The Sixty-Fifth Republic - The Covid School Phoney War under way so who will the gold medal and who will get the wooden spoon?

[Staffholidayclubrep]

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.

You can sit on chairs but keep the windows open. You don’t have to upload LFT results during the holidays. You do not have to wear mask - free choice

It’s my last day! I may well be a sweaty mess from being in a stuffy classroom all week but I cannot wait for the hols! So many pupils not in self isolating (many by their own choice) with lots of positive cases (7 confirmed PCR in one KS3 class alone) that I have been having half Teams half in school lessons and I’m quite frankly, done with that now

Yay Chloe! Count down those minutes!

Testing carries on til end September and then will be reviewed.

That article is so confusing! It mentions PCRs, testing twice, daily testing, contact tracing!

www.york.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/research/teacher-burnout-study/

@JanFebAnyMonth we do a reading thing like that. Adult reads and the kids all follow with their own copy and keep line place with ruler. They stop and talk about words and meanings and stuff to do with tthe book. It’s more structured than I’m making it sound and it has a name I don’t know. Our kids love it - they like being read to, the following with a ruler is to ensure they are following the right words as they are read. It’s designed to improve reading age and vocabulary and stuff. My school is no way draconian - is the reading thing like that?

Happy holidays, Rule and Chloe, and congratulations Jan!

Head scientist from Oxford interviewed on R4.
Interviewer: ‘OMG parents across the nation will be throwing hands up in horror, the dreaded bubble closures were for nothing?!”
Oxford bod: “Er, no. Remember LFTs were only available in the last few months. And levels of the virus were very low in the spring when we carried out those trials.”
Also he said something about people being more willing to test which the interviewer interpreted as meaning a more liberal regime worked better, but I missed a few words as was only half awake.

To those of us still going in today: “Courage, mes amies!”

Oh that’s interesting MrsHP, haven’t heard of that! I don’t think that school was talking about being read to though was it?

I can imagine that that sort of structure would work well for some SEN, but wouldn’t want to insist upon it for the whole school.

The benefits of being read to are well known.

Beeb article:

“Since March, schools have offered twice weekly rapid tests to all pupils, with those testing positive having to self-isolate, along with close contacts, for 10 days. They replaced PCR tests, which were sent away to a lab for results, when students had symptoms.”

NO! Shows how little journalists understand. Disappointing from BBC.

Daily Star front page this morning. I don't read the Star.

Brilliant

Love it! Sadly though he keeps reappearing in South Staffs.

@JanFebAnyMonth we do it at KS3. We’ve tried different things because our reading ages are so very low. We’ve got large numbers of kids who wouldn’t have many, if any, books in their homes ever. When we just had reading time I’d say majority of kids sat there with a book but not reading it. If they’d had to have a ruler maybe it would make some read or be easier to tell who wasn’t reading? I don’t know 🤷‍♀️ also disclaimer I’ve not watched that so may be totally different as you say 🤣

For what it's worth, I went to an Alice Sullivan lecture which looked at reading.

She talked about research that seemed to show that just reading to children - just reading, without any particular intervention, including minimal stuff such as stopping to explain complex words of checking that the books were pitched at the right age/developmental level - improved children's vocabulary and ability to use that vocabulary.

I don't have any links for that research. I can't discuss it at any length. But it did make me feel more relaxed about just reading books to children.

The school I’m moving to have reading sessions (with a ruler) like the one MrsHercule describes.

I’ve missed loads on the thread. Hope everyone is ok.

I guess there's lots of reasons why you would want to be sure that the kids you are reading to are looking at the right words at the same time.

Am I being thick or does that trial make absolutely no sense? Is does covid related absence include contacts who are self isolating or just those who have covid?

I’m not sure that 1.5% of contacts being +ve compared to 1.6% can really be described as a decrease. Not sure what it is supposed to show either. Surely you should be looking at the number of people who weren’t contacts of the original case who went on to contract covid.

Not really clear to me whether the % of available school days list is just for those identified as contacts or for the whole school. And if my maths is right it works out as saving half a school day over the course of an entire year.

The 'Quality Audience' posture would be completely impossible for some kids. I'm assuming either that school has no sen kids or they're quite keen to have them in the booths on computers with headphones on in the 'Academic Reintegration Centre' for 5 hours a day every day.

The hands on the desk bit was just... Like honestly do you need to require exactly how they sit, where there hands are, etc before you speak? Presumably it will be in direct contradiction to some EHCPs.

I like the idea of checking equipment in the morning but could be done in form time by form tutors rather than requiring the whole school to line up in silence in lines holding out their clear pencil cases like it's airport security or something.

Congrats on post and extra money Jan

Worth having a look at the data thread for the chat on those trials , including someone whose child 's school did them and a recent graph posted by someone that casts a bit of doubt on the data.

I am so annoyed by this scientist on BBC just now. There’s no risk apparently! Let’s just keep hundreds to thousands on children mixing together.

You can bloody well guarantee that she’s not going to be following her own advice

Happy holidays to those just finishing! Can’t believe you all go on so long!

I'm reading the data now...it seems that only 42.4% of contacts participated in daily LFTs. If a child declined to participate in daily LFTs and isolated instead, it seems that they were not followed up as an 'isolating' contact, rather were deemed to be not participating - so if someone felt they were too high risk to do daily LFTs they weren't in the trial.

Daily LFTs were also paused in high infection areas and delta variant areas due to public health concerns and was also not conducted where a whole year group was sent home or the school was closed (presumably due to it being riddled with covid).

Hmm.

Oh and also "A total of 247 and 343 control and intervention arm index cases had ≥1 recorded school-based contact, where the 10 days following the contact event included ≥1 study school day. The remaining index cases had no reported close contacts, e.g. having tested positive during a weekend/holiday."

So we're looking at a study done on the contacts of 343 kids LFTing, many of whose contacts didn't actually participate.

Noble you need to go and post o the data thread because they are discussing delta variant!