The Thirty-seventh Republic - Mass testing rolls on - school staff remain expendable

[SantaAssociationRepresentitve]

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 staffroom password just in case it attracts the wrong sort

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

@lonelyplanet

Primary children won't be able to swab themselves. KS1 especially. It will need a lot of willing staff and I expect lots of parents won't consent.

I’m in a primary in a contingency area. Our LA believe we will have to organise mass testing before we can open again, we already have weekly testing of staff. Not having to swab primary age children is a hill I am willing to die on. I’ve done my own 6 year old twice and that was hard enough! It could only ever work if parents swab.

My 9 year old - bright, completely understands the rationale behind testing and what was going on, but is, admittedly prone to drama - cried, sobbed and retched his way through the test. I had to hold his tongue down with my fingers and basically pin him to the seat to do the throat bit (don’t worry, I know what he’s like and after years of this drama associated with anything vaguely medical I now adopt a full-on Miss Trunchbull attitude on the grounds that while it’s deeply unpleasant for everyone, it is at least quick). But even one diva like that in a year group would hold things up immensely. And I don’t see how I as a parent could help; we read through the stuff, talked about what was going to happen, approached it calmly - all well until the moment I went near his mouth when all hell broke loose.

Fuck me. Just seen the latest figures for my two LAs. 42 cases last week in my small village (500% increase) and 180 in the neighbouring two villages and a 20% positivity rate from testing.

180 cases in the two small towns my schol catchment is mainly taken from.

We are next to a 'contingency zone' (the only one properly outside London afaik although haven't checked) where several of our feeder villages are and buses come in from. Nothing to see here. Oh no.

@GravityFalls, Gawd, that tale reminds me of the time we tried to get dd (at around 7 or 8) to swallow a malaria tablet! She held it in her mouth for 45 minutes.

After all this chat I don't want to do the test!

I've had a text as a parent saying remote learning for all will start on the 5th January. Glad I didn't change all the dates on go and google classroom on the basis of Gav reading a WRITTEN statement. FFS - even when he just has to read out something that's been written for him it's still a shit show. Clearly not trusted off script hence we so little of him and when we do see him he causes mayhem.

I'm going to post below the email I drafted but did not send last night. I've decided not to send it because I'm paranoid that they already think I'm difficult and hate me but sharing it here. I think there needs to be some way of us registering our concern for ourselves and our students as part of our duty of care and professional responsibility but short of just pissing off slt in our own name I'm not sure how.

^Dear Senior Leadership Team,

I appreciate you are very busy but I have to register with you that I do not feel that I or my students will be safe if we comply with this new guidance. My union (NASUWT) does not have a representative at our school to share these concerns with and I have therefore sent them directly to yourselves.

I am really shocked at the decision to no longer isolate known close contacts of a positive case and to rely instead on what are known to be considerably unreliable lateral flow tests conducted by students themselves, therefore potentially further reducing their reliability.

By the time a close contact, who has continued to mix at school with their whole year group for the preceding 48hrs, tests positive it is too late to contain spread. I don’t see how this reconciles with employment rights to safety or the school’s duty of care for students.

I don't know if individual schools, parents or teachers have any say in this but if so I certainly wouldn't be consenting to my son or myself or any of my students or colleagues spending hours in classrooms with known close contacts of positive cases. I feel like I would be failing in my professional duty of care if I didn't express my serious concern for student and staff safety.

I can only imagine what it would be like for me or my students to just be made to try and carry on as normal in a crowded classroom knowing that a member of the class, who attended just the day before, has tested positive for Covid 19. For any student or staff member this would be unsafe and stressful – let alone for students or staff with family members who are particularly vulnerable.

I would appreciate it if you knew and could pass on which unions do have representatives at XXX School and/or who has responsibility for staff safety and if there is a correct way to report our concerns.

Obviously, it goes without saying that you would all want to keep staff and students safe and I’m sure you share some of these concerns and I am aware of the pressures you find yourselves under.

Thanks^

Can we draft a standard letter like this and send it anonymously to every school (and newspaper)?

@lonelyplanet

Primary children won't be able to swab themselves. KS1 especially. It will need a lot of willing staff and I expect lots of parents won't consent.

Our advice has been that this will be rolled out when the lateral flow test is certified for home use. I suspect it will finally get to the point where parents need to produce negative tests to access face to face learning.

With my Y7, the mobile testing unit people banged on the window and told me to give up trying to get his tonsils, having seen me basically sat on him trying to get near his mouth for 20 minutes.

