The Twenty-Sixth Republic -Half Term Horror?

[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.

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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

That article about T and T is shocking : ASCL have to publicly intervene!

We sent texts to all of year 9 parents yesterday and followed up with an email. I imagine that's less work than working out who close contacts are! It's ridiculous though.

I wonder what the GDPR implications would be of schools handing over contact details to T&T.

The teacher doesn't do exit tickets so not sure I could go down that route (though i like that idea and so I'll keep that for future)

I used them a lot in my training years, less so now. Definitely give them a go - they give you a good and quick idea of whether you're ready to move on. I've attached an image of one that I used in my training year.

There are loads of things I used to do, which have sadly fallen by the wayside as the years have passed. Covid also makes things much harder. These include:

• mini-whiteboards - I love them but we don't have individual so can't use them at the moment
• Mathsloops (see if your school has a copy of the file. They are great as the answers are there, which reduces the "risk" for less confident students
• Tarsia jigsaws (too much cutting out)
• Exit tickets.... my plenary usually consists of the kids drawing a smiley to reflect their feelings about the subject, a % confidence and an "I need to....." sentence at the bottom of their work at the end of a lesson.

Frustratingly, Complete Maths seem to have removed all of their mathsconf23 talks from Youtube - there was a great one from Craig Barton about the use of diagnostic questions.

PGCE is a year to try out all of the ideas you have, and learn which work and which don't. When I've got a top set, I love organising a relay or a treasure hunt with them outside (I know being a top set, they'll come back!). Lower sets I loved doing a treasure hunt inside the classroom with mini-whiteboards, but I was pulled up on it because of lack of evidence in books. Have also done a carousel-type lesson where groups of pupils moved around the room tackling questions and discussing/solving in groups. Also pulled up on that for lack of evidence!

I think it's already been established that "public health" is specifically mentioned as an exception to the general GDPR regs, hasn't it?

I posted the calculator thingy that the el pais article uses several threads ago. (I remember I couldn't work out how to apply it to a classroom as you had to know its dimensions.)

You have to input what community infection levels are, I wonder what they used for the scenarios they show.

I hate this weather!!!!

Oh my goodness read this thread if you want to see the variety of approaches schools /LAs are using to the 'T&T during half term' issue! Am shocked, obvs this is another thing which should have been planned for and guided by the DfE:

Case at school - radio silence www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4063851-case-at-school-radio-silence

I am shocked by the number if people on there who believe a school staff member should give up holidays to do Track and Traces job. That is appalling.

Why do only schools have contact details? What do T and T do normally?

I also don't understand why school us dealing with holiday cases. Their interest should be school contacts . If kids are in holiday that's not a heads job to sort out as the contact won't have been at school?

They have the seating plans, piggy so they’d be involved anyway.

Example: test Saturday, positive result Tuesday, seating plan needed for previous Thursday and Friday.

T&T normally just ask for your friends' contact details (I think??), you wouldn't have these for "that twat Miss has made me sit next to in Geography" or indeed (in the case of a teacher) for "lovely Emily on the front row" without accessing the school's systems - and checking GDPR etc.....

Geoff Barton's been quiet recently hasn't he?

But they won't have the seating plans at home with them??

Name, hang in there, pgce is rough but short lived. Not sure if it's useful for primary I used to love the teachers toolkit book which had loads of different activities in.

Unfortunately for some reason I've now turned into a boring arse chalk and talk teacher.

My head certainly doesn't have my seating plans!

Our seating plans are online, SLT can access them at any time.

Yes, but that is definitely not true of every school...

Plus, someone needs to double check if the kids were in etc and who the kid sat with at lunch/ break/ clubs etc.

I honestly can't see why anyone would think this was a reasonable request of teachers (it won't juts be the head) during a holiday.

I know for certain no one can contact our school during holiday time, or my DS's. (or even out of school hours!)

We've all submitted our seating plans to central admin, who have (I presume) collated them for SLT. Someone central has them all on their laptop at home, with access to Sims from home to get contact details. I rather suspect that "someone" is the heads secretary rather than the head or either of the deputies.

Our contact was the general email. I don’t know if Admin or SLT were checking it on a rota, or just SLT. They did ask parents to let them know via that email of any cases occurring at any time in half term.

DS’s secondary did not mention contacting them at all. With an INSET day on the Friday perhaps they thought the buffer of that and the weekend was sufficient? I’m not sure how, though.

No one at our school has been that sensible. Mainly because I assume they did not think OOH stuff would be down to them...

Yes, all seating plans are up (and constantly updated) on our intranet accessible from home to all, precisely for tracking reasons. For social times, the student will be asked who they've been near. This would definitely be managed quite straightforwardly in my school, even in holidays.

One thing I'm not sure of is whether parents will bother letting school know if they test positive just into a holiday, thus losing the chance to trace contacts.

@Piggywaspushed

Yep. I get the disadvantaged thing with languages and that skiing question is beyond ridiculous. However, I always tell my students it’s a test of language and not the truth and that I won’t be phoning home to check. I just say be sensible and logical eg, no skiing holidays in Jamaica. I do also discuss questions and potential content with the exam years and keep reminding them that truth isn’t required.

I am thinking about the skiing one - spending time with family, travelling, meeting people, could all be positives? Negatives the weather, cold, expensive? Could do 90,words, I think but 150 would be pushing it!

It's not just half terms though is it, weekend contact tracing will definitely fall to schools.

From what I understand, the seating plans are used to identify class contacts and then the student themselves identifies who they hang out with at break and lunch. The school then contacts the affected families.

Exactly. I think it seems more obvious to contact school about weekend positive cases, though (I know parents are/have done at our school). Somehow, half term or longer breaks feel more likely for parents not to bother - or do T&T contact school directly and instantly too?