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.

Altho it’d be great if schools didn’t have to do the identifying close contacts etc any more, and that was handled by PH.

But wait a minute, how are PH going to know who was a close contact for Saskia in Reception or even Bob in Y11, both of whom won’t exactly be able to write a list of all the children they’ve interacted with / sat next to for the 48 hours before their test/symptoms??

Oh Miss Miss, I know this one!!

Yup, they’ll ask.the.school....

So, presuming the school will sort out the close contacts of positive cases, then what happens?!

HoY (poor sod!) has to do what? Give each of those identified 10 LFD tests to do at home each morning, and send them back to class? Or do they come into school to do them in the canteen each morning (where will everyone eat…?). Will Kev’s mum have to come back to supervise them doing the tests? What if Bob’s mum says he’s not testing-does that just mean they don’t have to as it’s optional?

Where do the rights of vulnerable children stand with not wanting to be in a sweaty packed classroom with loads of potential cases who refuse to do testing?

Oh have just read the article (ST, not sure?) about Uppingham School and the like closing early because of cases. I bet that explains the government’s sudden interest in stopping isolation of close contacts, rather more even than a U4T campaign or whatever!

Also it talks in general terms about 150 kids being sent home for one case. Is it because they have to do that in a boarding school situation??

It may also explain any U4T “concern” as well of course.

To go back a few pages, someone mentioned mass testing being done in schools where there are cases if PH felt the submission of LFTs had gone below a safe level. This was certainly why it was done in my school. Funnily enough the uptake for on site testing was over 80% but had fallen to below 30% in terms of submitting home test results.

So if the test instead of isolate works on trust that'll be fun.

An annoying - or exhausted if you want to be kind- primary HT in The Guardian today was advocated for test instead of isolate. For primary children. Hmm.

It was in The ST. Their reporting was confusing because they mentioned 52 cases in one of the schools.

I agree it's an issue if it circulates every 6m it's then testing all parents and teachers vax plus all grandparents.

So that makes for a fun after xmas present for all grandparents and fun January even more enjoyable ffs!!

If it is agreed for cv/cev children then presumably rich people will find someone to give it to their kids.
Certainly would think some gps will do this for their kids after the stories about some vaccinatting not only thenselves but also their wives and mates.
Especially as it use or waste pfizer.
I can only hope all those who dont mind getting it then catch it this summer.

Do you think uk gov are doing a bit of a chicken pox - where they say it's to keep it circulating and keep the immunity of older people up. With covid if you catch it while vaxxed then your immunity increases further i would think and potentially extending your immunity.

Im not happy with kids catching it because of long term issues.
After the 1918 flu there was an increase in parkinsonism.
However im also concerned that people catching covid after vax are still getting loss of smell/taste.
I think we need to know the death rates by AZ vs pfizer.

So is the plan with primaries just to let the children get sick?

I think so, yes.

So what are the options for CEV children? Not allowed to be vaccinated, not safe in school, mental health issues being completely isolated. Super!

The rich will take their CEV children to where vaccination is allowed.

Much the same Guy

I also think, when being rational, that expending energy on things that you have zero control or influence over is futile and like you I don't have energy to waste these days.

Obviously scrapping all mitigations is a fucking ridiculous and unsafe idea but that doesn't mean it won't happen or that there is any force of 'reason' to appeal to. In reality we'll just have to get on with whatever latest shower of shit we're given. Getting rid masks clearly made a difference looking at the graphs yet no one reports on it or says hmm maybe we need to rethink that.

There's literally no reason and logic and no authority to appeal to when it's our own government doing ridiculous things so???

Sorry - maybe a bit apathetic but the serenity prayer comes to mind.

Thanks piggy. No, the secondary teacher’s thread said that the level of testing being reported from the kids and presumably, staff) was one of the factors PH took into account when decided whether to close the school. Although the debate on that thread about whether PH only advise closure did make me think of your school and whether your head got to choose mass testing as an alternative to closure?

Yes I’m wondering, is the govt basically expanding the group of children for whom school is not safe? I think there is always a very tiny number who are too vulnerable to access school, is this just going to be a much bigger group (CEV)?

I think there is always a very tiny number who are too vulnerable to access school, is this just going to be a much bigger group (CEV)?

