Sixty-Eighth Republic - still under temporary guardianship…

[MrsHerculePoirot]

In the absence of staff and her fabulous thread titles and witty openers here is a 68th thread. The broom cupboard is overflowing so time for another Republic. Hopefully we hear from staff soon.

Stolen from previous threads…
'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.'

Some good news re btecs
twitter.com/realgeoffbarton/status/1460506491954339840?s=21

Guess who started a thread yesterday, Jan?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/4402789-Cull-of-BTECs-pushed-back-to-2024

I reckon they'll keep BTECs.

Just got into school but thanks for the offer of help. Primary

And I know lessons aren't graded anymore, shame they don't😂

@namechangedyetagain

Aargh. Can't sleep, am really not in a good place rn. I am wondering if teaching is for me. Have had such a bad week, a terrible first observation which I can't get over. My confidence is shattered. I have lost any ability at all to teach. Have another one coming up this week and i seem at the point where i can't face going in. And I'm literally losing sleep. I think ive made a huge mistake .i know one bad obs isn't everything but I'm now so worried about it all. And i can't pick myself up from it.

I will come back tonight and there's so much going on and I'm not feeling that supported outside of being given my time out of class and ect sessions.

I think we could all have written this at some point. It does make me cross as when I started, the stresses in school were so massively different and my mentor had loads of time to help, and planning/observations was a whole different kettle of fish (and it was still hard!) It’s dreadful now and that’s why I am pushing so hard for my own kids not to teach-I honestly wish I’d never started and teaching is all I ever wanted to do.

Which year group are you? What was the feedback and have you got another one coming up? Happy to help if it’s KS1.

Can you talk openly to your year partner name? They’ll presumably know the school, staff and children well and will be able to give you some insights.

You’ve had really good observations in the past haven’t you, so force yourself to remember those too!

Definitely going crazy at school.

I'm off with covid as is my supply teacher/ppa cover. My student is teaching the class.
And 1/5th of my class are off with covid too.

Oh no name don’t right off teaching just yet. You are still in your NQT year and this year is tougher than most.

Last year was my NQT year and I was in a pretty bad place this time last year too. See if your mentor can help.

Really hope you have a better day

schoolsweek.co.uk/ofsted-to-inspect-all-schools-by-2025-after-24m-funding-boost/

The HT union request a pause to Ofsted this term, but in response, the government give them a 24m cash injection to make sure everyone gets inspected quicker.

Brilliant

That just feels very tone-deaf.

@Iamnotthe1

That just feels very tone-deaf.

Completely.

Giving the £24m directly to schools and pausing inspections would have been far too sensible.

It makes you wonder exactly how that money will be spent? Salaries for existing leaders to do a bit of Ofstedding on the side?

Or will they be advertising for full time inspectors? I wonder how many desperately unhappy SLT there are out there who would jump ship to be an Ofsted inspector?

I know everyone hates the system and most think Ofsted isn’t fit for purpose, but is it better to be a head of a school that may fail and result in you having to leave, or going to be an inspector where I presume you aren’t accountable to anyone and can’t be sacked?! It’s a nice safe salary bump towards your pension before you retire?

Not me, I hasten to add. I swear far too much and would never be able to toe the party line.

"Ofsted has been asked by government to inspect all schools and further education (FE) providers by summer 2025, to give a quicker assessment of how well education is recovering from the pandemic."

Recovering from the pandemic? Schools are right in the middle of it. What's happening now will need recovering from. FFS.

Yep. Still in it. Totally had more impact this academic year so far than either of the previous two.

Totally had more impact this academic year so far than either of the previous two.

Yep. My friend doing supply at the moment says that every school he's been in is in some sort of crisis. He's a good teacher, I trust his opinion. He says that the academic gaps are bigger this year because there is no consistency. Lots of staff absence, so lots of cover being set that is often 'busy work'. When the kids were off with us, we could provide at least some learning - even if we watered it down, or not all children attended, we knew exactly what they were getting, from who, and what the catchups would be - now it's just general chaos.

