How are you planning on handling staff shortages and potential closures?

[Opihr]

Let's say your Y2 teacher is off for 10 days due to COVID and you have no way of covering the class.

Do you plan to:

A: Close to all Y2 pupils for that time
B: Merge, say, Y1 and Y2 but only open for vulnerables / key workers.
C: Something else.

I've seen that the DfE have recently updated the V /KW list and I'm trying to figure out how this fits in the current circumstances where we're not trying to implement whole school shutdowns but may have short term closures to certain cohorts or groups in response to staff absence.

Thanks so much and wishing my school colleagues strength and fortitude to get through the next term!

Bump

Why would there be nobody available to cover?

If we're talking small numbers of staff off we'll probably be fine, but every school has a finite number of staff so I think it's not unreasonable to plan for a scenario where you can't safely staff the full complement of children. Closing to any children would be an absolute last resort obviously.

I'm still confused as to why they'd all be off sick at the same time...but, we'd most likely switch to online learning for the older year groups and have the younger ones in school. We are four-form-entry, though, so have quite a few members of staff.

We would attempt to stay open as much as possible.

So even if merged classes were larger than 30, I think we’d do that before going to closed except keyworkers/vulnerable. Head, deputy etc would all be covering first though before we got to that.

If levels of staff sickness were so high we were struggling to cover though, I imagine there might be quite a few children off too (based on previous times we’ve had outbreaks). So merging classes may not be as bad as 60 together.

We couldn't get supply last term for 3 days of an isolation time. We split the class across the other classes in the phase. It was OK, and better than the crap supply we were getting, but I also tried to make sure the work didn't have very much marking attached to it, and there were parts of the day where they did independent reading so we could so intervention for those who needed it. We never lost a 1-1 TA, but we had class TAs out at the same time as class teachers.

3 out of the 4 teachers and 3 out of 4 TAs in my phase had covid in late October/early November (chaos!), including me. We've all had boosters since. I'm hoping that we can get through the next 6 weeks with our immunity as strong as it can be wrt vaccinations. I know omicron can be caught again, but my immunity fingers are crossed.

The other 2 are as yet untarnished, but they are boosted.

Bigger concern is losing TAs on a long term basis to EY due to ratios, not least because they hate doing that!

Oh, and in terms of remote learning, we've simplified the curriculum this term to cover some real basics - hopefully that will mean if they don't/can't do work, they don't miss too much, or if they do attempt it at home, it can be supported easily by parents.

We are not going to do live lessons, our parents didn't want them last time (they got them!), but we will have the option for children to dial in to story time at the end of the day. They can obviously email us work for marking.

Everyone needs patience with this term - by which I mean parents.

@Dizzyhedgehog

Why would there be nobody available to cover?

How can you not imagine this scenario?

2 class primary in rural Lincolnshire - 2 teachers, 1 TA. Both teachers off with Covid. TA is not a HLTA and not able (trust me we've tried) to cover 2 classes of 64 children (and besides that really wouldn't work!) Head is head of four schools (as is usual in rural locations) and pulled from pillar to post as everything is going to shit 🤷‍♀️

No supply available ANYWHERE 🤦‍♀️ We simply can't get any!!

This is the reality today. Any ideas?

@dotsandco
Well, I'm at a four-form-entry primary. We are also a through school, covering ages 1-19,...so we've got a lot of staff.
Our primary section has two dedicated cover teachers and several SEN teachers, who aren't class based. Add to that our interns and student teachers and you have quite a few "spare" adults, should it really become an issue. There are no HLTAs here and we're independent, so if we had to, we could just plonk any available adult in front of the kids (we usually don't). In our section, we've also had only one teacher off sick with Covid in the past 18 months. Whenever any of the kids got it, it came from outside school and didn't spread around classes.
So the idea that everyone would get it at the same time is a bit odd to me.

My previous school only had three classes but we still had a large number of adults available. It works very differently here, though.

I think it's strange having such a tiny school that you'd only have three grown ups available. Is there nobody else in your "trust" or at the other three schools your headteacher is in charge of that could come and support you in such a situation?

We’re secondary but what we plan to do is the equivalent of closing to year 2 for one day and then closing to year 1 for one day and using their teacher to cover year 2.

We had to close a year group a couple of times before Christmas. Eg. Year 8 off and some basic home learning set and then people used to cover other year groups when they would have been teaching year 8. Not ideal, but we could not get enough supply to cover. We closed different years each time so that nobody missed more than 1 day.

Why would there be nobody available to cover?

We had lots of staff absences last term. Apparently no supply teachers available anywhere so ASN staff had to cover. It meant that these pupils didn't get the help they need.

So @Dizzyhedgehog, as I presume you are aware, your schools is very different from an average state primary and especially from small village or town primaries who may only have a total staff of 15 on a good day, counting the cleaner!

Yes, @JanglyBeads, I am aware that my school has more than 15 staff members.

I have also taught at different average and small primary schools in the UK before moving abroad. My small schools were usually part of a federation or trust or partnership or whatever you want to call it. I'd expect staff to be deployed to a different school temporarily if there's such a huge issue.

Dizzyhedgehog - I work in a standard 1 form entry LEA Primary. There are hundreds of similar primaries across the country. Hundreds. 7 classes, 7 teachers, 1 Head teacher, 1 part time PPA teacher, 1 HLTA. That's it. No extra/spare teachers. No Trust or MAT. Supply is often unavailable at the moment. If 2 teachers are off, we will struggle.

We're secondary, also having a nightmare with supply. Lots of SLT doing cover including Head and Deputy Headteachers.

We’re already running on skeleton staff if everyone is in as people have left and we’ve not been able to recruit. There’s no supply cover for teachers or TAs. If we have more than a couple of members of staff out we’re really stuck. We’re not part of a trust so nowhere else to pull staff from. Plus, if there’s a covid outbreak it’s tricky to pull staff in from elsewhere who may then take it back to their own school. It also doesn’t feel right asking for supply if we have a significant outbreak.