The Fifty Seventh Republic - the joy of bank holiday marking

[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

Harriet, thank you so much for the ideas tonight!

Infection rates are low in schools, Ange although not as low as the rest of the population.

Easter helped. The v low levels in the vaccinated age groups are definitely helping.

So, the bright idea is to drop masks, which might just be partly responsible for those lower levels.

You're most welcome, @DreamingofBrie - if she does plump for law or has any questions that I might be able to help with, please do ask.

She is only Y9 at the moment, so if the republics are still going, I'll be sure to ask you .

Feeling despondent tonight so grateful for everyone's company.

I hope the Republics will still be going. They are keeping me sane!

I remember Laura McInerney’s analysis that showed that entrants to law degrees we’re more likely to have Drama A-level despite it not being in the Informed Choices booklet.

There’s a graph I’ve seen (maybe from iSAGE?) which shows how infection rates in 10-19yo and to a lesser extent, 0-10, rose as schools opened (the testing obvs being a factor), fell during Easter holidays, and started rising again as schools went back. Other age groups remained static afair.
But still at very low levels.

@noblegiraffe That's rather interesting. I wonder if it has always been so? I can see why it might be useful.

Here’s the research she did cfey.org/2013/09/what-a-level-subjects-do-russell-group-universities-prefer/

Hope you are hanging in there, Brie.

Thanks Noble- fascinating stuff, not only for the drama/law connection but also because DD1 is planning to take a degree in MFL - it's interesting to see which A-levels are most successful alongside (the necessary) languages.

Partner wants me to get an e car, I want a 1986 Golf GTI convertible. Because I'm almost 50, and that was the funnest car I've ever had. Probably wouldn't start well either!

I've been wondering about an ecar too, my current car is a 10 yo diesel and becoming expensive to service and maintain. My first ever car was a Renault 5 tin can, with a manual choke. We had lots of adventures together, mainly involving breaking down in inconvenient places.

In amongst my excitement yesterday, I forgot to report that one of my students did a LFT, came into school and then his mum phoned in to say he had failed the test...

He has two siblings (brother in my year 11 who will now miss assessments), so they had all been in circulation. The boy only got as far as form time(yes, inexplicably we have form time every morning). 12 students now have to SI because they sat next to him in form time! For about 5 minutes.

I bet his PCR is negative...

The new trend is students getting positive LFTs, retesting and getting a negative, so coming in, or trying to.

DH had to send a colleague home yesterday with a raging fever and a cough! His whole family were at home sick but he came in. This bloke has already had covid and was really ill so you would think he'd know better. Apparently, the cover bloke asked him if he had done a LFT (he had : it was negative, although not sure when he did it). The cover bloke then said 'see how you feel tomorrow'!!!!

Morning. School day for me. Hoping for smooth and uneventful.

Harriet that does all sound bonkers. I found myself wondering where on earth we’d manage to store all that paperwork even if we had time to do it.

rule might be your last chance to not have an electric car as I think petrol and diesel are phased out from 2030?

I don't want an electric car :(

P-Exing - permanently excluding.

rule might be your last chance to not have an electric car as I think petrol and diesel are phased out from 2030?

YES! That's my thinking too. I want the car I want, not the tiny go-cart e car that I can afford. I don't like any electric cars out there at the moment. I want a boy racer, spoiler, loud stereod GTI first.

Electric cars need to get a lot cheaper then. I don't have a driving license and occasionally look at these little electric boxes that can be driven on a moped license but even they're pricey.

@HarrietDVane

I hope the Republics will still be going. They are keeping me sane!

Compared to edutwitter where everyone appears to be calling each other racist, but with no evidence that anyone has actually been racist.

I'm baffled.

We’re starting to have meetings again. 14 of us crammed into a tiny room ‘socially distancing again’.

Fingers crossed that since we are all fully vaccinated and are going to take LFTs on the mornings of the meetings it’ll be fine.

Although if Pfizer is not effective at preventing transmission as it should be then there’s a good chance that 30mins in a room with no ventilation system and no windows will take out the entire section.

Masks, Rafa?

I'll be honest, from a teacher perspective, if you're all fully vaccinated, wearing masks and only 14 of you, that's living the dream...

Well quite, which is why I didn’t object when I was asked if I was ok with it.

And let’s face it, if you’ve spent a year working shoulder to shoulder together, mostly without masks getting everybody shoulder to shoulder together in 1 room isn’t going to make much difference other than from an isolating everybody point of view. And at least it isn’t all 170 of us.

Yep, we're back in one room f-f for meetings too. We're all single vaccinated (vulnerables double vaccinated), we sit in the hall 2m apart and have all the windows open. We all start off masked, then get fed up. Probably about 15 of us too. I dunno, this is almost as good as it's going to get really. Double vaccination would be good I guess.

That felt like a long day! I feel like opening the gin already.

Just been invited to book my second vaccination for next Wednesday - only offers me that day but it's a work day so I've booked the earliest slot I can but meant to be teaching period 2 and don't think I'll make it to school on time. Could only book between 9.30 and 12.30 and I'm teaching 10-3 minus a 40 min break. Not sure what to do - is it acceptable for a lesson to need covering to attend vaccination?