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.

@Piggywaspushed

Didn't take long...

Former education minister, now vaccines minister
@nadhimzahawi
, says teachers' unions are to blame for Sir Kevan Collins' not getting his education recovery plan because they "resisted extending the school day in the first place".

Yes, the NEU used its magical powers over the treasury department and Rishi in order to stop the plan in its tracks.

Nadhim Zahawi is, in reality, the cabinet minister for gaslighting.

@noblegiraffe

I went to look for the Gav article and found this amendment:

"This article was amended on the day of publication. It originally said that school lunch breaks could be cut by half an hour, however the DfE have told us that Mr Williamson in fact intended to imply that the government could consider enforcing a one-hour lunch break in schools."

So extending lunch breaks by half an hour?

Gav, you useless twat, you couldn't even articulate your bollocks proposal properly.

You couldn't write it. Gets more ludicrous by the hour. Gav has to go surely. Unless BJ is scared he will do a Dom.

Goodness. Managing to blame the NEU is almost gymnastic levels of contortion.

(Congratulations on your current thread, Noblegiraffe.)

I was waiting for your thread to turn nasty noble but it hasn't yet.

Isn’t Zahawi the guy that tried to do the mental gymnastics over schools reopening and ended up trying to argue that March was after May on 2 different news programs?

@SaltyAF

I wonder if he's realised that many schools have cut lunch to 30 mins to stop the fighting ...

Weve reduced break to 15 mins for the same reason. In primary.

If we lose 30 mins of our lunch break, that's 0 minutes lunch break for children and adults.

I also don't want an hour break with an extended day. We'd spend the first hour of afternoon teaching time dealing with lunchtime issues.

Yes, that's the one, Rafa. Vaccinated by April means protected by March.

Your thread seems to be going pretty well, Noble - perhaps the U4Ourselves contingent have decided on an early night? You've only got one real dissenter on there at the moment.

Sam Freedman points out the extended day would probably have been handled by tutors, non-teaching staff and those who would like the extra money - so no need to force teachers to handle it en masse.

However 'catch-up' is done, it's not going to be perfect: after-school might impact on target children's extra-curricular activities; in the afternoon, might impact on taking part in humanities subjects.

But it really is a very small amount of tuition being suggested. And the guidelines ...

Tutoring works best when it is closely tied to what's being taught in the classroom and in small, small groups of children, with similar levels of ability. And it needs to be regular, etc.

No-one I've spoken to, so far, has experienced anything like that. Common experiences have been of groups changing from session to session, with wildly fluctuating numbers and attendees. And the groups haven't been formed with a view to similar abilities, either.

It's just been too difficult to organise effectively in current circumstances, within the existing timetable.

And that's before it's all been tendered out to this new company. 🤷‍♀️

Gav really doesn’t (appear to) have the intellectual abilities or arrogance needed to do a Dom.

@HarrietDVane

Your thread seems to be going pretty well, Noble - perhaps the U4Ourselves contingent have decided on an early night? You've only got one real dissenter on there at the moment.

I think they're too busy arguing that children shouldn't be vaccinated. They must be torn between trying to argue that their kid needs free tutoring and keeping the Tories onside where they need them.

I don't understand what this Dutch company will be doing, Cat. Hiring teenagers?

@noblegiraffe

I don't understand what this Dutch company will be doing, Cat. Hiring teenagers?

There's a certain lack of clarity, isn't there?

I have no idea, either. 🤷‍♀️

Honestly, I hope schools and children are treated with respect with this catch-up stuff.

Where has this week gone.... time seems to be going 'strangely' is it covid/lockdown related? I don't know!

@JanFebAnyMonth

Gav really doesn’t (appear to) have the intellectual abilities or arrogance needed to do a Dom.

yep - he would totally cock up any answers. Even the tv presenters think he is a joke. The most inept Education minister ever!

"Ve most inept Education minister ever!"

Yet we have to teach phonics a certain way or else, whilst the education minister can't speak correctly! You couldn't make it up.

P.S. And don't get me started on Priti Patel who thinks that to drop any 'g' in a word endin with 'ing' makes you sound workin class!

Message from my HoD during a Gav rant: - “I could punch his face till my arm dropped off. Fucker.”

I think the issue with tuition at our place is that is has created that annoying kind of workload where you are told there is no workload because 22 year olds are doing the tutoring but then the HoFs f English and maths have to make schemes of work , have to provide resources, do training sessions, teachers field queries and vet lists etc etc. It's that drip drip drip workload. really the workload of Heads of En/Ma is insane at our place.

We've had some online tutoring that has had some impact on 3 kids. The other 22 haven't benefited due to attendance and engagement.

Staying quiet on HOD workload seeing as I end up doing most of it.

Yy, Piggy.

I genuinely don't know how our maths/English HoDs are still functioning.

Crossed my mind noble's thread is going well because she didn't mention masks, or vaccinations, or SI of contacts, so no Klaxon.

I ma still wondering what the government will do with the ongoing disruption to education if children remain so susceptible to spreading the virus. Oh what an irony that no on now disputes this and previous naysayers now talk of half terms as natural firebreaks of in school transmission.

A lot of U4T types seem to think they have inside knowledge that isolation of close contacts will be stopping soon.

I have just watched the Gav clip about lunch . He is not very clear but he does definitely say (probably parroting Sir Kev) that schools have condensed down the lunchtime. I genuinely think the plan was to force schools to extend lunchtimes (maybe back to an hour) just so the school day by default would become longer and the public would think things were happening. Keeps kids off streets longer as police and Wilshaw will tell you, most youth crime happens at exactly kicking out time (it doesn't but that 's what Wilshaw and Sewell say the police say..)

There was a lot of complacency up to and past the October half term last year, and even into November. I think we’ll see that again, albeit on a diminished scale because of vaccination, but I think the June final unlocking will turn into a June continuation of fairly half arsed measures with some local quasi-lockdowns and school closures.

Crossed my mind noble's thread is going well because she didn't mention masks, or vaccinations, or SI of contacts, so no Klaxon.

I've noticed my AIBU political schools threads tend to go ok. Ones on the government being shit, Gavin Williamson being shit, or the proposal to cut the summer holidays were all fine.

Ones that don't go well - covid measures in schools threads in the covid section(!!), and threads about Free School Meals in AIBU (that one was genuinely awful).