The Nineteenth Republic - DfE guidance issued August Bank Holiday Weekend!

[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.

No DfE muppets allowed

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

Same with maths, if they haven't seen it, they can't answer the questions. We acknowledge for loads of kids this is the case anyway and only teach them part of the course. It would be questionable to do that for all.

No assessments until half term here. Rumours of 72h quarantine. Current plan is to not get caught! I don't care about touching books if I'm in a room breathing the same air for 2 hours.

Nope. Last week when DS got his results, several days later he said he had just twigged what the D stood for!

He got money for his results and it didn't cross anyone's mind to reward the Spoken English, even though it was actually the only thing he properly did, in effect.

Where is this ill teacher thread??

We haven’t been told anything about marking.

I’m assuming as we’re having the exam weeks it’s life as usual!

@Piggywaspushed

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4009415-To-insist-that-my-friend-doesnt-go-back-to-work-on-Tuesday-without-a-negative-covid-test-result

But in maths, the thing they haven't done won't be worth 40 potential marks?
Also, ime, (don't shoot me!) maths do always seem to be a subject that finish the content quite early?
Plus there is the issue with coursework. I will admit to panicking for my year 11 option class.

The English class will be fine, which sin't fair

Some students won't see 40 marks worth of content. Our higher groups always struggle to finish. Foundation less so.

I agree that content should be cut for other subjects. For maths I'd be happy with formulae being provided and grade boundary shift.

I spray and wipe packaging and wash veg. And even the bottom of shoes. That's because my mum is very vulnerable though, and wanders round in socks most of the time.

Looking on the fb page for my school area this morning I note that two twatty parents of my class have posted self-congratulatory pictures of themselves on the anti-lockdown protest in London. Maskless, next to a load of other total wankers. I've sent a screenshot to slt but I bet both kids still rock up on Wednesday. What's worse is the amount of supportive comments they've got! Another 4 of which are from other parents! This is really not helping my back to school anxiety.

Head of sixth form emailed y13 last week to say formal assessments in the first couple of weeks. Didn't tell staff. Cue a flurry of panicked email from kids. They missed their y12 exam slot but I'm not sure how I can cram a 2.5hour exam into a 100 minute lesson - so it wouldn't be a "valid mock" anyway.

The constant ‘get them back to school’ brigade can not see how the disruption of school closures will further greater the divide.

My pupils had a full life timetable. My Yr 11s and Yr 13s will be going back to school at the point where they would have been if lockdown hadn’t occurred. If we close, we’ll carry on remotely as before. Other schools won’t be so lucky - through no fault of their own.

We need a robust assessment procedure that factors this in.

*live

Oh I get that people are washing shopping because the virus lives on surfaces for 72 hours, I just don't know whether it matters. I read loads of articles and the conclusion seemed to be 'washing your shopping won't do any harm' which isn't helpful!

Given all the 'no recorded cases of transmission in classrooms' studies and facts, it's all about person to person transmission. Have there been any recorded cases of transmission from a surface 60 hours later?

I don't know about the surface transmission. I'm far more concerned about airborne. SLT want marking done on teams. An actual nightmare for maths.

It’s the same theoretical transmission as cold or flu, really, isn’t it? I did the washing in weak bleach solution when DS was a baby with bad asthma too (and wiped down shopping trolley handles and seats) because that was quite a serious risk to him at the time.
I don’t think I ever picked up a cold from handling shopping. It was the child sneezing in my face or the colleague who dragged themselves in full of snot that I caught those from.

We're being told no quarantine of marking (so it'll have to be done) but have to wait 72 hours before sharing books between bubbles . Which is it?

We're doing assessments with y11 starting on 14th September. That's just us as maths though, I think. The rest of the school are just doing the normal mocks in November. But we need to do some resetting so kids have as long as possible studying the right tier of entry. So my class, who are borderline higher/foundation will end up being split roughly down the middle. I get to keep whichever group is bigger, so I don't know yet if I'll have my keenies doing higher, or the lazies doing foundation.

We've been told we can mark however we want. So some people are making books as normal, others are moving to online marking for hw and quarantining assessments before making, others haven't decided yet. I wish there was a more consistent policy for marking, so we were all doing the same thing!

I can't do 72 hours because it'll drive me mad. I'm only going to mark homework and I'll be setting it on teams. Essays are easy enough to mark that way.

I remember, many years ago, working as a student in M&S on the till, and a small child sneezing directly at me. I felt the spray in my face. A few days later I went down with mumps.

Is the marking thing down to teachers being able to mark in a block, not touching their face etc then washing their hands straight away? In theory, anyway, as I know there may not be time to mark a massive pile of books in one go, in the classroom.
Whereas children can’t be trusted to remember not to pick their nose or stick their pen in their mouth while using the books.

@Hercwasonaroll

I don't know about the surface transmission. I'm far more concerned about airborne. SLT want marking done on teams. An actual nightmare for maths.

More medical people I know are less worried about surface transmission.

I wonder whether 50 has got her resignation letter in yet? What with masks and all that.

@Piggywaspushed Your comment about Life on the ‘sick teacher’ thread 😂 👏

Yeah surface transmission doesn't seem to be a thing, airborne transmission definitely is, yet schools are quarantining books but not wearing masks. It doesn't make any sense. Taking the wrong things seriously.

High touch areas may be an issue as collect high viral load (my guess.)

So door handles and photo copiers.

There was an interesting article in the guardian considering a post Covid world of buildings; copper was used a lot for door handles as its anti viral.

@Piggywaspushed

So fed up of hearing about the metal health pandemic. Under normal MN service, anyone who posted such stuff would be patronisingly told off for projecting.

I am sure the return to school will be blamed for anxiety and poor MH in a few weeks.

I'm beyond pissed off about it. I suspect it's faux concern in most cases, basically just covering up for 'I don't want my life to have to change for other people's benefits' and pretending they actually care about the people they are using as an excuse.

Where the hell were all these people who are suddenly 'worried about MH' when kids where being placed in MH beds hundreds of miles away from home because it was the nearest bed? Where were they complaining about the lack of funding MH gets compared to physical health and about how little of that goes to child and adolescent MH? I don't seem to have seen hundreds of threads started on how to maintain your MH during the lockdown/pandemic either. If I genuinely thought that this pandemic would bring greater awareness and might lead to long term change in MH services I wouldn't mind so much, but most of these posters are going to disappear if they get what they want and won't give another thought to child MH other than to say how much we overreacted and caused long term problems by locking down over a virus and our children paid the price.

And anxiety is a perfectly normal and healthy reaction to the situation we are in at the moment. It's not necessarily a mental health issue, nor will it become a long term one for many. I don't think conflating anxiety and MH issues stemming from anxiety helps anyone tbh.