The Seventeenth Republic - The Pick Your Grade Show continues as we edge towards INSET days.

[StaffAssociationRepresentative]

You are most welcome to this school staff support thread to get us through stressful times. It is meant for school staff only – a sort of room of requirement. Baiters, haters, goaders 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 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
Do not give ‘The Every twat for Themselves mob’ the staffroom password as a number of them are operating in an alternative reality.

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 goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom. Close the door quietly on your way out

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53875410

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-53877292

Great use of misleading photo yet again by the bbc with the two SDed children in masks. Urgh!

It's not contradictory if it is brought in!

Again with the misleading picture at the BBC!

Meanwhile, Gavin was on holiday :

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/gavin-williamson-skipped-meeting-to-go-on-holiday-ahead-of-a-level-fiasco-reports-claim/ar-BB18gGzZ?ocid=spartanntp_edu

The great back to school campaign is really insidious. Is this how the 21st century campaigns? Where is the honest campaigning with posters and TV ads?

Why hide it in articles that appear to be factual news?

I find that really scary on so many levels.

Who are the SM influencers? Surely they don't mean MN? that would break ethics codes.

I remember when I used to teach "science in the news" trying to get the pupils to evaluy the source.
I used to say the BBC and broadsheet newspapers tended to be trustworthy.
Can't say that anymore!

Evaluate

Indeed whynot!

Did anyone see the TeacherTapp outcomes that said something like 35% of teachers over 50 were very anxious about returning to school? An just over 1/4 of younger teachers?

This has to be acknowledged :and not just by the government - by SLTs, by unions, by parents.

And yet the government (and the opposition for that matter) don't want to reassure us at all. They just want to lie about the guidelines.

And, I might add, TT respondents tend to be irritatingly chipper so it is probably an underestimate!

I haven't spoken to everyone in my department but all the ones I have spoken to have more than usual levels of anxiety, even dread , about returning. I imagine the one that hasn't is the male SLT.

Ken Robinson has died. A compassionate voice in education.

I saw that on Twitter but have no idea who he was?

I don't know whether I should start another thread on this but am getting increasingly fed up of the ALGI Facebook groups, and , increasingly some people on here falling for the spin that Ofqual didn't tell schools to fit CAGs to data or to self moderate.

Out of interest did anyone on here just enter non moderated 'trigger happy' CAGs (I don't mean deliberately inflated but unmoderated, in data matched)? The myth is that some schools did,but I have yet to find one.

ALGI has the ST on its case and some are getting lawyers. The claim is that schools did not follow Ofqual advice.

I will admit that I think my school were over concerned about 'accuracy' (they always are) and over did it (in some subjects) as if they'd get a Blue Peter Badge, and I am FUMING that SLT did not give us sight of their final CAGs and changed rank order which they should not have done. My SLT's mistake was to quibble over individuals based on their prior data : which is almost certainly why Ofqual put so many of my option grades up!

All teachers of a certain career length will have sat through an INSET with Ken Robinson’s Ted talk that someone drew pictures for about how schools kill creativity in children and turn them into sausages. Something about how they can find more uses for a paper clip before going to school than after.

I don’t know him for anything else.

piggy I have heard of a school who entered (and have now been awarded) some very rosy CAGs. If progress 8 were a thing this year it would have shot up.

Piggy I'd be fuming about rank changes. We were told SLT may change CAGs but not raks because we know the rank best.

Any trigger happy schools didn't follow the ofqual advice and therefore won't be shouting about it if they have any sense.

Should I ask for that to be deleted? I guess it wouldn't take much searching to work out where it is.

I have to say, anecdotally indies and leafy schools seem to be high on the grade inflation radar.

Perhaps more 'monitored' schools have taken a more data led approach (and read the guidance properly!).

Oooh @noblegiraffe I remember the paper clip thing

And yes I'd imagine a lot of grade inflation happen in some independents. One near me seems to have gone up a lot (a very poor one that someone I know worked at for a term before leaving in despair and coming back to our state school)

It's is appalling that the BBC are continuing with the completely misleading pictures.

However, maybe we just have to wait a couple of weeks for it to dawn on parents: school now looks nothing like that!^ Could this mean that it's not safe?!!!^

Especially once their child's sent home to self isolate.

Nope , never heard of Ken. We don't do TED talks round my way.

Can I just clarify, I wasn't asking if anyone knew of grade inflating schools (although again I don't actually know of one), just any that out in what they genuinely thought (which may have shown some apparent inflations) with no intervention at all from data teams and SLT to change them. so, if you like - optimistic but honest and clear of any data bias.

This is genuinely what ALGI believes Ofqual directed us to do : 'predict your grades and we will do all the adjustment.' I now no longer know whether that is true or not but it certainly wasn't the interpretation my SLT had. I don't think we were at the extreme end of 'fitting things to data' either (or certainly not as religiously as Ofqual did).

I AM fuming herc but am already person non grata with SLT. I have made my feelings clear to HOF but she has really lost track and the original department CAGs have been zapped.

I read that they were getting this impression from data submissions to Education Datalab, piggy. Something like 2/3 of schools did it one way, and 1/3 the other.

Perhaps more 'monitored' schools have taken a more data led approach (and read the guidance properly!).

But what DID the guidance say. The lawyers are saying the guidance did not say anything about data and that this came from ASCL training and advice. I am not sure that they aren't right here, actually.