The Twenty Fourth Republic - conditions not great and are teachers becoming modern day lepers?

[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 yo

@Enoughnowstop

My colleague’s partner has tested positive and he has symptoms. Awaiting test results. I spent some time with him earlier in the week, always with a mask and probably at 2 metres distance. We also had a socially distanced departmental meeting with windows open but no masks. I assume that if he tests positive I might be expected to isolate or is the mask and distance enough to keep me in school? Am worried 😧

Is he a school colleague too? Did you both wear masks?

Yes and yes

Judging by the teacher at a neighbouring school, if your meeting was socially distanced then you won’t need to isolate. 2m is enough.

If you spent more than 15 mins at 1-2m you're a "close contact"

• or any time at less than 1m.

If it was me I'd probably get a test if I could but school will probably say you had mitigations in place. Hope you and your colleagues are ok. Hopefully the mitigations will mean everything if fine, I guess it's just wait and see. So sorry you are in this position. Why are we being endangered like this and what are the unions doing? They've gone silent in the biggest crisis ever.

Thanks August. I've signed up.

Determined not to look at news tonight. I need a decent sleep. Will face it tomorrow along with another 2 sets of qmas. I think the qmas plan was to reduce marking but I'm not finding that to be the case.

I also think I'm going to cause some ire because I'm marking honestly and it sounds like they like to fudge the marking for year 8 so as to recruit candidates to take history gcse. Year 8 flight paths are totally unrealistic let alone when they've missed over a term of year 7. I see it as inevitable a lot won't achieve their flight path in the first assessment but then I can see what needs emphasising and build them up.

It seems like year 8 are the most impacted from lockdown. They're very needy and struggling to structure answers to achieve their flight path even with masses of input. I have occasional ones working above flight path who are presumably the ones who did the set work in lockdown and thrived working in peace.

How accurate are STAR reports? Is it the child's exact age use or year group?

Pretty accurate @Keepdistance.

You can read more here is you really want to wade through marketing:

www.renlearn.co.uk/star-reading/

Joe Wicks MBE 😍
Also Marcus Rashford for child poverty, well deserved.

Honeybadger you seem to work a lot of extra hours for someone who is part time. It's the weekend! If you can't fit it in during the week then it's too much and can surely wait till next week. I feel the need to be firm on your behalf - I could write a note for your line manager?

Head up, the surveillance report has changed and stopped publishing graphs showing schools data bar this:

Can now be found here.

www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-flu-and-covid-19-surveillance-reports

Off to check the other pages.

There's slides but I think the data is from last week?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/925099/WeeklyyCOVID-19anddInfluenzaSurveillanceeGraphsW41.pdf

@Mistressiggi

Honeybadger you seem to work a lot of extra hours for someone who is part time. It's the weekend! If you can't fit it in during the week then it's too much and can surely wait till next week. I feel the need to be firm on your behalf - I could write a note for your line manager?

I meant to do one set after school but got caught by the trainee instead who needed to talk again about the ten minute starter task she's doing in my lesson next Wednesday. When I agreed she could use my group I didn't realise just how time consuming that might be. I'm hoping once she gets in front of a class for ten minutes she'll calm down and be a bit less needy or go to the professional tutor with things rather than me.

I'm doing a lot at the minute because of QMAs falling back to back and it all having to be marked with SWANs and recorded as a flight path on Go marksheets. I'm hoping it's just a pressure point in the first half term and next term I should only have 1qma per year group and interim tick and flicks in between.

Looking on GO it looks like lots of my colleagues are behind on all this but I would rather keep up than get mega stressed later on. I'd rather like to be able to chill at half term.

It's in the slides, tin hat moment over!

Secondary cases are increasing...

Where neuro? I can see week 40 ? We are week 41. Outbreaks should be 325. That shows 280.

Someone mentioned earlier about PHE saying many schools had 10 or more cases. We hit 10 yesterday :( I've no idea how many children are isolating anymore, we keep getting sent lists of who is out but I've lost track, I'd guess over 200 currently.

It was me.

That's when it gets ridiculous isn't it? Surely jus close the place down for a couple of weeks to rebalance...

The lack of detail form PHE reports now on school outbreaks concerns me : either they have lost detailed track of the matter or it is political interference.

I certainly think the 'setting visited' has been tinkered with to make leisure settings climb p the charts above education to have evidence to shut down pubs, restaurants, gyms, etc.

I think they've changed the 'week'?

These are the two, one from the last normal surveillance report and the other from the slides associated with the new report.

The second is only up to 4th October.

So maybe they have stopped?

I am very confused.

I'm also more knowledgeable about varying playdough recipes and the benefits of powder paint than graphs...!

Do the DfE just keep their fingers permanently in their ears??

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/10/plan-b-for-rigorous-mock-exams-to-avoid-rerun-of-a-level-fiasco

This YET AGAIN overlooks the fact that some subjects have coursework.

Those exam boards better start producing more 'specimen papers' for us to use, too. My subject has one set of past papers.

So so so many flaws in this.

Either way, school outbreaks still vastly outnumber universities!

Yes, but there are far far more schools than unis and the number of cases in unis is higher. This is obviously largely down to mass testing. They will never mass test a secondary school.

Pointless putting unis on there then isn't it.