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

Nah, they're not interested in discussing schools data with anyone who has any actual experience of it.

Bit like the government.

FFS.
Was it this trial or the test events one where we discussed the fact that it was set up in a way that it wouldn’t find anything?

@noblegiraffe

Nah, they're not interested in discussing schools data with anyone who has any actual experience of it.

I don't think that is true on this occasion. This is actual data so they are on it.

I have summarised over there but don't understand your number things well enough.

Oh, and also they don't like me

This graph sums it up as a bit of a shitshow. Out of potential contacts for testing they were hampered by refusal to consent, lack of availability for testing and whole year groups being sent home.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of this 'only 1.6% of contacts tested positive so 98.4% of kids were sent home unnecessarily' thing too, because from the report, that seems to be from testing of asymptomatic contacts (and very small numbers of those) and doesn't seem to include symptomatic contacts so doesn't appear to represent how many contacts actually went on to catch covid.

Is it a Guided Read, MrsHP? We have whole class (KS2) lessons doing that. What I would have called Comprehension when I was at school in the 1970s. I used to detest having to use my bookmark to read every line s-o-ooooooooo s-lo-wwwwwwwwlllly. We also do it in KS1 but with different levels of reading material depending on the reading proficiency of the small group we are working with.
We use an online reading resource that does similar - after reading speed assessment it only highlights the text a few words at a time at the speed it has set for you. Skim readers/speed readers often have their accounts locked until the teacher can look at it - it’s usually that the program doesn’t accept you are reading as fast as you are.

It definitely feels like we’re being gaslit by the government and the media. I wonder what this graph would look like I’d you started from October last year and not Feb when we were in lockdown and cases were falling.

Apparently the exemption for food chain workers exists even if you aren’t double vaccinated, which is presumably an indication of how fucked that area is.

Case rates were higher before Christmas, yes? So why were we not having a 'pingdemic' before Christmas?

The empty shelves in supermarkets are being touted as evidence that the pindemic is out of control....but we didn't have empty shelves before Christmas.

We also know that isolations in school children were (up till last week) higher than they are now, and yet the papers weren't reporting on the terrible impact of isolation on school children then.

I suspect they also weren't reporting on the terrible impact of being a close contact then either.

The empty shelves now are because of Brexit and the pingdemic is being blamed as a distraction.

In addition, the papers are going all-out on the pindemic now, because they want isolation to end whereas before they were all about hiding the impact of covid because they didn't want a lockdown.

This seems the perfect time to re-open nightclubs.

Rates in children will go down now because no school, but can only see rates in the 16-24 group increasing, even with increasing vaccinations because of only being single jabbed.

Case rates were higher before Christmas, yes? So why were we not having a 'pingdemic' before Christmas?
Wasn't it just before then that it came out the app just led to an MS Excel spreadsheet? I feel like the app wasn't actually really working as intended for a while.

The empty shelves now are because of Brexit and the pingdemic is being blamed as a distraction

Maybe it’s not all Brexit, but I’m sure a lot of the empty shelves are Brexit related

We know there’s a shortage of delivery drivers due to Brexit, Grant Shapps was talking about removing restrictions on them having to have proper breaks to combat it.

Whoop, an hour or so to go for some of you! 🥳

The data thread is tone deaf to anyone who works in schools I find. The stuff being reported in the media re shops etc is what the NE has been dealing with for weeks; except we aren't London. As usual.

Newcastle has started to turn thankfully which could be an indication of genuine flattening as schools finish today. Many are still wearing masks everywhere too thankfully.

NT however have plummeted as schools finished last week.

I need to digest a lot of data, thanks for looking into it Nobel. going forward we need to look more closely at hospitals etc too.

My son's school had a case in ks1, no one has a clue what to do apart from all the teachers are getting pcrs. So those classes have closed and all the kids are about and about everywhere. at least it's sunny so they're outside!

@Saucery not sure - my own kids do guided reading at their school but I don’t think it’s the same. It didn’t directly affect me when I was being told so I didn’t allocate any memory space to it 🤣

Went to a supermarket today - nearly all staff and customers in masks. Most ask still sanitising trollies on entry and people generally making space when walking down the street etc…

have summarised over there but don't understand your number things well enough.

Small sample size plus low adherence to study protocol = can't tell you a lot.

I have, over the past few days, been to a small co-op (twice), a large Lidl but very late at night, a large garden centre, a branch of Dunelm. Not seen a single unmasked person. Even primary aged children wearing them. Quite impressed, really.

I haven't been out since Friday (isolating) but DCs tell me that virtually everyone they've seen in shops/bars/transport has been wearing them.
DS went into London on Weds and DD was adamant that he should make sure he wore one. He was happy to.

I'm seeing mostly masked in places like supermarkets, shops and anywhere busy indoors. Pubs are a mixed bag because people don't wear them sat down, they forget when stood at the bar or going to the toilet but seem to wear on entry and exit from the pub!

No masks outside or in play group. There was only 5 adults in a large village hall and it was well ventilated so felt safe.

Majority of people wearing them near me. Apart from a middle aged man who was looking quizzically at everyone in a mask.

I took DS to the barbers yesterday and I wore my mask. The other men in the shop were wearing masks too. Barber wore a visor (preciously mask and visor).

Also popped to my local shop to grab milk and although staff weren’t wearing a mask all customers did. Staff still behind screens. It has out my faith in people!

*put

Yes, mine too. The anti-mask brigade don’t like it though. It’s one of the situations where those who shout the loudest suddenly realise they didn’t represent the majority.

Most people wearing masks here. I've been to lots of shops this week and almost everyone was wearing them. Not necessarily wearing them in the wide spaces between shops in the shopping centre, but going into the actual shops people were wearing masks.

Nearly everyone here is too.