The Forty Fifth Republic - Can I get a hair appointment before the summer term starts?

[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 non-staff as it attracts the wrong sort of crowd.

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 do wear a mask

Does "not doing any work since year 7" count as worthy of noting?

@Michino

We have a river running alongside our garden. DH goes swimming in it every morning. There's a stretch where he swims against the current, so he actually stays still relative to the bank. If it's raining, he runs down there so as not to get wet! He says it does wonders for his mood, I certainly notice if he's missed a day or so.

Add camping at Michino's to the republic grand tour please! Nice camping though - yurts with rugs and cushions and log burners to dry our cossies next to.

Good work MsAD!

Having a river right by the house would be amazing. We're not far from a swimming spot on the Thames, but only yesterday they were talking about the sewage that has been chucked in it. I know that sewage gets chucked in it - I have seen turds.

I hate swimming, it's so boring.

I swim with resistance fins - makes a huge difference to leg work. Seems to make it less 'boring' - although on the whole, I love swimming.

So, blithely ignoring your swimming chats can I please burst in and announce today's vexation?

We are not giving grades to our students, not even by using the pointless grade boundaries. We are being told what our own special algorithm says after rank ordering. Using prior data.

Is that not exactly what we aren't meant to fi?

We've been told not to give grades to them but we rank and sort. They just don't get told them.

Ooh (completely ignoring all other conversations) I forgot to add to my productive morning list that I finally bit the bullet and started a private pension. Been umming and ahhing about it for ages and reading up so I think it's the right one for me.

At 2 days a week my teachers one is going to be pathetic and buying more years from them is insanely expensive. The fact that the government pays 20% on top of what I contribute just means that even if it had no good return on the investment it's better than any savings account anywhere. I'm feeling quite responsible.

Oh I didn't mean giving in that sense I meant awarding grades.

I thought we were awarding grades too, based on whatever made up thing we'd decided.

We are sharing our basket of evidence and saying that the exam boards may tweak (rogue algorithm application)

We can't tell the kids anything. We have alternating revision and exam weeks this term so 3 exams per subject. Mini exams but are called 'tasks'.

These form the bulk of a raw mark. We also consider past mocks and other evidence. Data manager will collate everything and will rank by final raw marks. This rank is placed against prior gcse rank for similar past cohort and, izzy wizzy let's get busy, we have grades!

What could go wrong?

We don't have baskets. We definitely should.
We do have poly pockets in which we have to put the evidence. That's 220 students each with a poly pocket for each subject. I was moved to point out that if the exam boards wanted to see the evidence, they wouldn't want it in poly pockets - but what do I know?!
We have a load of "grades" which will be "appropriately weighted" to come to the final "grade"

Hopefully the grades from Y10 will be totally discarded, MrsH, unless needed as evidence to argue for a higher grade than that awarded in Y11.

We have poly pockets too.
I can't help but feel a fuck tonne of admin is being done to prepare for the very slim chance of appeals. Surely this summer showed that most kids are happy.

I'm at places letting data managers and prior data grade kids. That is exactly what ofqual said not to do.

We are not using year 10 tests done at home as there is no guarantee that mummy or daddy helped

Sadly the year 10 stuff will count. What really makes me cross about that is that we had time to rerun at least one of those assessments last term because we'd finished the course for the jan mocks... except that people hadn't stuck to what was agreed.
It's not right that they're going to counted on stuff they did less well in than we told them, especially when there was time for another go. And the reason for not letting them? We wouldn't have time to mark it... that's our actual job.

Our teachers are being issued with special boxes and signing out sheets to keep work in and if they need to take it home to mark. Strict warnings about keeping it away from cats/ coffee/ kids....

Has the world gone mad?
I have to go to a meeting next week where SLT will tell me how to apply a mark scheme, before going to another meeting where my hod (who has never marked for the board) will tell me how to mark the paper I lead on. And we need to be told to look after work?!

MrsH I'm feeling your pain. Think I told you about the HOD who advised me to read the examiners report for a paper. I wrote part of the effing report!

I think sometimes SLT aren't very good at recognising experts on their teams. Instead they blunder thinking they know best.

Sorry, I am not making myself clear . I am not talking about what we tell the kids. I am talking about us the teachers. We are not allowed to know the grades. Our data person decides them.

Oh god, Herc
Did they live??
It's not just SLT who don't have a clue. I said that I had the S scripts for the paper we're using... there was much head scratching from Hod and ks4 bod.
Hod: What are they?
Me: the exemplars we use to judge the marks awarded?
Hod: and you have them?
Me: yes
Hod: why?

Currently in a Webinar about assessment...

Piggy So who is signing to say they awarded them? Not HOD?

Appeals left right and centre at your place from a procedural POV the kids would all be able to claim they weren't graded by a teacher.

That's truly insane, Piggy

I guess they aren't to know this.

In common with lots of schools, we can mark and give kids marks but not grades. What they don't know is that it is then not the teacher or HOD who assigns the grades but a guy applying various algorithms. Apparently after this we can whine.

So, theoretically, some poor child could have got low 4 ish type stuff in all his marked stuff but be bumped to a 3 because data. So it's gone back to being all about the rank order. Which is the same as last year. And impossible to get 'right' in a subjective subject with 400 students.

@MrsHamlet

Has the world gone mad? I have to go to a meeting next week where SLT will tell me how to apply a mark scheme, before going to another meeting where my hod (who has never marked for the board) will tell me how to mark the paper I lead on. And we need to be told to look after work?!

I hope you have a special wtf look for the HoD meeting warning them to step away the edge 😂

But that's not fair at all.