The Twenty-fifth Republic - circuit breaker before/during/after half term

[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 and you will receive a detention

It is a lot easier to keep primary in their bubbles if you have the space. It’s pretty tight at our place, but they do not mix at all. Everything timed precisely and they are pretty good at checking the toilets for instance if going out of ‘their’ time. KS1 and SEN accompanied there, because they wouldn’t be able to manage it.
All classrooms bar 2 have their own door to the outside so no mixing in corridors at all.

You can’t alter the timings or volume of children moving about half as much in secondary.

@NeurotrashWarrior

In yr 12 you often get thrown in with people you don't know?

By yr 13 you're all snogging each other.

That made me laugh a lot. But it's definitely true about my year 12 and 13 classes. Year 12 are still very stand offish with me and each other, while year 13 are all friends and chattier/closer to each other. It's weird because theyve all come from our year 11, so should in theory know each other. But the year 12s have come from 4 different maths classes so are still sussing each other out.

Are year 13 more likely to have more contacts outside of school? Part time jobs, etc? And most of ours can drive by year 13 so they have more freedom to go to more places (which may or may not be high risk)

@TheHoneyBadger what would happen if you didn't do them? If for example you'd left them at school or your WiFi was down all night, what would the actual consequences be? You seem to have a much greater workload than your pro rata time could allow for.

Yes I can only think it's because Y12s at this stage of the year are slightly more distanced than Y10/11/13s - with new people at college or, to some extent, sixth form.

If it evens out in a couple of months that'll prove it.

Do we think that this new presentation of the data might be a precursor to a change in the narrative, especially when combined with yesterday's changes in the DfE Guidance?

"Secondary schools are a leetle less safe than primaries....."

"Actually, let's give Y9 and above the opportunity again to show us how maturely they can study from home..."

Wow all this data now

And how long have they been gathering it for, hey??

Maybe phe are reading the data threads 🤣

Ms you have all those little cliques that get broken up at yr 12 and I do remember feeling quite shy of the big yr 13s .... at first!

Y13 definitely more likely to have jobs and - an issue with one of our positives - boyfriends/girlfriends who are freshers at uni.

I bloody hope so, so they will have seen me asking 23 times what has happened to data by occupation!!

Maybe next week then...

Interesting. Should have been a 6 week term, shouldn't it. Those last 2 weeks have fucked it over. Well, fucked it more over.

Schoolsweek is worth a read this week

schoolsweek.co.uk/

It is a long time since I remember so much corruption, ineptitude and scandal.

Just thinking piggy, it's probably not fair to say that PHE have been gathering the data on year groups for months - well it is, but different to how you're meaning.

They've only had to look at the DoBs for everyone who's had a test, given by all when booking/registering. There is no other way of categorising by year group in this country! (OK, very very occasionally there is, not statistically significant.)

The fact that they've chosen to publish it IS interesting though.

DS just laughed when I told him the higher numbers in Yr13.
“Not surprised, none of the Yr12s have spoken to us yet and it’s been 8 weeks”

Mistress it would mean I couldn't do the feedback lesson I'd planned for tomorrow and a big gap would elapse between doing the assessment and them doing their next steps.

Aside from missing the deadline it would mean just kicking the work further down the line and having to mark in half term and feedback would drag over into the first week back.

I am definitely doing more work than is sustainable but I've been determined to be able to get some solid time off in half term after a tough 8 weeks.

Just surviving reaching half term with everything done then I'll have a think about sustainability.

I've always ended up having too much work for my actual contracted role at this school and I feel like I've handed them yet free pass to overload me by saying I wanted to go to ups.

There's no chance currently for additional hours (which would increase my time in school and my wage packet but would make little difference to my workload) but there may be some additional tlr opportunities available soon. If I could get one of those and either get extra contracted time or reduced teaching it would be more balanced if not I really do need a good think.

Don't want to go to another school but can't really keep doing thiis much work for this little salary especially if it doesn't feel valued. We'll see. Questions for a calmer time really.

Meant to add, normally by this point the years would have mixed a lot more, with loads of activities and joint enterprises/mentoring. While they are still counting Yr12 & 13 as one bubble, none of that has happened.

Sounds like you will feel better when the shit stuff is marked Honey. I am part time and feel I work too much but I think you do twice as much as me. Your school sounds pretty crap tbh even without Covid.

Do they given TLRs to part timers, Honeybadger? (not in my school).

18 pubs/jobs
And siblings at uni maybe living at home

As you go up more will have siblings in older groups. If the average age gap is say 2-4y.
Y13 siblings at uni and maybe y9.
The more people in a house able to catch and transmit the higher the risk .
So if it were true u10 half as likely to catch and transmit.
4 personfamily a 10yo and 2 parents and a 7yo. Thats =3 adults.
4 person of which 2 adults and 11yo and 15yo. That's 4. (But also everyone in the year group risk will have gone up too.
So primary lots of 3 families. Secondary lots of 4.

This is also true of after school clubs as ours mixes the whole of ks2 so my 8yo has c lassmates exposed to the older kids.

But also it may just be symptoms fit better for the older kids.
Exam years may be most likely to go in with symptoms as they dont want to miss learning or assessment.
Many 18yo would have older siblings working rather than uni.

I think when ons surveys before school restarted the age groups were more similar as testing not based on symptoms.

Going back to the schools vs unis outbreaks - it reflects outbreaks of 2 more more, so many more smaller outbreaks in schools and fewer but massively larger outbreaks in unis? Is that right? Is it possible to know the number of cases in total in those outbreaks to compare? Sorry I this has been covered....

It's so much better now I've moved departments. I have to hope that part of the time consumption is that it's my first time through all of the schemes of learning and assessments and mark schemes.

Mentoring has added on a lot of time and challenge but it's valuable experience and something I wanted to do however the extra challenges with this trainee means even that is more time and energy consuming than it usually would be.

I don't think the school is shit per se but we do do a lot for our students and have gone through significant sly changes and therefore lots of new approaches and systems to adjust to.

I'm not generally a glass half full person but I'm having to try and be positive and resilient because my mental health can really plummet if I start sliding. Thanks for your supportive comments. It's shit that other part timers find themselves over worked but it's nice to have that understanding from others.

God probably not noble. I'm likely banging my head against a brick wall. Hopefully I can think clearly over half term.

@noblegiraffe

Do they given TLRs to part timers, Honeybadger? (not in my school).

Nor mine! In fact, they don’t give them out at all any more these days (primary) .

Should be slt changes not sly changes. Although maybe autocorrect is wiser than me

Sly changes is a brilliant autocorrect!

I got a thank you from SLT today. First in a long long time. Felt good but weird at the same time!

@MrsHerculePoirot I think the answer is yes to all your questions/points!