The Sixty-First Republic - Covid the gift that keeps giving even in the last half term!

[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.

DrMadelineMaxwell
You're doing the right thing. Schools need to understand that if staff aren't well, they aren't well. If staff need a covid test, they need a covid test.

Have Black Mumsnetters started a thread on it yet? They won't take this shit lying down.

Honestly. It's 12:50 and I just feel sad. ☹️

The day is barely at its half-way mark and I just feel I've depleted my little stock of hope and optimism. ☹️

Me too cat . Unmumsnetty hugs and handholds.

🙂💐

cat you should definitely read Spirit Level : you would really 'like' it.

*Nearly 250,000 children in England missed school last week for Covid-related reasons, including 9,000 with confirmed cases of Covid-19, the worst figures since state schools fully reopened in March.

The weekly attendance figures published by the Department for Education (DfE) found that Covid-related absences from secondary schools tripled in the space of seven days between 10 June and 17 June when it surveyed schools, while the rate of absences in primary schools has doubled.

There were 9,000 confirmed cases among state school pupils last week, compared with 7,000 the week before and just 4,000 at the end of May.

The DfE’s figures have been adjusted to exclude pupils in years 11 and 13 who have finished school for the year, leaving 3.3% absent overall.

The biggest rise was in the number of pupils self-isolating because of Covid case contacts within schools: 172,000 according to the DfE, while a further 42,000 were self-isolating because of contacts outside school, and 16,000 were off with unconfirmed cases*

Rafa
The gall of the DfE talking about recovery funding though. That would be the recovery funding we might need much less of if you hadn't been pretending covid didn't exist in schools.

There are suggestions that future recovery funding may be linked to PP so some schools will get loads and some won't get anything. In some of the stuff I've been feeding back on recently, I've noticed increasing links between the tutoring programme and disadvantaged/PP children that suggests that, moving forward, those children will be the focus of "catch up" rather than those who are actually behind.

There are suggestions that future recovery funding may be linked to PP so some schools will get loads and some won't get anything. In some of the stuff I've been feeding back on recently, I've noticed increasing links between the tutoring programme and disadvantaged/PP children that suggests that, moving forward, those children will be the focus of "catch up" rather than those who are actually behind.

This so hits the nail on the head. PP funding is such a blunt tool to focus funding that it can miss children who also desperately need it. That and the fact that children who actually need catching up may well slip through the net yet again, due to not receiving PP. PP shouldn’t be the only measure.

Nearly 250,000 children in England missed school last week for Covid-related reasons, including 9,000 with confirmed cases of Covid-19, the worst figures since state schools fully reopened in March.

And yet we have so many running threads at the moment of parents who are struggling with another bout of self isolation with poster after poster encouraging them to ignore it and not seeing the bigger picture….yet again!
It’s like we have been talking into thin air for the past year.
The Dept for Ed needed to get a grip on Covid in schools a loooooong time ago.

I really feel for these kids.

And yet we have so many running threads at the moment of parents who are struggling with another bout of self isolation with poster after poster encouraging them to ignore it and not seeing the bigger picture….yet again

I’m really worried about Covid taking hold again. I’m naturally a bit on the pessimistic side so I really hope I’m just being a doom monger.
Vaccines are amazing but you can still end up in hospital with the delta variant even if you’ve been double vaccinated.

Government keeps saying hospital cases aren’t rising, or looks like they are in the North West. Really had enough of Covid. Just want to teach normally.

Sample request came.

Either English or maths - English
One other - English lit

Not sure if this is reassuring but I'm guessing the vast majority of people who end up in hospital despite having 2 doses of vaccine are also those who ended up in hospital without - the very elderly, care home residents, people near end of life? They mount less of a response to the vaccine therefore have less immunity that a younger receiver of vaccine plus they are vulnerable enough that even with the milder illness effect it's still enough to see them in need of medical assistance.

@MrsHamlet

Sample request came.

Either English or maths - English
One other - English lit

English and Geography called for at my school.

Yeah we got English, Eng Lit and politics A Level. Not sure if anything else.

Maths and science at my school.

Can I pick maths' colleagues brains.... what sort of schemes of work do you have? Lesson by lesson all didactic? Total free for all? Something else?

We have White Rose for y7&8 then an in house one for 9,10,11. It has hyperlinked lessons but no obligation to use them.

We created our own schemes of work, each term has roughly three topics to cover, and the scheme of work says what needs to be covered within that topic - e.g. solving equations, with some details of the types of equations that need to be solved and an end of topic test to work towards. How it's taught is up to you.

We’re doing Maths, don’t know what else. The Maths is slightly bad timing as the HoD is taking paternity leave unexpectedly early due to a slightly prem birth visited upon his also-Maths-teacher-at-our-school wife on Friday, a few hours after she went on maternity leave!

Having read those calls from Oldham PH and council for testing instead of isolating by pupils, I’m now worried that’s the way the government’s going to go as absences due to Covid rise again.

We had maths and another subject but no one seems to know which one.

We have our own schemes of work, written by us as a department. We have 3 tests a year, and the schemes of work pretty much just tell us what topics to teach before each test. How we teach it is completely up to us. We mostly stick vaguely together with the parallel sets, or talk to the higher/lower sets if there's likely to be movement soon.

Scream.

Got a child off today isolating until 2nd July, because her sister tested positive. Child was in school yesterday, even though someone in the household had symptoms and was going for a test. Apparently she told a TA, who didn't think to mention it.

This child's mum is in the police, and has been in school every single day since March 2020 as a key worker. Even through the holidays. The one day she needed to be off... nope. FFS.

Oh yes, more FFS. Its a hourly daily thing.