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.'

A third of my class are now currently off with covid. Pretty sure I caught it there from a child who went off with it in the week before I caught it. My supply then got it.
And now we are starting to get cases in the parallel class.

Just crazy. We literally had no bubbles shut all last year until July.

That is crazy @DrMadelineMaxwell. Have they told all the children to get a PCR? When it happened in one of our year groups they went back to being bubbled and away from other year groups.

We’re at 12 staff down and a third of all students out ‘sick’. Cover staff are either also calling in sick or not turning up.

And re the union thing - I have contacted them. They send it back to him and ask him to sort. Ffs.

No. Just sent the standard 'there has been a positive case in class x' out.
Test and trace are pants too so I doubt many of them will have been told officially they are close contacts. Of the 4 cases we had in the last month I was contacted once to tell me I was a close contact and get a test...but not to do with the child i (probably due to the timing) caught it from.

While off with covid i had zero calls from test and trace too. I thought they mithered you during your isolation.

We aren't told of cases in our school at all. Though you hear from the pupils. I have complained about this.
Feeling really stupid as have been sat in tears after reading an email giving us an extra job (tracking related) that will just add more stress onto already busy days and won't give much benefit. Sometimes I feel I'm waiting for the one extra thing I'm asked to do that will lead to me running screaming from the building!

My regional union rep is awesome. He sat in on my 28 week risk assessment review and as a result I'm now working from home for the rest of the pregnancy!

Fab u lous Hobnob!!!

Late as always, on day 6 of Covid now, been pretty bloody ill tbh.
Had to laugh at government form which after asking where i had been in the week prior ( work, work, more work and 20 mins in Aldi with a mask on) and then asked where do you think you caught it.
Like no shit sherlock. We have confirmed cases in 1 in every 15 kids, and thats with not all kids testing by any means ( maybe 50% testing) and then false negs on the lfts.
My school have really struggled with supply and i know some have lost precious frees but I can’t even manage a whole day just sitting down without a couple of naps, not sure i will make the 10 day return date tbh.
@namechangedyetagain hang on in there, really please do. Possibly think about a school swap, maybe even at Easter.

@DrMadelineMaxwell

A third of my class are now currently off with covid. Pretty sure I caught it there from a child who went off with it in the week before I caught it. My supply then got it. And now we are starting to get cases in the parallel class.

Just crazy. We literally had no bubbles shut all last year until July.

This has happened to one of the classes in my phase. I happened to do the register there on Wednesday and had a look through the folder. One child off for testing the Friday before the teacher had a positive test (on the Sunday) - now a third of the class off. The kids in my class who are friends with those kids' parents are also off with 'colds', so assuming it's doing the rounds properly. T&T have told the teacher that even though they'd been to London the weekend before, the actual timing of his positive test almost certainly means school.

Rule that is EXACTLY the timings of what happened in my class.

Jaffa "Well, there was a man 4m away from me in the veg aisle who cleared his throat... or it could have been the 30+ children I interact closely with on a daily basis..." 🙄

Sending 💐 to everyone feeling poorly (covid or other) and don't go back until you're ready - as rule found out there's no such thing as a gentle return at the moment.

@HobnobbingAboutHobnobs

My regional union rep is awesome. He sat in on my 28 week risk assessment review and as a result I'm now working from home for the rest of the pregnancy!

Great to hear, Hobnob 👍.

Fab news, Hobbers, must be a relief.

What does 'working from home' involve?

ChloeDecker do you think school computing infrastructures will support this?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/4406511-Head-of-AQA-exams-could-be-online-within-3-years

Just commented on your thread noble we don’t have enough laptops for this. We definitely don’t have the ability to charge all the laptops.

I’m not against a move to digital completely. But it doesn’t really work for maths and science (Physics especially).

Plus we might have to rewire the school so we can charge them all.

There are schools out there which don't even have wifi, so it would need to be desktops.

And our wifi falls over if you try to get a whole class to log in at the same time.

Excellent news hobnobbing!

Anyone done an NPQML? Is ‘evidence’ acceptable if it just states progress achieved (0, 1 level, 2+) with cohort compared to the previous year? Not sure what else I need really.

[quote noblegiraffe]ChloeDecker do you think school computing infrastructures will support this?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/4406511-Head-of-AQA-exams-could-be-online-within-3-years[/quote]
Our school infrastructure barely supports us all logging into School Cloud to do Parents Evening, so I doubt it!

This came up in the associates conference a couple of weeks ago. I think the intention is to start with small cohort writing heavy subjects - he was pretty clear that subjects with huge numbers won't go that way any time soon. Good job because we couldn't get all 230 y11 in front of a computer at the same time!

Absolutely no way most schools I know have enough pcs for the whole of year 11 (plus some 13s) to be logged in at once to take a core subject GCSE!

Working from home will be marking the mocks for the maths department, completing analysis grids, for said mocks and adapting schemes of work on CompleteMaths to be more tailored to our school. I'll miss the kids and my colleagues but I can't pretend it's not a massive relief.

Our school infrastructure barely supports us all logging into School Cloud to do Parents Evening

That reminds me that neither did School Cloud. Remember the first few parents evenings when it was unusable due to crashing all the time?

That sounds great, Hobbers, both for you and your department!

In all seriousness though, I on purpose moved from Edexcel to OCR for GCSE Computer Science because we have too many students doing Computer Science that we can’t do Edexcel’s Paper 2 onscreen exam. The amount of computers you would need, physically spaced apart to prevent cheating and then printing off at the end would be a logistical and financial nightmare. There is a reason why most schools doing it currently only have the odd small class doing the course in the first place.

But they won’t listed to common sense, just to tick one of their boxes, I bet.

That reminds me that neither did School Cloud. Remember the first few parents evenings when it was unusable due to crashing all the time?

Yes! My sound kept cutting out