So it amused me to see the confident assertion that the test takes 90 seconds. It’ll take that long just to tell them which end of the swab to use.

It's almost like the government wants this virus to spread...

Honey if your school doesn’t have a union rep you should email your regional rep directly.

@GleamingBaubles

Are any of you on the NEU unofficial FB page?

Can you link to it? Is it worth being on?

Yes, @noblegiraffe, and I saw someone has already posted the link to the twitter comment expressing incredulity that anyone who had seen your average secondary student trying to glue in a worksheet could possibly think they can manage to swab themselves.

Pretty much what we were discussing on a recent thread.

I emailed a regional one about something else a while back and never got a reply. I'm not going to send that to my school because it will be taken wrongly but really if every member of staff and parent was sending them something like that it would empower them to challenge things you'd hope.

Instead we have to act all happy and breezy about it for parents and kids which is maddening and professionally irresponsible at this stage.

Grr. Madness. I'm also being wound up by my bloody parents calling me about petty stuff every day. I didn't answer a call this morning so they have tried another 5 times. I put in a message yesterday that I'm wound up about school stuff and not in the mood for chatting and busy sorting out school work. I refuse to answer the phone to answer whether ds wants to go to theirs on New Years Day or some such which it will be and they could just put it in a bloody message.

Cranky much?

I ended up having 3 tests over 4 days in June, because the first 2 came back Inconclusive. I think I touched my tongue with the swab both times.

With a LFD (lateral flow device) there is no Inconclusive, it just shows as Negative.

Eyes peeled everybody

twitter.com/dannywallace/status/1344382747666739203?s=21

Danny Wallace was being a fricking education champion last night. Love him. My mum used to say that in her mind, he'd be the perfect man for me. Ha.

I've posted again about the scam of the tutoring funding on the dfe thread. I don't think most people understand that the sums of money they're talking about go to private tutoring companies not schools and schools would have to pay £15per session per child from their own pockets which funnily enough we can't afford to do.

Someone smarter than me needs to break down the amount of funding they claim schools have into what is hypothetical money to their mates tutoring business' that is only available if schools can afford pay the above access rates, what they have actually received and what is airy fairy maybe we'll give you some money towards what you've spent on setting up and staffing mass testing. A nice pie chart would be good I'm suggesting a large slice of that chart could be labelled 'fuck knows' or 'total bs'.

I don't comment much on Twitter or go in much but I made 1 small comment on rates on primary pupils and it was pounced on by some twat who accused me of being a a fake account and a troll, and then someone rt him etc. I was both quite upset and furious as he was the troll.

I don't have many followers but I have a few. I'm not very interesting on Twitter (or anywhere!) either. But I was fucking fuming.

I'm going for a massive walk then coming back and cutting ds hair before drinking gin. He's got a couple of weeks before he goes back so he won't get "fresh trim slapped".

I haven't done ANY planning.

I do suspect that Mumsnet is the one place they've had successful pushback on the whole UsForThem messaging and mouthpieces and that's why they are trying to use it for announcements.

On the one hand I've been cross mumsnet have allowed all of the us4them trolls to post crap on the other hand I am beginning to suspect that in the background they may have been under a lot of pressure to not let us keep posting anti propaganda eg. talking about the reality in schools.

If the latter is true then cheers mumsnet.

@phlebasconsidered

I'm going for a massive walk then coming back and cutting ds hair before drinking gin. He's got a couple of weeks before he goes back so he won't get "fresh trim slapped".

I haven't done ANY planning.

Sounds like a plan.

I think it's fine you've done no planning and probably wise.

To be honest this is a part of why I've recorded lessons for all of my classes even though I'm only responsible for doing that for one year group.

I know my colleagues won't do any of it over Christmas and I understand them taking that approach but for me it would be too stressful to still have nothing done for eg year 8 when I need to be setting work for them that day. I wouldn't want to be chasing colleagues saying erm have you done the lesson and straining professional relationships so it's just easier to do it myself at least for the first week back.

It's kind of if you want it doing do it yourself. I'm the one who wants it doing in time so it's me who has to do it.

Our school doesn't have a union rep either. I've tried emailing the local branch and national one quite a few times in the last few months. The local one hasn't responded at all and the national has sent inadequate stock replies not addressing my particular problems. NEU

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-maintaining-educational-provision?utmsource=8ff99bc5-98b6-48fb-a535-932474a17738&utmmmedium=email&utmcampaign=govuk-notifications&utmmcontent=immediate

Wha??

I must have used a banned word.

I shall try and track down the word Twitter accounts and crossmatch to some MN people who attack.