Broom cupboard 4 - soon be time to think about heating this place

[TheHoneyBadger]

Will post this on the end of the other thread too but I have just found this:

If you are identified as a contact and asked to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace, including by the NHS COVID-19 app you may be entitled to a payment of £500 from your local authority under the Test and Trace Support Payment scheme. If you are the parent or guardian of a child who has been told to self-isolate you may also be entitled to this payment.

^Presumably that is all of the 'thought' that has gone into the situation I've been talking about. Still doesn't tell us if we would be seen as taking unauthorised leave or able to work from home or anything - need union specific advice on that.

That would have been embarrassing, Chloe! I did have a mild fear of failing the maths skills test because that would be very awkward.

Herc how long have you been teaching?

@noblegiraffe I had that same fear! Would be hard to explain as I have a maths degree!

It makes the fear worse if you have a higher qualification! I make careless mistakes despite being on my guard against them.

I am incapable of doing mental arithmetic when put on the spot. Oh, you've got a maths degree, you can work out how much we each need to pay on this restaurant bill...thank god we now have phones with calculators.

I must have missed it by a few years.

I am really fed up reading Twitter this morning, so we are apparently heading for…

Ofsted having more powers.
1265 going
KS3 SATs
Early years ratios changing so each adult would be responsible for 5 children.

What’s the betting they’d go for 195 days next as well.

Think I need to come off the tinternet today and think about something else!

They're flailing about trying to solve problems of their own making with even more bad decisions.

I saw that they'd sent letters to ambulance drivers and firefighters asking them to consider retraining as HGV drivers.

I’ve considered retraining as HGV driver this week

I had to produce a portfolio of evidence for ICT when I trained. I took it to my tutor on a disk. She looked at the disk (didn't even insert it anywhere) and ticked the box which said "pass".
I'd spent bloody ages putting shitty clip art dual coding the worksheets.

@ChloeDecker

I did my KS3 Sats in 2003 and didn't have to do ICT.

Didn’t exist then I don’t think. It was only from about 2005ish to when they were all scrapped in about 2008 was it?

Makes sense, not sure I remember any of my friends in younger years doing them.

I did the skills tests for ITT but when I did them in 2013 I didn't have to do the ICT test as it had been scrapped.

I am incapable of doing mental arithmetic when put on the spot.

A problem for me as well. I confessed this to my university tutor and he said, same here, that’s why I’m an algebraic topologist.

Quite a few people I’ve taught in the last few years were good at mental arithmetic - very numerate - but incapable of applying their skills. They found it immensely frustrating.

I remember doing SATs back in about 1995 in Year 9 and was totally miffed because the previous year there hadn't been any (not sure why) so my brother got off scott-free. And I remember I got a level 7 in Maths but the teacher has said 3 people in our set (top set, but I was very much bottom of that) got a 6 and I overheard some other pupils trying to figure out which 3 people it was and my name was one. I was most affronted.

@KatherineofGaunt, I think 1994 was the year secondary teachers refused to mark the KS3 SATs because of workload. The Tories had introduced them and expected teachers just to do it on top of everything else. (Sound familiar?) After that, the marking was taken over by exam bards, who trained and paid examiners. I marked them for MEG in 1996 - which makes me feel ancient.

@Appuskidu, I have also considered retraining as an HGV driver

@AnInspectorBores I knew someone would know!

I think I might train to be a HGV driver too. Especially if they're going to scrap teacher working hour limits. Well, I should say "limits" because we all work more anyway.

We went to the hall to do sats in year 9 but the head decided we weren't doing them so we got sent out on the field instead. That was 1992. We were Grant Maintained so I guess we could do that.
I was three weeks from a deadline for a Shakespeare for SATs book when they were culled overnight. I'd marked the bloody things twice and hated it so I was torn between relief and fury!

They extended the limits for HGV drivers too though, 11 hours a day.

Oh, @noblegiraffe.

Time for a rethink.

I’m beyond pissed off about the increase in directed time.

I spend so much time planning and marking I genuinely don’t know how I would cope if directed time was increased.

@Appuskidu

I’ve considered retraining as HGV driver this week

This made me laugh right out loud. So have I I did playground duty all week and it was miserably cold and wet.

I have very good mental arithmetic but no aptitude whatsoever for the hard stuff. Sin, cos and tan nearly drove me to a mental breakdown.

www.facebook.com/1379524501/posts/10227332370279885/?d=n

• for all considering entering the world of logistics

I think it's fairly easy to see where the desire of the Tories to scrap 1265 hours comes from. They have succeeded in the stealth privatisation of education through the academies programme, so fewer and fewer teachers are employed by an LEA. The next logical step (to them) is to dispense with the STPCD, because teachers are now working for private academy chains, not a nationalised service. When they've done that, they'll come for the TPS. After all, if we're working for private companies, why should there be a national pension scheme? Instead, we'll have to negotiate some inferior Defined Contribution scheme locally.

(Not scare mongering with the TPS point - I'm a union rep and heard a senior person in my union make the point eighteen months ago.)

IMO, Nye Bevan was right

They've already gone for the 195 days, too. There was something buried in an article I read the other day (Schoolsweek?) about making primary schools do 8 days of trips and activities and secondaries 10 days and the lost teaching time would be made up by extra hours in the day. School year would he 195 days for kids. Thus losing 5 training days. There is no way they wouldn't add those 5 days on to make teachers work 200.

@DanglingMod

They've already gone for the 195 days, too. There was something buried in an article I read the other day (Schoolsweek?) about making primary schools do 8 days of trips and activities and secondaries 10 days and the lost teaching time would be made up by extra hours in the day. School year would he 195 days for kids. Thus losing 5 training days. There is no way they wouldn't add those 5 days on to make teachers work 200.

You can see the Daily Mail headlines moaning about workshy leftie teachers objecting to working ‘ONLY’ 200 days now…!

@DanglingMod

They've already gone for the 195 days, too. There was something buried in an article I read the other day (Schoolsweek?) about making primary schools do 8 days of trips and activities and secondaries 10 days and the lost teaching time would be made up by extra hours in the day. School year would he 195 days for kids. Thus losing 5 training days. There is no way they wouldn't add those 5 days on to make teachers work 200.

That is just fucking outrageous . Teachers have already lost five days holiday when Kenneth Baker took a week away to create INSET days. Teaching went from 190 days per year to 190+5.

Who do the Tories think will want to become teachers if the conditions are made even worse? It's not as if there's over-supply even now, is there?

Mary Bousted going down a storm on Any Questions at the moment.

@Appuskidu

I’ve considered retraining as HGV driver this week

An ex colleague actually did this a few years ago (had been a History teacher and Head of Year for about 12 years) and was absolutely loving being an HGV driver, when we met up for a social. Couldn’t praise it highly enough and said he got paid way more with far less stress. Haven’t spoken to him since Covid started though.