The Twenty-third Republic - school attendance not great - half term to be renamed circuit break?

[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, especially if you have not used the hand gel. Close the door quietly on your way out and put your mask on

We have had complaints about the one-way drop-off system meaning that their buggy wheels are getting muddy as it entails walking across a bit of grass.

The lack of ventilation is terrifying me. The endless cleaning because the airborne virus knows not to cross our bit of red duct tape on the floor.

I think the closures are inevitable and BJ is trying to create an illusion of semi normal life for as long as possible for the sake of trying to appear like this Government is competent and in control. It's probably because the winter will be long and people's mental health is already flagging. But the truth is we are being put at risk in this trade off. How many of us are going to need to get seriously ill before the media gives this some attention?

Absolutely freezing in my DC school yesterday-they said it was awful! The head sent a letter out saying they should wear thermals, coats and bring in reusable hand warmers. It’s going to be a long cold winter!

It’s it too bad in my school but that’s only because the windows only open an inch, which is pretty dire from a ventilation point of view!

I noticed people who wiped shopping being laughed at on another thread as contact doesn't give you the virus. That being so, why do we need to get desks cleaned, door handles cleaned etc?
I love it being Saturday as I feel I can stop worrying for a bit.

The shopping-cleaners get laughed at but I'm having to quarantine my Y12 assessments because I took them home to mark and they're not safe to give back.

It's cold in our classrooms too. I'm the only person in the maths department to still have all the windows and doors open. The others have gone to a halfway compromise of opening half the windows, even though they only open 6 inches anyway. I think they all assume they'll be ok when they catch it, whereas I know (because I've read the stats) that I'm at risk of being put in hospital when I catch it.

noble I don't have to quarantine anything I mark, because I've been given gloves to mark in. So there's no risk to anyone by me marking just as I always have. There was a nod to marking electronically if we wanted to, but it's so difficult to mark on a screen, partly because even sixth form can't manage to take a decent scan of their work. So we're all back to marking paper and putting on gloves to do so

I can mark at school with just liberal application of hand sanitiser, and then I can give stuff back straight away.

If I take it home, I need to quarantine it before giving it back because of house germs.

What I would actually like is a scientist to look at this stuff and say what will actually make a difference.

No idea if the PHE helpline is even asking about marking when there's a case.

@MsAwesomeDragon

It's cold in our classrooms too. I'm the only person in the maths department to still have all the windows and doors open. The others have gone to a halfway compromise of opening half the windows, even though they only open 6 inches anyway. I think they all assume they'll be ok when they catch it, whereas I know (because I've read the stats) that I'm at risk of being put in hospital when I catch it.

Only 6 inches?! I dream of 6 inches (stop making your own jokes up!)... 3.5 centimetres I've measured.

@HerdyGerdy

I’ve been lurking on these threads since they started but I’m hoping I can have the moan that I can’t have a work. We’re a small school and we’ve had daily absences of 7+ of staff. We aren’t being told if students are off due to positive tests. We’re being used cover instead of staff being bought in which means that getting work done is hard. We’ve been threatened with contract revision if we complain about anything. Teachers aren’t following the risk assessment and aren’t leaving doors and windows open. Year 11 don’t want to work and every other year has forgotten how. I just want to cry and that’s been my state since Tuesday 🙁.

That sounds appalling herdy.

We are just marking as normal. Probably as we are so close to the children anyway, touching everything they've touched all the time.

I'm cleaning or quarantining everything used and tables between bubbles as they come into the room.

I'm trying to work out the relative proportion of Sen schools affected to number of schools in the country as it looks, not surprisingly, high on the surveillance data.,

I have my Year 7s a rocket yesterday because despite me explaining and actually demonstrating how to plug the laptops into the trolley, four if them couldn't be arsed. One even shoved theirs back in upside down. If you can't stand right over them and make them do it, it just ends up with yet more work.

Actually laptop use is a nightmare. Ours are moving round to lessons rather than us going to them, so between lessons we have to spread the desks then give them all a bit of blue roll to wipe them down with (can't just let them at the blue roll or they'd use the lot). There's one close contact with all of them. Then the books need distributing because the tables were wet until that point, so potentially another contact. If they're using the laptops, I have to clean the keyboards so I get them to open them up and have to then spray bits of individual roll to clean the keyboards. The IT techs have said that wipes are damaging the keyboards so we cant just let them do them themselves. There's another close contact with all of them. Year 7 are incapable of logging on without clicking the wrong link or forgetting their passwords so then it's looking all those up / unlocking accounts and then invariably having to go round and look at screens individually to work out what they're doing wrong. God I'm knackered just thinking about it.

