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

I hate that Gav goes on about having been to a normal sixth-form college, because I work at his alma mater, and we get screwed over in every conceivable way (very mixed cohort including some deprived areas, some feeder schools are very poor, lower funding than schools but also hampered by being a smallish college...). I mean, if you’re going to use us to bolster your “normal guy” credentials as least throw us a fricking bone every now and then!

Why does Gav have a whip on his desk in this photo of him at his desk yesterday? And it might just be perspective, but that mug and the phone don’t look like they are a comfortable distance away unless he has really long arms.

@StaffAssociationRepresentative nowt wrong with a 2.2. 😏

Students should apply around their predicted grades and not the other way round.

UCAS grades are very different to CAG, it's annoying me all the people saying teachers predict wrongly on UCAS. Generally I'd go with benefit if doubt on UCAS as if I predict too low they may not get an offer they wanted which looks bad if they then get the grades - ultimately it is up to the student to get the results in the exam. (Also if a student asks enough someone else will raise the prediction anyway.) The CAG were much more evidence based and given much later in the year, plus they were moderated by the school before submitting.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/12428968/kids-coronavirus-classroom-home-study/amp/

Now school is safer for children than staying at home 🤔

That photo of Gav makes him seem even creepier than normal!

@Useruseruserusee

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/12428968/kids-coronavirus-classroom-home-study/amp/

Now school is safer for children than staying at home 🤔

Magic walls!

So schools are safer because last week, no one got Covid at school? Even a 5 year old could explain that one, I think.

That whip. What on earth?!

Oh ok, I get it.

@Useruseruserusee

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/12428968/kids-coronavirus-classroom-home-study/amp/

Now school is safer for children than staying at home 🤔

That seems to be a slanted interpretation of that data to me...

Do you think U4T are going to start campaigning that all schools become boarding schools then? 😂

What "militant union chiefs"? I've barely noticed teachers unions exist recently

Got DS’s school return info through. Nothing earth-shattering, they are applying official advice well. Some of the older buildings are going to be tricky with distancing, but that’s a pretty much universal problem. Bit disappointed 16-18 yr olds can’t decide to wear a mask at their place of ‘work’ but I don’t in any way blame the school for that. I mean, I’m in my 40s and my school won’t let me wear one either 🙄.
They’ve adapted brilliantly to every stage of this and I am so impressed.

Also finally got my hours ! They are ok. I’ll be digging my wipes out for the photocopier and guillotine and the resident Typhoid Mary (ALWAYS ill, ALWAYS stands too close to me) can back the fuck off.

It's percentage based. It's saying that, in Belgium, during the latter part of last academic year, if there was a coronavirus-positive child, they would pass it on to a higher percentage of their family than the percentage of their class.

Of course that's the case. There are much greater numbers in schools than in families and Belgium was employing social distancing and masks to control the spread. I imagine those same protective measures didn't exist in the home.

Fucking morons at the Sun.

@hedgehogger1

What "militant union chiefs"? I've barely noticed teachers unions exist recently

Haha, all I’ve had from my union in about a month is an invite to the LGBT forum and reminders to reject the pay offer in a ballot. I mean, all very important in normal times, but some welly behind safety measures to stop my dying, being disabled or fucking up DS’s future prospects with repeated whole household isolation waiting for tests would be nice.

Noticed this morning in the 31 July guidance for parents on schools returning that it says "Public Health England" do not recommend masks be worn in schools.

So if PHE (at least in its Covid role) is shortly to be no more, does that maybe leave the door open for the new organisation to declare that masks can now be recommended in educational settings?

Just a thought.

I was looking back at how starry-eyed we were about Ofqual’s algorithm back in the day and found this post that the government really should have read at the time.

What I wasn’t anticipating was that the flaws in the algorithm would be so big that individual schools could pick up on it and you didn’t need a wider view of the data to find them.

I know we’re all “Gav is blaming Ofqual for his fuck-up”, but seriously, why weren’t large grade drops checked for and corrected? No one at Ofqual actually gave any thought to the kids at the end of this did they?

Nope.

I know we hate it when people say ' what have teachers been DOING?'

but seriously 'what have Ofqual and the exam boards been DOING for five months??'

I never normally get The Guardian but it is really worth a cover to cover read today : stuff about exams, about Sweden , about the government in general. Suzanne Moore says some great stuff about the relegation of teachers to childminders etc

Schools in Sweden were left open, by the way, largely to let the virus spread through the healthy population. It's quite a scary article..

I still can’t understand why they didn’t use some sort of confidence interval for adjustments. It would have resulted in far fewer changes and although it would have resulted in more grade inflation than the system they used, it would have kept grade inflation lower than it will be now that they’ve U turned. They could have said that no school’s results were outside of the range that you would expect, whilst looking like the good guys for making reasonable adjustments for this years cohort. It was an easy win and they fucked it up. It would have been so much fairer than what they did and what we ended up with.

Had my first email from an upset year 13 about their CAG. They were done on the data but if I'd just had free reign I'd have predicted her a grade higher. In fact I did, it just got taken down

@hedgehogger1

Had my first email from an upset year 13 about their CAG. They were done on the data but if I'd just had free reign I'd have predicted her a grade higher. In fact I did, it just got taken down

That must be hard hedge

I know we’re all “Gav is blaming Ofqual for his fuck-up”, but seriously, why weren’t large grade drops checked for and corrected? No one at Ofqual actually gave any thought to the kids at the end of this did they?

There are so many blindingly obvious flaws in it that it is scary no one considered them. Even 'letting' a sample of HTs see anonymous results would have flagged most of them.

@Iamnotthe1 yeah it's not like I can email her and go "it's not my fault!" Really like the girl too :(