The Fifty-first republic - twice weekly tests and wear masks at all time till Easter

[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 to others 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. Do not sit on the chairs and wear a mask.

We have a staff room, department bases and a sixth form common room. We'd never call the staff room the common room, so saying that suggests they haven't actually spoken to any teachers.

Anyway, all of our staff cases have been detected this term when the staff room has been closed- so how does that work?

(Actually, at least 2 members of staff most probably caught it from their primary aged kids, but that's not the point).

I think people need to acknowledge it's unrealistic to expect a staff of 150 adults to never interact closely. So if it's adult-adult transmission that makes schools unsafe (it's not, but take the argument at face value) schools are still unsafe.

It's a lack of knowledge about how schools work- we can't always stay in our classrooms, because someone else is teaching in there. Some staff don't have a classroom to eat lunch in. Trainees need somewhere to work, etc etc.

"They just want schools open with no covid mitigations at all."

I wonder what an acceptable death toll would have been to them, had schools remained open in the way they were advocating.

Any death toll, Ange because it would have only been the elderly (nearly dead anyway) those with underlying conditions (nearly dead anyway) or the obese (no loss).

I think, it’s anything goes in terms of the death toll. As long as it isn’t children. The fact that a lot of those people will be close relatives of children sand that children might be affected by their deaths seems to have passed them by.

Watching them try to get their head round not liking testing but testing leading to ‘healthy’ kids not having to self isolate is going to be nearly as funny as watching them find out schools are reopening but with masks and testing.

It’s almost as if all their policies are knee jerk and badly thought through rather than well thought through ideas about what would be most beneficial to children’s education in the medium-long term.

We'd never call the staff room the common room, so saying that suggests they haven't actually spoken to any teachers.

It also suggests that's what they call them in Semple's ivory tower and what they called them when he was at his public school in the 80s...

Nice to see teens on twitter on the no masks hashtag telling U4T to stop speaking for them and that they’re fine with masks.

U4T really are very primary-centric.

Love that, Noble.

Not a single staff member had Covid in my school in the Autumn term (several caught it during KW provision in the first lockdown). Doesn't mean we had superior systems to anywhere else. Sheer luck. Dozens of kids had it and passed it around and back home.

Yep. The top tweets on the nomasks hashtag is quite revealing.

Unsurprisingly SnowflakeinChief Lozza Fox is supporting them. I expect the usual Tory rabble will be making an appearance on the U4T timeline over the rest of the day.

There is an U4T organised letter calling for evidence on masks not being harmful.

Tim Henman has signed it!

That well known health and education expert??

Oh and Anthea Turner.

Oh well if Tim and Andrea say so...

Need to catch up on thread but I had a google re 5 term thing; yes i think it's long terms. But I think some have the odd bank holiday and possibly easter weekend too.

This is from 10 years ago; I don't know if anywhere actually trialled it.

www.independent.co.uk/news/fiveterm-year-for-schools-1045402.html

Under the Newham scheme, the six-week summer holiday would be cut to four. Children would also have four two-week holidays in October, December, March and May.

I have to say I've often felt like I'd like a change in how the school hols are spread out. I've usually burnt out by Xmas and would prefer 2 weeks in the autumn.

Also, how do they square that circle with places that have more holidays? My friend's children's primary school was a normal state school that merged with a failing private school under some sort of academy set up (?) but has a two week autumn holiday and at least 7 (but I think 8??) in summer!

I'd prefer 3 weeks at Xmas to accommodate the annual immune system slump

I have a vague memory of a lot of research that was done into this, and some unique pattern of the school year that supported children's memory? I heard it on r4 once. Can't remember if it's the 5 term idea though.

So basically they are going to use tbe pandemic to bring in something they wanted 10 years ago.

Can someone send me some oomph please? Still at home, still in a little pain. Have work to do (essay, folder, job application) but little motivation. I've done the easy bits and now left with the tricky talking about myself stuff. Needs doing this weekend.

[quote WarriorN]Need to catch up on thread but I had a google re 5 term thing; yes i think it's long terms. But I think some have the odd bank holiday and possibly easter weekend too.

This is from 10 years ago; I don't know if anywhere actually trialled it.

www.independent.co.uk/news/fiveterm-year-for-schools-1045402.html[/quote]
A handful of schools near here did it, but not all. They reverted to ‘normal’ terms recently because they struggled to keep staff. Once teachers had children who went to schools with normal terms, they ended up with totally different holidays which was unmanageable so they left.

I would do this-if no holidays were lost, IF it was found to massively impact children’s learning, which would mean private and public schools also wanted to benefit from this amazing impact on pupils, and moved to 4 weeks in the summer, too.

I think the impact it would have on tourism and parents jostling to get time off work would be immense though.

Could 5 week terms work?

Would give us 4 terms lasting 8 weeks and 1 term of 7 weeks. Would mean longer holidays - so would kids be more rested after the holidays?

Most kids are utterly knackered by a 7 week term. 8 weeks could be really tiring for them.

IF it was found to massively impact children’s learning, which would mean private and public schools also wanted to benefit from this amazing impact on pupils, and moved to 4 weeks in the summer, too

It will mainly benefit kids from a deprived background. Which is why I don’t think it will happen.
I know Johnson keeps waffling about his levelling up agenda but the Tories don’t actually care about deprived kids.

I'm not surprised it fizzled out Appu.

Here's gove wanting less holiday... Gove urges longer days and shorter holidays for pupils www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22202694

And yet private schools get more.

So yes I'd insist that this was National and be copied by private schools. The jan to March term would be a bit meh though...

I have a shitty situation that my Easter holiday doesn't match my son's this term. So I can see that being an issue as I bet some areas stagger it.

Four week summer holidays will massively drive up the cost of all holidays - less time in the summer to go away, more people wanting to go at half term/Easter. And more unauthorised holiday absences

@WhenSheWasBad

Could 5 week terms work?

Would give us 4 terms lasting 8 weeks and 1 term of 7 weeks. Would mean longer holidays - so would kids be more rested after the holidays?

Most kids are utterly knackered by a 7 week term. 8 weeks could be really tiring for them.

I don't know; I was shocked to learn how the terms work in the US. No half terms at all but about 10? 12? Weeks off in the summer, hence summer camps. So autumn term lasts from sept to December, though I think they have a few long weekends. Eg thanksgiving (?)

But the US has less holiday generally for everyone.

I know in Germany they have shorter days, not sure how holiday works.

@CarrieBlue

Four week summer holidays will massively drive up the cost of all holidays - less time in the summer to go away, more people wanting to go at half term/Easter. And more unauthorised holiday absences

True.