Might be, even if it's parent choice rather than a given list. Wonder how many kids will be kept off as soon as things start feeling bad? Of course we won't 'know' it's bad because they'll stop reporting the bad stuff.

I have a question.

How do you work? From a shared drive of resources at school? From your own laptop with personal stuff on it? From pen drives or hard drives?

I spent yesterday clearing down my desktop on my laptop. My laptop keyboard has broken, so I need to hand it over next week. Everything I've done for the school since March 2020 was on it. I've copied anything shared onto the shared drive already (when it was needed), but there are lots of my own things I've now added to the shared drive.

In the past there hasn't been shared drives at my schools, so we've all had our own stuff. I get confused over what belongs to who - is it school's property? Or mine?

I've got a hard drive full of resources I've made while at other schools, that I still use loads. Is it that school's intellectual property?

I'm of the opinion it's yours but you don't get to deprive the school of it when you leave itms. So you have every right to take it with you and they have every right to also use it. I don't know if that aligns with their rules but that's my ethical position on it.

I've been thinking about this recently actually as I don't think it's possible to plug an external hard drive into my work laptop so I was wondering if I could set up a cloud space to send everything to or if I could just use my personal google drive but not sure how much space you get on that. I've downloaded all of the remote recorded lessons I did into my own folder for example but need to get them off the laptop.

I guess the answer is I don't know but personally I think it belongs to the school and to you.

I do everything on my personal laptop and save it to Dropbox which syncs to my work laptop.
Stuff that's for school like schemes of work get saved into the school shared drive but I keep the originals.

Technically, whatever you create in order to fulfill your role when working at a school belongs to the school. You are even supposed to formally request that you're allowed to take copies of your work when you leave (though in practice, this doesn't happen).

It's a weird area because teachers upload things to tes or sell things through teachers pay teachers but, often, they don't actually have the legal right to.

Stuff the kids make also belongs to the school so if a Year Six kid coded an amazing new gaming app as part of a school project, the school could launch it and keep the money as a revenue stream.

Hi Rule,

Generally speaking, if you are creating resources at home in your own time and not your school's, then these resources belong to you and you can profit from them etc.
Anything earned or spent by you, is also your money.
If you create resources for your job role (and particularly during school time), these resources belong to the school.

Xpost sorry!

I've heard mixed things rule. Some have said that if it's done in your own time then it's yours, but others have said that if it's done as part of your role then it's a school resource, even if you made it at home.
The schools I've worked in have been quite fair about people selling materials, revision guides and resource. They're also fine with people taking what they need to their next school.
It would be unusual for a school to get funny about it based on my experiences, but I wouldn't be surprised if some MATS were awkward about it.

@JanFebAnyMonth

Thanks piggy. No, the secondary teacher’s thread said that the level of testing being reported from the kids and presumably, staff) was one of the factors PH took into account when decided whether to close the school. Although the debate on that thread about whether PH only advise closure did make me think of your school and whether your head got to choose mass testing as an alternative to closure?

Yes, that is our understanding!

I keep stuff that I have paid for - although I'll also save that to the school shared drive. At the moment I've downloaded everything from Whiterose and Classroom Secrets, LiteracyShed+, Hamilton etc that I'll ever probably want to use. Straight onto a hard drive. Those are paid for by me.

When I left my old job, I only shared my SENCO stuff (then deleted it off my laptop). The rest I kept for me. Probably not OK. Definitely having the SENCO stuff on my laptop was a GDPR issue. Although it was before GDPR was a thing.

I've been thinking about this recently actually as I don't think it's possible to plug an external hard drive into my work laptop

We can’t plug in an external hard drive into the work laptop either. I’m taking a few things with me when I leave in a few weeks. Definitely taking my own resources.

Should add, this has never been an 'issue' - I was just thinking about it yesterday when I was spending 6 hours sorting out a laptop!!

You can use a cloud storage account to make copies of resources, if you cannot plug anything in usb port-wise, if that helps?

You need to utilise your MS OneDrive. Then access it at home and download the lot to a hard drive. I do this regularly as a backup as we've got some rooms which don't connect to the internet well, and my old hard drive went pop so I have everything doubled up, just in case!