear masks. This is a school policy and I am really grateful to our headteacher for implementing it. We're going to try and arrange my room so the seniors can physically distance when not doing practical work so they can be mask free. It is unusually hot here so we had an outside two minute mask break mid lesson!

@Piggywaspushed

Absolutely! It isn’t even good speaking and listening. It’s just a mumbled presentation. I would very much like to see it done as a proper debate topic.

Wow @fuckweasel I am impressed with your head. I wonder will he/she get any pushback on that from parents?
(also impressed you have room to SD the pupils at all!)

[quote FrippEnos]**@RigaBalsam

From the Guardian
Families across Scotland have been breaching quarantine rules by sending their children back to school within days of returning from holidays in countries on the quarantine lists.

Do you have a link for that before it gets buried?[/quote]
It was on the live updates. I can't find it now.

@Iamnotthe1

Just seen this on bbc: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-53804740 Headline: Coronavirus: Poor pupils facing 'two-year catch up after lockdown'

Only to find that the 'two years' in the headline is based entirely on the opinion of one exec headteacher. Surely that's extremely irresponsible journalism.

This teacher also said now is our time to step up ( or something like that I recall) 🤮

Anyone else have to wait until September to find out what their students got? Do at my place?

@Mistressiggi We've had very little pushback from parents. A detailed letter was sent out explaining the rationale behind it and it's gone down very well. It wouldn't take many of us to be off for the school to close! I have very small N5/H/AH classes so I think it's doable to SD for them, not so much for the BGE classes!

Great, thanks. None of your parents in UFT then!

I also miss controlled assessments in English. I was a moderator for the life of the spec though and some of the cheating was painfully appallingly obvious.
I can't quite believe I went out for the day and missed this. I'm refusing to enter into discussion about CAGs because a lot of mine were changed.

Another reason CAGs for all is unfair is because some were changed by SLT/MATs.

Yes. I'm not sure why Bob who is hated by everyone but me should have his English grades determined by someone who is not me

@MrsHamlet

Very interesting! Do tell!

I think random spot checks by moderators could be a more useful way of doing things. As well as maybe making controlled assessments into a sort of modular exam. So done in exam conditions with invigilators.

So many better solutions than squishing four enormous topics in five essays on two papers.

@Piggywaspushed

That Hutchinson bloke annoying people again by saying 'we have badly let these students down'

Who is this 'we' of whom this assistant headteacher speaks?? Synecdoche doth not become him.

TBF to him I do think that was a general 'we' and really not meant to be taken as teachers. It wouldn't really fit with everything else he's tweeted about it except 'that' tweet the other day.

More from the news about pupils isolating in Scotland due to the house parties:

“Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, assistant professor in infection and immunity at Edinburgh University told the BBC's Good Morning Scotland programme she would not be surprised if young people meeting socially were spreading the virus.
She said: "Kids are kids and they like to gather with each other and as we know from studies that came out from Public Health England last week that secondary school pupils actually shed the virus in similar amounts to adults. The virus is going to spread and transmit in these gatherings.”

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-53804140

So, teens spread the virus as much as adults and are at risk when attending parties but the article is very quick to state that these transmissions don’t happen in school 🤔

@BelleSausage a favourite was the year when a group of them all came with post its with what seemed to be teacher suggestions for "tweaks" and changes in pen colour which might have made a cynic think they might have been drafting. I had to request all of the particular teacher's work... which they tried to fight me on. It was very clear that they had followed neither the letter or the spirit of the rules.
I really enjoyed it. Where students were writing about things they cared about it, it was often excellent. And the iGCSE was even better.

Just reading about two cases in two primary schools in Scotland as well in Renfrewshire and Paisley.

@RigaBalsam

Anyone else have to wait until September to find out what their students got? Do at my place?

We don’t get sent it but our board is Pearson/Edexcel so we can log in to results plus and see for ourselves At my last school it was exported into a spreadsheet and sent out. Was really good!

I can access AQA and OCR to look. Has to be set up by the exams officer though

I log onto SISRA to see what my classes got. Could never get my head around ResultsPlus.

Ah yes. I always forget about SISRA

Wow, what a rollercoaster the last couple of hours has been for English teachers. I know a lot of Irish secondary teachers gearing up to see the shitshow repeated here soon...

So pleased for you fuckweasel that your head has taken a sensible line on the masks! Wait until Them4Us hear. They'll be spitting feathers.

Gav is blaming everything on Ofqual and has said: "We don't get any detailed data before schools but when we started to see concerning outliers... that's why I felt action had to be taken."

So he's just ignoring the fact he's spent the last four days telling anyone who will listen how fair the system was. What the actual fuck? Why are these liars not held accountable for the things they say? Our kids' parents would hold us accountable for anything we said in a meeting or via email.

We don't get any detailed data before schools

And yet, as has been pointed out by people who have worked at the DfE, this isn’t true.

Gav wasn’t on top of his brief. What the fuck has he been doing the last 6 months?

RigaBalsam
Anyone else have to wait until September to find out what their students got? Do at my place?
We don’t get sent it but our board is Pearson/Edexcel so we can log in to results plus and see for ourselves
At my last school it was exported into a spreadsheet and sent out. Was really good!

We usually get it on a spreadsheet sheet but nobody is allowed in this year.