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.

What is she saying these Y11s should do. Not all plan to go on to A’Levels in the same school, many may go in to technical qualifications etc at colleges. The only use in kids staying would be to get a head start on what they need for the next year but that will be dependent on results won’t it? So secondary teachers have had all the assessment on top of teaching other years and even as this come to a close they want you to do more!!! Outrageous. Has the woman no common sense?

Surely the evidence that the catch-up commissioner (or whatever he was called) recommended £15bn and the government allocated £1.4bn is enough to see how much this lot in charge care about education and children.

But hey let's deflect from that and blame schools (and those work-shy teachers 🙄) for not doing enough to keep yr11/13 for the last half term when in a normal year most aren't in school anyway (or would just be doing revision and exams).

😡

She's just showing how absolutely out of touch with reality she is. No one wants 11/13 in school apart from some targeted A level and uni prep.

A reason why there’s no money for education ... extended furlough?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-57337965

Has the additional burden of these CAGs meant staff have been compromised on what they are doing with other year groups? I don’t ask this in a critical way at all I blame this stupid Government for that. Surely this is precisely the time when the focus shifts from Y11 and 13 to Y10 and Y12. My fear is that staff have been distracted from that focus already and to have 11 and 13 back would mean 10 and 12 miss out. How is it that this Government make a bad situation ten times worse? I despair for you secondary colleagues I really do.

I have @SarahLou67. We were told by SLT to prioritise exam years so other year groups haven’t had any marking/feedback/assessments since before Easter.

Has the additional burden of these CAGs meant staff have been compromised on what they are doing with other year groups?

Yes absolutely. 100%. And I don’t see that as being a critical question. The time had to come from somewhere to write all these assessments, mark them, moderate them, write them up and then match to the terrible grade descriptors.

We've had a "marking holiday" since Easter too.

@motherrunner

I have *@SarahLou67*. We were told by SLT to prioritise exam years so other year groups haven’t had any marking/feedback/assessments since before Easter.

Precisely as I thought. This is an inevitable consequence when you divert people away from what the should be doing onto someone else’s job (without the pay of course). It is a scandal. Williamson is a total disgrace. Why couldn’t the Y11s and 13s have done external exams? I don’t get it. The kids would have been more socially distanced in exam halls than classrooms and as I understand it cohorts were being treated as bubbles anyway. It was perfectly possible. All that needed to happen was a reduction in number of papers taken and a sensible setting of thresholds based on results as normal. Of course this should mean a lower standard this year but that’s not the kids or staff’s fault. People have also forgotten how late in the day this alternative assessment came about. You hardly had time to breathe!

Our year 10 and 12 will do mocks right after half term, year 9 have been revising the years topics and are doing mocks in week 2 and 3 next term. Ks3 have carried on with qmas as normal so plenty of marking there too.

I’m the only one without year 11 in my department so I’ve been trying to focus on ks3 staying on track as people were doing the wrong lessons etc but no way hod had time to notice so I just quietly steered us back on track. Perfectly understandable that I was the only one to notice or frankly give a damn given what they were going through with cags.

I’ve got 2 sets of year 7 assessments to mark and I’m afraid they’re just going to get marked and put on system rather than the usual swans protocol with individual targets for improvement.

I’ll have 3 sets of year 8 assessments to mark over the first couple of weeks then year 9 mocks. Then ks3 have assessments again 🙈

Looking forward to a summer of no marking!

Our Yr 10s had exams last week but we won’t be required to mark them until after half term - I have though as I know there will be something that comes up! KS3 have their exams next week. I too look forward to a summer if no marking but not a summer of dealing with parental complaints over grade awarding.

Our year 10 exams have been moved to September :(
Year 12 at the end of June. We don't do exams for other years.

sarahlou, I do think some overlook the essentially intractable problem of different coverage of syllabuses in terms of exams. Optionality of questions was dismissed by many stakeholders as being too confusing.

I also think no one knew what covid would be like at the point public exams were cancelled and there could have been loads missing them and then chaos. In fact we have had lots of isolations during our CAG period.

Personally, I think cancelling most exams was the right decision : the issue came with replacing them, effectively, with more exams, this leading to this cognitive dissonance shitshow.

We have year Year 10 and Year 12 end of year exams in just over a weeks time. Mark. Then full reports.

I feel sorry for 10 and 12 as they have been second class citizens since before Easter. Those poor sods will potentially the first cohorts to sit formal exams in two years - not that will be a very interesting set of results

I think what replaced public exams was based on absolving the DfE of as much responsibility as possible due to last year’s fiasco. It sounds like it will still be a fiasco and done in a way that was detrimental to all pupils not just the exam years!

Half our college is y13 - EVERYTHING on the whole year is geared around these six weeks of gained time as we teach 22.5 hours when they’re here! I have, I think, four schemes of work to write for a kick-off, as well as everything else that’s been massively neglected. Buses, the canteen, support staff - all reduced in this half term. They’ve all gone off to start working full-time over summer.

We don’t want them back, they don’t want to come back and we can’t cope with them if they do...

Hopefully this is just Spielmann hot air. Schools will ignore it. Not her place to dictate government policy. But sadly, Gavin is an idiot and it wouldn’t surprise me if he made so rash last minute rule change - he’s done it before. How is he still in his job?

I don’t see how it can work. Pupils and families have plans, they might not actually be able to send them back to school/college. We can’t even fine for non-attendance (not that we would) as all students are over 16; if they persistently fail to attend they lose their place. So we have literally no way of making them come back. I can’t see any college putting any effort into asking y13 to return. They’re leaving on the same date they always have!

We have a rollover timetable. Simply couldn't get them back.

22.5 hours is brutal. I've had that equivalent since Jan (long story) and it's near killed me with CAGs. How do you do it Gravity?!

I promised myself that I wouldn't get wound up by school news so I'm trying to be zen. Amanda is a div though.

Crikey I haven’t hear any called a div/ a divvy in a long time! Hate to think what it’s derivation is (off to look)

noble your thread seems much appreciated! Maybe U4T types are all out at stately homes* / the Norfolk coast.

(MN interthreadual ref not originally intended, but it may work)

• its, obviously.

22 to 23 hours a week is standard at my school.

Which is not intended to diminish gravity!

Ouch piggy. We're 21-22 as standard. Generally the better you are the more hours you get annoyingly! I get no management time at all.