The Sixty Third Republic - as we glide into staycations the DfE whip up anti-school media storm

[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.

My kid's primary had a bunch of parents turn up on sports day (to which they were not invited) and try to watch through the school gates.

I think MEGs can be overambitious sometimes but not 3 or more grades overambitious for 96% of students. I also have intimate knowledge of the department and their attempt at remote learning provision.

So did we, noble.

Will we have to provide our vaccine info to our school then? I was very surprised by a few of our younger teachers refusing theirs.

I say we, who knows what Nicola Sturgeon will do with us

Our 'flight paths' seem to involve using FFT (the top band, despite us being nowhere near that great, because 'aspiration'), for GCSE target and then assigning arbitrary points below that for Year 9 and 10 targets.

There's no consistency, I have year 10s with a year 10 target of a 4-3 and a final target if a 4-4, also year 10s with a y10 target of 3-3 and a final target of 5-5. Then year 9s with a year 9 target of 4-3 and a final target of 4-4.

I've flagged it as ridiculous but the SLT person in charge of data doesn't reply to my emails.

Do you know the grading is accurate, Honey and consistent between departments?

We haven't even told parents we're doing a sports event.

Meanwhile due to covering other's isolation, I've lost all non contact time for the next 10 days, and the perf management meeting where I was going to talk about part time. And my class are feral. Turned my back today for 30 seconds, two children dancing on the tables. They refuse to do anything anyone asks them to do, even the head. Meh, I'm not going to be sorry to see the back of them.

@noblegiraffe

Did primary colleagues see that Gav said schools should be allowing parents into schools to watch activities during the last week of term?

I did not see that Two words spring to mind...

@noblegiraffe

My kid's primary had a bunch of parents turn up on sports day (to which they were not invited) and try to watch through the school gates.

We had parents with gardens backing onto the school grounds inviting groups of friends round for a party and to video the events....

All the more 'interesting' because exactly the same group of families had a cluster of Covid cases which closed a class, from which they were barely out of isolation.

@noblegiraffe

My kid's primary had a bunch of parents turn up on sports day (to which they were not invited) and try to watch through the school gates.

We have 3 sets of gates between the front and the sports field, so our angry parents just sent endless whingy, arsey emails and repeatedly phoned the Head.

Who are all these parents that desperate to watch sports day that they'll make themselves look like tits in front of the teachers?

@noblegiraffe

My kid's primary had a bunch of parents turn up on sports day (to which they were not invited) and try to watch through the school gates.

We are concerned about this as it's possible (and probable) that a significant number will try to turn up. We've said that, if they do, we'll stop and go back inside until they leave.

I was going to say, I don't have kids, but I genuinely cannot see the fuss about Sports Day...

So we had sports day - no parents allowed or welcomed. Had speech day on Friday - no parents but all prize winners had a photo with head which was sent home. That’s it till September.

What self respecting secondary kid is going to want mum and dad to pitch up to watch? Poor kids life would be made hell by Bob for the rest of his school career.

We have MEGs (Minimum expected grade) and CEG (Challenge grades) for GCSE kids (flight paths in ks3). Then we have bands that they should be in each year around that mark.

Eg. ds has scored 2 marks lower (but close to only one mark lower itms) in Maths than his MEG and that is considered 'on track' at the end of year 9. He's one mark below his MEG in English and considered to be 'above' on his progress towards MEG. Below is 3 grades below MEG and 'well below' is 4 or more grades under MEG. So it's actually 4 grades or more below that 96% of kids have scored at in Science.

We do the whole content in years 9 and 10 so they've actually done 50% of the course by the end of year 9 so saying 2 marks or below is on track seems fair to me.

I find the MEGs far more accurate than the flight paths because it's actually based on 2 years of in school data. Some of the flightpaths for year 7 this year are super crazy as they didn't do sats and what they did instead does not seem to have reflected the reality of their ability at accurately.

@DollyMixtureLulus

I was going to say, I don't have kids, but I genuinely cannot see the fuss about Sports Day...

For most teachers and all the kids not taking part or in a winning position it is horrendous.

Luckily sports day has fallen on one of my non school days!

Sports day. Awful as a kid, fucking horrendous as a teenager, hate it as a teacher, no interest as a parent.

He's one mark below his MEG in English

On what? A whole mock paper using genuine grade boundaries? Or something made up by the school?

I don't understand how you are assigning grades to kids in Y9.

@RuleWithAWoodenFoot

Sports day. Awful as a kid, fucking horrendous as a teenager, hate it as a teacher, no interest as a parent.

I could have written that-completely agree!

OK, the new guidance says:

"You must comply with health and safety law and put in place proportionate control measures."

The guidance on Health and safety Law from the HSE says:
"It is an employer's duty to protect the health, safety and welfare of their employees and other people who might be affected by their business. Employers must do whatever is reasonably practicable to achieve this.

This means making sure that workers and others are protected from anything that may cause harm, effectively controlling any risks to injury or health that could arise in the workplace.

Employers have duties under health and safety law to assess risks in the workplace. Risk assessments should be carried out that address all risks that might cause harm in your workplace."

It seems to me that a very large number of Heads in high Ciovid areas could reasonably turn round and say 'I don't care what the guidance says, I must follow H&S law and therefore much of what we have done this year will have to remain, as the Government has done absolutely nothing to make schools safer'.

We assign grades. It's all very serious and important and totally made up.

rule I admire your consistency

H&S particularly with respect to CEV pupils - if the levels of Covid circulating in the school are likely to cause harm to CEV pupils, then surely the head has a legal duty to put proper control measures in place?

Mocks (Obviously not full papers but slimmed down versions) plus assessments through the year are taken into account. So in my subject year 9 did 2 mock papers. We also do QMAs throughout the year that are real exam q's marked with the actual exam markscheme.