I thought up a great system re: sharing and sanitising our laptops, and specific children having specific numbers with the parallel class etc (too complex and boring to list) and then I realised that another Yr gp had borrowed them and their TA had replaced them all on the wrong shelves in the trolley! Took 20 mins of my lesson on Friday sorting that one out and re-sanitising.

PHE being very shady about contacts, year groups etc. Apparently our head wanted t send out a much more reassuring letter but PHE said no, he had to use their standard one.
Anyone seen that guardian HT article? So accurate.

There's a thread about that guardian article but not many posts. www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4034153-AUBU-For-parents-of-school-age-children-in-particular

Our IT bod have said we can use wipes for keyboards....?

As someone above just said, it would be really helpful if a sub group of SAGE or whatever, in combination with some actual teachers, could risk assess everything that happens in schools and then give us a definitive list of what not to do/ how to do it (relatively) safely.

It wouldn't be that hard to include categories for different situations:

Classrooms above/below X square footage per person
SEN schools
most kids come on buses
Teacher marking at home
Etc etc

And to foresee the issues, eg
What if the classroom becomes too cold to teach in?
What if a book was marked two days ago by a teacher who tests positive today?
What if 3 in the year test positive but are not thought to have had direct contact?
Etc etc

And then would need publishing widely and explaining, where appropriate, to parents.

It's not actually that hard, is it?

I was just thinking about the app thing and contact alerts... How many of you have your phone about your person as you're teaching? Mine is either in my drawer or in handbag in cupboard. (They're supposed to be in lockers in staff room but obviously we're also limited to staffroom access at the moment). Those close contacts will only ping if your phone is in your pocket, won't it? (And it's mostly irrelevant to me as I teach under 16s but maybe other staff/TAs perhaps are in close contact but we won't get a notification, will we?)

I'm primary. There's not even the pretence of SD going on. We are marking as we go, green and pink, over the children's shoulders, but they are turning round and talking at us. They don't stay in their seats. They have individual pencil cases of stuff and every morning I go round checking they've all got what they need, and by the end of the day it's total carnage, they've "lost" their pencil or ruler, they've borrowed someone else's highlighter, etc etc. There's no extra cleaning going on except by me when someone sneezes onto a desk.

SLT have become manic about going in and observing three or four times a week. we get bollocked if we haven't marked a book by the end of a session, there's no attempt to acknowledge the reason the children haven't achieved the LO is because most of them haven't written anything at all for 5 months. We are supposed to quarantine reading books but parents are complaining the books aren't being changed daily. Some children are being dropped off at 8.30 if they have siblings with different drop-off times and we have to "teach" them until everyone else arrives at 8:50 but by then they have done 20 minutes work that everyone else hasn't so they play up. They play up under the gazebo when they have eaten their lunch and have to wait to go back in. We've had complaints about it being too cold and children having to go out in the rain. Behaviour is appalling - children have lost the ability to be quiet, they talk over me, they shout out, they can't sit still, they have no independence. You'd have thought that lockdown would have been a good time to teach your 7 year old to tie shoelaces, wouldn't you?!

I'm run ragged from 8 to 3.30 and as a TA I don't even get paid until 8:40 am.
I'm so exhausted already.

@CallmeAngelina - our sen students laptops are all labelled and coded to their use only! It is very frustrating that 1 student has 2 laptops but they won't reassign the spare room another who desperately needs it!

Sticky labels are your friend anyway, dd1's school even labelled the it suite computers so set students only use them each time.

I'm run ragged from 8 to 3.30 and as a TA I don't even get paid until 8:40 am

Blimey-I’d be turning up at 8.40 on the dot!

Freezing www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_staffroom/4020095-Freezing

@minisoksmakehardwork, We have numbered laptops, which correspond to numbered shelves in the trolley. Child no 6 was using laptop 6, when child 6 from next door needed their turn, only to discover that it wasn't laptop 6 at all, but laptop 24, and child 24 had laptop 9 and from there the system collapsed.

Oh yes even sixth form can't be relied on to actually put a laptop back in the charging trolley the right way round...

Yes of course there's the tiers /blended learning stage. As someone on here has alluded to, we might be forgiven for forgetting about it as it was published and has not been referred to since even in Bolton etc!

plasticboxesrock that sounds horrific I agree, you should not be doing 40 minutes of work that you're not paid for.