Today:

Between 8.30 and 9.00 I had another class (teacher and TA off with covid), my TA had my class.
At 9.00 I walked the other class down the corridor, dropping children off in various other rooms until I ended up with the year 3 part of the class in my room. We shifted everyone around and I taught whole class reading until 9.40 when supply finally turned up. In the meantime, we'd walked back up the corridor, got all the writing books out and taken them back to my class because we didn't know what time (or if at all) supply might turn up.

At 2.30 our resource base teacher had to go and relieve the supply teacher and the class from the library - she then kept them until home time doing some random bits of PSHE for anti bullying week.

In the meantime they've been 'taught' subordinating conjunction use and perimeter of rectilinear shapes.. but it's not been marked. So at 3.30 me and the rest of our team marked their books and planned for the rest of the week for that class, resourced the whole lot because this morning was beyond stressful.

That class will have different supply all week, and we can't do anything like an assembly etc to try and keep them together with us.

After seeing the absence list this morning, another teacher just stuck her head around the door and said 'how long do you think we can keep every class open?'

The teacher who is off with covid is fine - completely asymptomatic. We sent him a list of planning for next week this evening.

I’m normally a lurker but just joining in the the COVID debacle. It’s rife in our single form primary school, staff and children off, I’ve got it and feel really ill. We can’t get supply staff so have had to close a class for 3 days and are only reopening due to borrowing 2 staff members from different MAT schools. It’s mad.

Sorry you feel rough Hairy

This was all so predictable. Unvaccinated kids, no mitigation measures - we were always going to be here.

I’m so cross about this Ofsted decision. Do we think it was in response to Heads asking for a pause in inspections or just a coincidence?

£24 million would have really been good to help fund the shit tonne of supply cover that’s been needed in schools this term.

Do parents know what's going on? Do you think us4us are happy with it? Someone should do a thread on health.. haha. All those ICU consultant's wives will have had nothing to do for a few months now.

Us4Them regularly tweet in disgust when a school has to close classes. They think it’s totally unnecessary.

Time for their Parent Army to step forward and fill in for the missing teachers, I guess.

@namechangedyetagain I'm so sorry you've had such a bad time. I would say that if you qualified during the covid crisis then you have serious coping skills, but also you won't have known "normality".

I think Nqt or whatever it is called now, ECT, is harder than training. You're suddenly shoved in front of classes with all of last years support removed and all accountability on your shoulders. It's a steep learning curve.

The obs is in the past. If you're open and receptive to improvements then your mentor should be helping you with this.

Hope you feel more chipper soon.

Hello me again. So tired tonight. The observation fell down on me not moving around the class and teaching from the front and also not spending long enough modeling in small enough steps. It was the second time ive tried the split input maths group thing to try and get every child what the needed (and failing miserably). Also my first morning of working with a new class ta who didn't know me or the class. Im not making excuses, i just don't think it was a completely fair reflection. Ive kind of lost the sparkly bits I did as a student eg a lovely starter as just don't have time! Starters these days are usually links back to prior learning, maybe some whiteboard assessment.

Broke down in front of my mentor today. Confidence has gone.

We’re back to multiple classes being covered in halls and canteens…. Our cases are creeping up again in students. Teachers without Covid are struggling to keep going - managing cover, setting work for cover and remote students and generally just starting to collapse….

I presume Us4Us are part of the group that's advocating for people not to have to isolate even if they have symptomatic Covid.

Twats

@namechangedyetagain sorry it’s tough for you. Can you ask to observe someone else doing those things? I think it would be really helpful to see how someone experienced does it - and watching for specific things for a specific part of a lesson can be really helpful. Just a thought to add to the advice from everyone else.

I have a special shoulder for staff @namechangedyetagain - you're absolutely not alone in finding it hard.

Teachers without Covid are struggling to keep going - managing cover, setting work for cover and remote students and generally just starting to collapse.

Yep. So much for my easy week. Luckily we'd planned a stand alone week for anti bullying, so at least foundation subjects aren't getting fucked up as well.