The Fifty Ninth Republic - May Half Term beckons

[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 for school staff to let off steam.

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. Finally, upload your covid test results twice a week on Wednesdays and Sundays.

Yeah the gastric symptoms thing ahs been the big unpublicised thing all along.

If they have a temperature, mind, they should be getting tested.

Gastric symptoms are on my list from the trial people - we had a load of kids off in the autumn term with "not covid" which may well have been.

@Piggywaspushed

Yeah the gastric symptoms thing ahs been the big unpublicised thing all along.

If they have a temperature, mind, they should be getting tested.

“Oh, it was only for a couple of hours, so didn’t get them tested” is one excuse I heard. 48 hours off school obviously preferable to 10 days and household isolation. Which is why it keeps going round and round and round........ Still, there’s talk of a telephone helpline so that’s ok What people need is the money to cover them being off work.

Congratulations @HobnobbingAboutHobnobs!!!

Off out before it's frying time

I wonder how efficient even a PCR test is at picking up gastric cases. If you’re not coughing then how much viral load is sitting in your throat? And the reluctance of parents to shove the swab as far in as it needs to go is well known.

All hangs on how efficient double vaccination is against it, I suppose, for older people who pick it up that way. Plus long term effects in children.

The coach thing blows my mind. 10 page risk assessments, trips deemed Covid Safe. Yet X School has 3 year groups out for isolation and we are supposed to use the coaches the rest of their pupils have jumped off half an hour ago? Ffs.

The trouble is all the risk assessments and nearly everyone’s thinking, including the DHSC/ NHS, is based on the “it’s not airborne” idea. Which I remember scientists doubting back in March last year!!

Congratulations Hobnob - glad you had a last Pimms binge

I’m not sure this is national but Wolverhampton LEA now require any absence for staff and student to require a PCR.

I'm thinking back over the last however-long and the number of absence codes on SIMs where the notes just said "not well." This is for kids who were trumpeting like elephants in class the previous day (luckily the windows are all open all day!)
Then they turn up back in class the day after.

Gav being shouted at on GMB: twitter.com/haggis_uk/status/1399999259949289473?s=21

I don’t know how he has the front to sit their and brazen it out.

*there

Well, if Adil had made some of his questions shorter instead of repeating himself over and over again in a bid to sound like Piers Morgan, then Gav might have said a bit more.

@Piggywaspushed

I keep reading that some of the money that survived the treasury foot stamp is for teacher training. In what?? So we can do everything they won't fund? I have never seen it explained.

The National Tutoring Programme has been outsourced to a Dutch company which here seems to be controversy about. The other tutoring programme will be part funded by the gov (75% and schools to pay the rest), so buying in 20 year olds in our case. At some unspecified point, schools will be expected to pay for this in its entirety.

The teacher training thing is HILARIOUS if you consider the fact that they massively cut that this past October. Goodbye to many bursaries, goodbye to government support for salaried school direct courses, what on earth are they going to do now? Predicting they will bring back a fraction of what they cut and say "you're welcome!"

All of their promises of NQT salaries starting at 30k haven't been mentioned in a while either.

Wow re Wolverhampton. But it’s the kind of sensible move Gav or U4T bods will seek to challenge....

Seen the massive Bank Holiday next year that we profit not one jot from??

Don’t like that date for a bank holiday. Or that week being half term.

Can we move the Queen’s jubilee instead.

Bastards. Why don't we get the bloody bank holiday too?

How is it a 4 day bank holiday if two days are the weekend?

And my Google calendar says that the late May bank holiday has been moved from the Monday to the Thursday. So only the Friday as an extra day off for those Mon-Fri workers who get bank holidays off then.

The sam happened for VE day didn't it in terms of moving the Monday?

All of their promises of NQT salaries starting at 30k haven't been mentioned in a while either.

I was talking about that with colleagues last week-I think Gav tried to sit down and write out the new pay scale and realised that if NQTs (or whatever they are now supposed to be called) earned £30k, then M2 and above would have to be paid more than that which hadn’t previously occurred to him, so he had to go for a lie down and hasn’t looked at it since!

It makes me laugh how they keep going on about the national tutoring as if it's a huge success. We've ended up with a handful of small groups taking part. So far, it hasn't made even a bit of difference to the kids involved.

I'm sure some schools are seeing it being successful but I have some real questions around exactly how much any improvement in children's attainment is actually going to be attributed to the tutoring.

Oh my word the noise about 5 kids are making maybe six gardens away makes me realise why they look at us like we are mad when we tell them they are being too noisy. Parents are there as can occasionally hear them not saying shut up. They sound like they are filming a disaster movie.

I'm irritated with the parents who contact us to say that they can't get their kids to do their homework at home so can they do it at break at school with a teacher to help!
Er... no!

Is there any actual evidence saying the tutoring scheme has been a success, or is that just Gav pretending it’s great?!