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.

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

Wow riga.

And the American CDC has nuanced their advice on what is close contact :

elemental.medium.com/amp/p/69071e5750d2?source=social.tw

Including this:
Kimberly Prather, PhD, director of the Center for Aerosol Impacts on Chemistry of the Environment in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, had this to sayay_ about the new CDC definition:^

“Given the growing evidencece_ on the importance of aerosol transmission, close contact (and tracing) should be expanded to include anyone in the same room breathing/sharing the air… not just within six feet.”^

Such thinking should apply to bars and restaurantsts_, gyms, offices, and schools — any indoor space where people share air for extended periods — scientists have been saying.^

(Why does MN's platform occasionally underline random parts of a quoted passage?!?)

It also says the 15 mins doesn't have to be continuous, but can be cumulative, eg 5 mins + 5 mins + 5 mins, which is exactly how the NHS app calculates exposure time actually.

Greetings, happy half termers

Laptop story picked up in the Guardian.

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/oct/24/englands-schools-to-receive-fewer-laptops-for-distance-learning

I've discovered that there are lists of all the schools closed (partly or otherwise) for covid reasons on the County Council websites. So, a MASSIVE list for both the County I live in, and the city I work in. I knew about two of them. Out of about 50. Interesting worrying - our county council wants to put us into Tier 2, but MPs are blocking it.

Oh I must look at my county's then. If it's on most/all of them I'm surprised BRTUS aren't using it or at least publicising it.

Can't see it @ohthegoats , was it easily findable on yours?

This is interesting - it has a slider across the top and you can see how it has changed over time...

coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map

So bored of being told I'm campaigning to have schools closed. New thread that I can link to whenever the lying liars are out in force.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4059472-Ways-to-make-schools-safer-without-closing-them

I shall buy you a placard noble

What really annoys me is when you start a thread, the usual suspects all pile on and say I knew who this thread was by before I looked but I think exactly the same about all the 'everything's wonderful and there are no problems' threads!!

I always wonder, has MN ever published figure for how many lurk on threads, etc? How many posters actually post regularly per week/day/month?

Probably a good thing they don't at the moment otherwise I'd be shamed.

@Augustbreeze - yep, just googled 'County name school closures', same as I would for snow days. List was there.

Thanks. Nothing on council website but local press quite interesting!

Including this, is this the criteria PHE are using for all school cases?? Have underlined the para that surprised me:

Around 15 pupils were self-isolating after a Year 9 pupil tested positive for coronavirus at School

Headteacher ** confirmed there had been no positive cases at the school since this one incident and pupils returned from isolating on Tuesday, September 22.

He said: "We had one Year 9 student who was kept off school when he became ill by his parents, he'd only been in for one day.
"They took him for a test, he'd been ill on the Monday.^

^
"By the Thursday morning (September 10) the tests came back positive and parents immediately let the school know.

"Then I got in touch with the local health protection team and worked with them on what we were going to do about it.

"Because we have already implemented compulsory use of face coverings in the school in any communal area and because we've got year groups working in bubbles, because he'd only be in one day and he had no symptoms in school we just needed to identify who he'd been within one metre of.

"We have seating plans set up for all of our lessons so we could identify that quite rapidly.
"So probably within an hour we had identified the students, phoned parents and sent them home."

Whereas, PHE told our school that mask wearing was irrelevant.

Exactly piggy, t&t treats mask wearing as irrelevant. Am wondering if this Head has gone a bit rogue here, which is worrying if PH didn't stop him!!! OTOH it might explain why in many cases only a few children are being told to isolate....

And whether the child was in school with symptoms or not is certainly irrelevant. I'm thinking the Head has misunderstood why PH have taken certain decisions?

I vaguely know someone who teaches at that school and I think it has a good reputation, so am thinking not a dreadful head or anything. But who knows.

My county doesn't have a list sadly you can only search for a specific school to see if it has closures rather than access data on schools as a whole.

When we had our year 11 case last week we were told initially only a small number needed to isolate and then 5 others tested positive across the year group within less than 48hrs and then the whole year group closed.

Copied from a Ventilation thread,

I teach in Germany and we have a message appear on the computer every 20 minutes, reminding us to open all of the windows for 5 minutes. Then they get closed again and the message pops up again 20 minutes later. Our heating is turned up to the hilt and I'm quite lucky that my classroom gets full sun in the mornings and is protected from wind. It's actually been fine. It might get cold for 5 minutes but then heats up again really quickly. It's generally quite hot in the room after a short while, so I'm glad to be able to open the windows again.

The kids haven't complained, yet, and several sit around in t-shirts. I teach 6-year-olds. The parents have been reminded to send them in appropriate clothing and they are also allowed to bring a blanket. We haven't needed those, yet.

(Don't know why it's so small, sorry, may not appear that way when I hit Post!)

That doesn't fit with what has happened in my school, August. We were told what was defined as a close contact and it was within 2m for 15 minutes or more, or within 1m for a minute, or for any time within 1m if face to face.

That's weird.

Yup @noblegiraffe

I'm keeping windows open. Have had kids tell me we're allowed to close them and said no actually I'm allowed to close them.

I'm really, really cross with staff who are allowing windows to be closed. Not only are they breaking the risk assessments and undermining the staff who are following them, they're also enabling the culture of the kids complaining about the cold. If all the rooms were equally chilly, the kids might actually start wearing vests and jumpers or base layers under PE kit.

(We had a big delivery of base layers/top layer PE kit delivered this week for pupil premium students, so we're not ignoring their needs, btw.)

Well all staff are going to have to comply after the changes to the Ventilation section in the updated guidance this week, @Danglingmod

I know. Some just won't be told, though, and we can't expect SLT to go around every classroom every ten minutes telling ppl off (they do actually teach in my school )

I'm cross with window closers too. One pupil complained bitterly that they were cold and refused to work as I had opened the upper window near their seat - impossible to avoid students sitting near windows and this was the highest window so less breezy for all students.

Except he was just wearing a pe t shirt and shorts despite uniform rules being that they should still wear their blazer over their pe kit, which does include a sweatshirt and joggers. Asked if he could put his coat on - which the teacher declined at that point (!) and then when teacher said they could wear their cost, refused to wear it because it was torn! So we were never going to win. The window stayed open though! I'm sick of kids complaining when there is adequate uniform on the approved list of they choose to wear it, and because if they really are that cold, they could layer up with t shirts under their shirts and blouses as well as jumpers. But I guess that's not 'cool' these days.