The Forty Ninth Republic - Announcement Week - Roadmap and Exams - Be more Bob

[StaffRepFeistyClub]

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.

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.

Assessment stuff leaked to the Times as per

twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1364702555184517127?s=21

Looks like we can award whatever we like and so long it’s not too batshit re previous Progress 8 they’ll just let it go.

Which is a bit

Every single problem with schools boil down to lack of funding and years of underfunding.

Intervention is crap really. Taking kids out of lessons (unless targeted and with a trained person) doesn't help.

Huge societal problems with engagement and behaviour in education are down to lack of funding. Huge bottom sets are due to lack of funding. Massive CAHMS wait lists due to lack of funding. Q

@chocolateisavegetable

The NEU has a meeting tomorrow.

Any aliens happening to be sizing the Earth up as a potential new home/food source/whatever - especially as in the movies they often aim for the USA first - are now hightailing it away from here broadcasting 'Unclean...unclean,' on all frequencies and painting a large red cross on the dark side of the moon so we can't see it but any other interested life forms are warned.

@noblegiraffe

Assessment stuff leaked to the Times as per

twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1364702555184517127?s=21

Looks like we can award whatever we like and so long it’s not too batshit re previous Progress 8 they’ll just let it go.

Which is a bit

Well that's all my class getting 5s then (except Bob, because quite frankly he hasn't ever shown me evidence of being higher than a 3). And my nurture group will all get at least a grade 1!!!! I actually think that's what they would be most likely to get in the actual exams anyway, but it feels very odd to let us decide them without needing some sort of evidence/proof.

The assessment stuff is a mess, they have just passed the buck to teachers to sort out.

Impossible job.

Did anyone just see the piece on newsnight about the catch up Sir Michael is a total arse suggesting teachers have not been working hard enough and we should have a longer working day. Mary Bousted nearly exploded and defended the hours we have put in well.

Wiltshaw is a dick, his bit in the times about going back in to the classroom after 15 years is full of shit.

Also his numbers don't add up, 74 yrs old, stopped teaching 15 yrs ago was a teacher for 43 yrs.

Makes him a classroom teacher at 16.

Also it would be interesting to see how he would deal with Bob.

@Hummmmming

Did anyone just see the piece on newsnight about the catch up Sir Michael is a total arse suggesting teachers have not been working hard enough and we should have a longer working day. Mary Bousted nearly exploded and defended the hours we have put in well.

I tend to avoid news programmes at the minute They aren't good for my stress levels. If they want me to work longer days I'll resign. I probably wouldn't actually, but I'll do far less marking and my planning will result in shitter lessons, because like fuck am I actually doing more work. So more contact time means less marking/planning. Hey ho, textbooks for all!!!

Hope piggy's OK - migraine- and interview-wise....

👋 if you're lurking, p.

Thinking of you, Piggy - hope today (yesterday now!) went well and that your migraine has lifted.

I'm quite annoyed at the lack of concrete action/ guidance from the unions- it feels very slow when we're expected back in work next Monday

Morning everyone. Been mad busy over the last few days (take that Wilshaw and shove it) but I finally have time to say hi....because the two year old woke us up before 5am to have a wee, and then to climb all over us in bed saying ‘What you doing Mummy/Daddy? Is it morning yet? Can I do bouncing?’.

Good luck to anyone trying to get me to do longer days, I’ll put my bossiest eight year old in charge and have a nap instead.

I slept til 6am! DS I had never been a good sleeper. For two years after mat leave I survived on 2-3 hours sleep a night. He’s 6 now and sleeps through but wakes between 4.30-5. I work with a start about 25 minutes ago, he’s still asleep 😳

At my old school pupils who were deemed to need extra help were only allowed to choose 2 options and their other option blocks were given over to extra maths and English lessons. Poor buggers. I used to teach ‘catch up’ English in one of the double option blocks. I hated it. They hated it. They loved the other English block though as a Business Studies teacher taught that and she would let them go on the computers for 2 hours for ‘independent revision’. Waste. Of. Time.

Staff meeting before school to find out The Big Return To School plan. Please test FrOM the 8th, selfishly I want to be home a little longer.

Wilshaw is a dick, his bit in the times about going back in to the classroom after 15 years is full of shit.

Yeah full of it. I did my PGCE placement at one of his schools when he was the Head and he never saw the inside of a classroom when I was there. He was always out and about on ‘conference this and meetings that.’
This was 2003. He retired very soon after (and oversaw a terrible time at Ofsted in my opinion by employing so many non teachers as inspectors who had never set foot in classrooms themselves)

I don't want to make up their grades. It's not right. Not Bob (target 9) has done nothing for months. I'm going to be pressured to give him 9 and I just don't have the evidence.

I don’t want to make up their grades either. A lot of schools local to me have signs on their schools declaring ‘Best GCSE results ever!’. Yeah, cos we all predicted the grade we thought they would achieve on a ‘good day’. I can imagine conversations will be the same this year. ‘So is Bob started working really hard from now, used his study leave effectively, got a tutor and a lobotomy it would be possible for him to achieve a 9 wouldn’t it? Let’s put it down’.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-56157413

Definitely CAGS again.

Daily star has Gav dressed as Betty today...

Exactly mother
I have an A level Language student with a grade 8 in Language. She's struggling. We talked about it and I said "well you got an 8 so you're obviously really capable"
Turns out she'd never expected an 8 and wasn't achieving much above a 6 all through the course. Her school had its best results ever.
Interestingly, the schools with sixth forms locally only saw a moderate rise in the GCSE grades, whereas as the ones without saw them go up more.
I was moved to wonder about a couple of kids we didn't really want in the sixth form why the hell we'd given the grade 6.

Can year 11 leave now then please? I'll keep y13 because they're lovely.

Yes that’s the issue, the movement from GCSE to A-level. We accept students from other schools to our 6th form and they struggle anyway with Literature as we do OCR and they’re used to sitting other exam boards where the questions are more structured. Last year I had a I-GCSE student on my course and she had never taken an exam! I haven’t got Yr 12 this year but my colleagues are reporting that ‘outside’ pupils are struggling as they came in with high grades but they’re not the same ability of our pupils who have started on (and had their grades given honestly by us).

@MrsHamlet

Can year 11 leave now then please? I'll keep y13 because they're lovely.

We’ve got Yr 11 in until the summer 😭

You do OCR mother ... do we work together????

Interestingly, the schools with sixth forms locally only saw a moderate rise in the GCSE grades, whereas as the ones without saw them go up more.
We have noticed that too.
In my subject, we have noticed a big gap between our students who had at least had lots of exam technique lessons with regular tests throughout their GCSE and so are at least more prepared for A Level tests vs those who came from other schools who are all over the place when it comes to writing down answers and think writing down one word is adequate for 4 marks, for example.

I did a lot of extra ‘exam technique’ lessons last term as a result.