The Thirty-Sixth Republic - New Year approaching, no clear idea of what is happening next week and has Gav been sacked yet?

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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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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 booze is stashed - Thirsty Tuesdays, Fizz Fridays now in operation.

If you come with a stick to goad us then that is not allowed in the staffroom and you will receive a detention

It’s clearly their ‘fuck, mass testing isn’t going to happen’ plan B.

Not sure whether heads will tolerate staff isolating over testing.

Grun just reporting that primary schools as normal, and that it will announced tomorrow that school staff will be moved up the list for vaccination, but still below NHS staff and vulnerable groups.

If that is instead of mass testing I don't know where that would leave me (or if I'm identified as a close contact). The NHS website says not to be asymptomatically tested for 90 days after a positive test as you can still test positive whilst not being infectious. I guess I'd have to isolate, I wouldn't want to risk testing positive when not infectious and so preventing my DH from going to work.

The HT webinar said that the mass testing at the start of term wasn’t compulsory and pupils have to come to school whether they’ve had one or not.

Not that it particularly matters because the tests are shit.

He’s described as “Oasis academy chief” not an academic

He’s a TV vicar isn’t he? He was always on GMTV back in the day, very evangelical happy-clappy

130 posts in a couple of hours. Education policy going well then...

Yeah he was a leading evangelical, then had a complete change.

Am resisting idea of telling my DD that her mocks may not happen next week, she's doing little enough work as it is, as far as I can see: having books open in front of you whilst on yr phone does NOT = revision. Sigh.

This is a fantastic thread:

twitter.com/karamballes/status/1343846455795200000

So, if school staff are moved up behind the vulnerable does DH end up in a queue behind himself??

I am close to tears with this all today.

They're going to plough ahead with opening (primary) schools regardless, aren't they? They will ignore all the warnings and the data, and just send us over the top to do battle with no ammunition.

Can anyone tell me why no one is addressing the very bottom line here. Is Covid dangerous and spread amongst humans when they mix at close quarters? The answer is an overwhelming 'yes.' So, if it's so dangerous I can't mix with anyone on NYE, it must also therefore be too dangerous for me to mix with dozens and dozens of people in school next week. Yes?
So what the FUCK are they fannying around debating?

I could scream.

@CallmeAngelGabriel

I am close to tears with this all today.

They're going to plough ahead with opening (primary) schools regardless, aren't they? They will ignore all the warnings and the data, and just send us over the top to do battle with no ammunition.

Can anyone tell me why no one is addressing the very bottom line here. Is Covid dangerous and spread amongst humans when they mix at close quarters? The answer is an overwhelming 'yes.' So, if it's so dangerous I can't mix with anyone on NYE, it must also therefore be too dangerous for me to mix with dozens and dozens of people in school next week. Yes?
So what the FUCK are they fannying around debating?

I could scream.

I wonder how much sway Us4Them have had over all this?

I am fucking livid today-stress levels are through the roof.

Because, Ange there are a bunch of Tory mentals who don’t agree with your assessment that covid is dangerous.

They think kids get it mildly, so there’s literally no problem with it circulating in schools.

They’ll be the ones posting on here that most people that die are over 80 so who cares.

Laura wetsuit from teacher tapp just did a good tweet on this. There is only one problem that is unsolvable- the other problems have solutions that might be unpalatable, but they are solvable. The only true problem atm is the NHS being overwhelmed.

I wrote 'wotsit' above, but the autocorrect wetsuit amused me.

So why are the "Tory mentals" going along with tanking our whole economy, seeing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, for something that's not dangerous.

What I want to know is, what is the plan for secondary schools once they have identified the close contacts.

Are they each hauled out of class in turn and told they are a close contact? And their parents then rung? Do they THEN have to decide if they give consent for the daily tests?

What if the parent wants them in school to be tested, but the child says they don’t want to do the daily test? Will those who were overruled by their parents be sent straight back to class in floods of tears with nobody wanting to go near them to comfort them?

