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

Imagine if secondary teachers across the land reorganise their rooms and then have to unorganise them again on 1 September!!!

There’s nothing difficult about setting up Skype, monkey. Go for it!

@JanFebAnyMonth

Just hearing

The government is going to publish a list of those “critical workers” who will not have to isolate If positive......
egs given in the Commons yesterday were rail signallers and air traffic control staff.

School staff????

I'm thinking not after reading this:

Covid: Isolation rules loosened for critical workers www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57894392

@JanFebAnyMonth will try today

DH would be seriously unimpressed if that happened.

Given the (large) number of school school staff that have tested positive i know of locally, despite double jabbed (including a head), they'd be bonkers to say so - unless we are the vaccine machine for the nation's children.

I think, come September, school staff will be added to that which will screw over Primary staff. Magic tape will be back in secondary so we aren't close contacts anyway haha.

We have a "normal" not nomadic timetable. But there's a secret covid one lurking in the background. I've loved double lessons but if we all have to move every lesson again, I'll cry.

@MrsHamlet the nomadic timetables has effectively meant no specialist/subject specific teaching for ks3 as no equipment to do it on. Our plan is to be back in our specialist classrooms and to teach year 8 a tweaked version of year 7 curriculum as they couldn't access the year 7 curriculum at all this year.

*timetable

No one double jabbed will be isolating from 16th August, so neither primary nor secondary.

The list is only to keep the NHS and essential workers going until it applies to everyone.

We've never isolated though, have we? We've had zero staff cases. Umpteen student cases , obviously. Not a single staff member has isolated because of student cases...even when, say, 4 cases in the same class.

Turns out our local PH team are still recommending whole class closures in primary and generous interpretation of close contacts in secondary. Week to go.

We're back to rooms in Sept but keeping some double lessons (far too many at ks3 but no one will listen to me!!).

I chose the nomad life for a couple of years as an experienced staff member in a dept that needed it. This year was a different kind of nomad.

Well that's true, Dangling, I've been surrounded by covid case and not isolated once.

I have been told not to isolate when pinged by the app and when close front row kids have come down with it I was told I probably wasn't near enough to then for 15 minutes anyway. Plus if I'm standing and they're sitting, the diagonal distance to their mouth is longer than I'd think.

So yeah, NHS staff are late to this.

I've had conversations about students being facing the board so as long as I was behind them it was fine. Never mind I was sat there for over an hour within a metre of a positive. I thought we had stories of non isolating NHS staff before, or was that an informal arrangement whereas this is formal?

Morning everyone. Haven't posted for ages but have kept up with all of the threads.

So, broke up on Friday after weeks of the covid hokey cokey - 'you get your yr8 in, yr 12 out ...' I know you all know what I mean.

We are out of zones in September but I have evicted myself from my lab anyway. I'm acting HOD (so just pretending ) until at least Jan so couldn't ask ECT to be a nomad while I had a fixed base.

We are expecting OFSTED when we come back too - yipee!

Has it crossed anyone else's mind that the furore over the nightclubs is a deliberate smokescreen to attract the media away from the not vaccinating a large chunk of the population thing??

[quote Monkeytennis97]@MrsHamlet the nomadic timetables has effectively meant no specialist/subject specific teaching for ks3 as no equipment to do it on. Our plan is to be back in our specialist classrooms and to teach year 8 a tweaked version of year 7 curriculum as they couldn't access the year 7 curriculum at all this year. [/quote]
Science kept labs but our KS3 Computing was in classrooms for the first half term! No DT or PE in KS3 until Easter.
It's been shit

@MrsHamlet yup.

I think PE had normal lessons but DT, Performing Arts and to some extent science have had a horrible time of it.

Yes and computer science too I think

PE were only teaching KS4. They've had a lot of non contact time!!

Yeah, sorry, I got confused there.

The govt announcing things that are happening now, changes on the day of the main happenings, plus things that will happen in August, doesn’t really help.

@noblegiraffe

No one double jabbed will be isolating from 16th August, so neither primary nor secondary.

The list is only to keep the NHS and essential workers going until it applies to everyone.

Oh I thought they would if they test positive?

@MrsHamlet

PE were only teaching KS4. They've had a lot of non contact time!!

I know, monkey.
They all get extra frees normally for fixtures, which pisses everyone off, but this year has been infuriating!

Surely PE is one subject that can be taught outside in the summer? Poor kids