The Sixty-Sixth Republic - Who will be the medal winners on Results Day? Grade inflation predicted again

[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.

Can't find the story now Noble. Will look again.

I don't get the 10% either. I thought I did but now I don't.

Aha!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx3kv0n3p4zo

From the story "with eight members of staff isolating."

Isolating, or with covid? I've lost touch with what the Scottish rules are these days. I know they have masks still, are they still isolating contacts?

I don't get the 10% either.

I KNOW, RIGHT? I alternate between being annoyed at them for writing it badly and annoyed at the press for all reporting it differently and not going 'hmm'.

I mean, it's kind of important.

Same as ours afaik. So they must be cases. I think they stopped isolating contacts before us.

I thought we didn't have to isolate anymore?

Positive case in household, everyone else can go out?

Only need to isolate if you've tested positive yourself, so why aren't they saying that.

Because they don't want to say 8 members of staff with covid because teachers do.not.catch.it.

Ah right, of course. If any of them get it seriously, it will be due to pre-existing conditions. Or something.

I'm going to engage on work tomorrow afternoon. I know I had three key jobs to do this holiday, I can't remember what any of them are. Which bodes well. Hope past-me has written a list for current-me.

They most probably sat on chairs in a staffroom whilst having extensive coffee breaks.

@Piggywaspushed

They most probably sat on chairs in a staffroom whilst having extensive coffee breaks.

Or all went to a pub together. Disgraceful behaviour.

I don’t even know the rules anymore. We should all still be wearing masks and distancing but (talking about myself as well), having two vaccines has made us all complacent. And it’s too hot. I get spots and look like Nanny McPhee.

Ironically we could all go to a nightclub and winch each other on the dancefloor yet we’re supposed to wear a mask while we’re a metre apart in the corridor. Daft.

Have I missed something re govt guidelines to schools as dd is saying tik tok is telling her that schools have been told to prepare for lockdown. I've kept away from all news about school and covid.

Yes we have inset on Weds, so hopefully I'll be able to find someone to go through sims, and also hoping they may give us an outline of what they'd like us to do the first couple of days. I'll come back tomorrow with what I have in my head so far.

Anxiety is awful at the minute, I slept for a solid 12 hours one night whilst we were away. And now I'm back to waking up with the dreads at 2am and not being able to get back to sleep until it's time for DH to get up for work.

It will be ok. I'm excited and daunted at the same time. Yes I'm in Y3 with some I know from placement and I cannot wait to see them again

It's really easy to find info like pp status on Sims. Someone will show you in two seconds, but it's basically: get your class list up, look at advance settings on right hand menu and then drag over the columns you want (SEN status, PP etc). Really easy. Sometimes it's good to focus on a basic admin task and know you can do that with no stress or thinking needed 👍

I just get the standard class register up on SIMS, right click and it brings up a list of stuff like PP, SEN, birthday and when you click it, it adds a column next to their name.

Noble, staff and pupils were encouraged to test before returning to school, and to continue doing it twice weekly. No ideas about uptake. We've never tested them on the premises.
The staff in that story could just be isolating - rules are to isolate until you get a negative PCR if double jagged, and to isolate fully if you are not double jagged (unless you're under 18 in which case carry on)
That'll still take a day and some staff won't have both vaccines quite yet either.

Don’t worry name totally normal to feel insanely nervous. Is inset tomorrow? Or next week?

Best of luck

@noblegiraffe

Oh I would so love to never have to do another parents evening again. echt!

It was objectively OK, but the same problems of not really being useful: from 12.00.p.m. to 8.00.

Aaaargh.

The Scottish high rates are also to do with the fact that opening up has only just happened AND schools have gone back.

Encouraging kids to test will cause cases to go up (this is why some on MN are trying to put people off consenting to the tests at the start of term I think). As kids haven't been testing regularly over the summer, it will catch asymptomatic infections that would have been missed otherwise and possibly pick up some positives from kids who had it asymptomatically earlier in the summer; we know they could still test positive.

It doesn't mean infections have gone up (yet). I don't know if Scotland has the equivalent of the ONS infection survey.

When we ran out testing centre in March it picked up very few positive cases but we were going back after a lockdown. I wonder what the results will be like this time.

I was always a bit on the fence about LFTs but after my recent experiences I know they really are shite. They will miss loads of cases!

@motherrunner

When we ran out testing centre in March it picked up very few positive cases but we were going back after a lockdown. I wonder what the results will be like this time.

My headteacher was worried about this too, last term. Coming back from a strict lockdown vs coming back from a free-for-all summer holiday, will produce a very different picture I am sure.

It’s why we are still ‘bubbling’ form groups in Year areas in the morning at least, as we mostly used to get positive notifications from parents in the morning and although it doesn’t look like it will be easy to send anyone home with the new guidance, I think my Head is trying their best to cause the least disruption if it does happen (even though staff are desperate to have their form groups in their own classrooms again!)

I'm not sure what the Scottish rules are on isolating? Are they the same as the English rules?
Even so, 8 staff in a primary isolating already is a lot!

The 10% thing is unclear but I would think it's 10% of a group who have mixed closely e.g. a form, a class?

I agree with you, Pumpkin. That's how I read it.