What about the children the next morning who are told they’re now LF ‘positive’? Once they’re all herded into the room of requirement to wait for them mum to come and collect them...who will be offering them kind words of reassurance? Kevin’s mum, the exam invigilator or the chair of governors? Will the army webinar be covering this?! Will there be a few slides on ‘how to break bad news and what comes next’??

It’s like shouting into the void, CallMe, isn’t it? Family and friends agree that the two concepts aren’t compatible, we’ve even made wry jokes about it at school . But no one with any authority is prepared to stand up and draw that line. There is no other profession or workplace where working conditions haven’t changed for employees. Not a one. It’s like the start of all this when frontline staff were dying because of lack of PPE. A scandal, the majority of people agree. So where are the people standing up for us? That selfish, selfish 8% of working parents who won’t admit the childcare element of schools is the sole reason we are stuck in Covid Soup for 6 hours a day, because it doesn’t suit them. The politicians who cling onto their bleat of Schools are open! because to close them would be to admit they’ve lost any grip on the situation.
I despise anyone who thinks I should go back next week to close contact with 2 adults and 30 children. I even despise myself a bit for putting up with it because I chose to do this job.

@Saucery

It’s like shouting into the void, CallMe, isn’t it? Family and friends agree that the two concepts aren’t compatible, we’ve even made wry jokes about it at school . But no one with any authority is prepared to stand up and draw that line. There is no other profession or workplace where working conditions haven’t changed for employees. Not a one. It’s like the start of all this when frontline staff were dying because of lack of PPE. A scandal, the majority of people agree. So where are the people standing up for us? That selfish, selfish 8% of working parents who won’t admit the childcare element of schools is the sole reason we are stuck in Covid Soup for 6 hours a day, because it doesn’t suit them. The politicians who cling onto their bleat of Schools are open! because to close them would be to admit they’ve lost any grip on the situation. I despise anyone who thinks I should go back next week to close contact with 2 adults and 30 children. I even despise myself a bit for putting up with it because I chose to do this job.

It’s even worse than that, because the media are peddling the myth that we are still whinging when we are all teaching socially distanced classes of 6 children all wearing masks. It’s very deliberate.

Epidemiologist at Queen Mary's London, there's a whole MN thread on her thread:

And school transmission is key. Models largely look at opening & closing schools, as if these are the only options that are available. Let's act to curb transmission in schools now, by making them as safe as possible. This is the only way forward. Anything less is negligence.

Basically we've created this mutation and exported it to the rest of the world:
mobile.twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1343910101472714759

Agree with the shouting into a void. My parents today "oh they're bringing the army in to test the kids". Me "have you actually read the article, HTs get a phonecall or webinar". Them "oh no the army are actually coming to do the tests". Me "NO THEY AREN'T!!". How many other people will assume the army are doing the testing?

We're being lined up for a fall again with the "teachers couldn't even get the kids tested with the army there" rhetoric.

@CallmeAngelGabriel

So why are the "Tory mentals" going along with tanking our whole economy, seeing hundreds of thousands of people out of work, for something that's not dangerous.

They’re not. They were against the circuit breaker, they held out on a second lockdown till SAGE basically shouted at Boris till he did one. They kept schools open in the lockdown. They ensured no masks in schools. No rotas.

Boris swings between the two.

I've got a photo of my class that I should put emojis on to anonymise, then put all over the media. Of course I won't, but you know.

53000 cases today.

Maybe we all should, Rule. None of mine are even a metre away from each other, or me.

Look at any U4T twitter feed and they literally have about 86 followers. it is ASTONISHING how much people like Halfon and Gav listen to them.

@CallmeAngelGabriel I know. I keep going from feeling terrified to angry. You just can't keep away from young children.
I'm more annoyed as I know SLT will keep insisting they make 13 steps progress or whatever insane amount is needed for them to catch up. Never mind that our bubbles will shut, or that new children will arrive with no English, or that the children are sitting in rows and helping the children that need it is a struggle. No no, they MUST ALL catch up.
I just can't be bothered.