Good news for school children.

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Roker Mackem said:
Our first one isolating now. Nearly got to Christmas. Luckily its the middle one who is best at doing work by herself and takes things in quickly.

Not ideal but could be a lot worse.

From next Friday any bubbles sent home will miss Christmas Day😬
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My daughter goes to college and my son is in Year 7 at school, I haven't had either sent home yet to isolate. I was sure at least one of them would have been by Christmas.
 


Shieldsman said:
Are you north-eastern based mate? Primary or secondary? There have been loads of positive cases at our secondary. There were also so many positive cases amongst staff at a local primary school that it has had to shut for 2 weeks with all learning online.
The situation of some schools being lucky enough to avoid closure makes the government's insistence that exams should go ahead a ridiculous one. Most of our year 11 have been out of school for 5 weeks whereas the year 11 of school x in town y have not been out at all. It's all very well giving kids information on which topic areas may come up but there are going to be two papers for each GCSE and A-Level exam this summer - the so called contingency papers. Students will therefore need to prepare for the topics in both which may equate to having to prepare for best part of the syllabus anyway.
The cynic in me would argue that the government are fully aware that the independent sector where online lessons were the norm throughout lockdown 1 in the likes of leafy Surrey or Herts where the MPs children will be studying are massively set to score from this situation. It's not a level playing field in the first place but next year's exams will be even more lopsided in their favour whereas kids from the likes of Sunderland, South Tyneside, inner city Manchester etc are left high and dry.
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I live in Leeds mate, primary school teacher. It's quite a small school.

I'm year 6 so the exam decisions affect me quite a lot. To be honest I'm a bit confused by them. The exams are still going ahead (except the GPS one), yet the data won't be published in league tables, but the school and Ofsted will still have access to the results.
 
AC Mack said:
I live in Leeds mate, primary school teacher. It's quite a small school.

I'm year 6 so the exam decisions affect me quite a lot. To be honest I'm a bit confused by them. The exams are still going ahead (except the GPS one), yet the data won't be published in league tables, but the school and Ofsted will still have access to the results.
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Yeah, the impact a spread will be no doubt will be different in a school of 2000 compared to one sub 200. Moving forward, the removal of the SPAG test at KS2 and the need for kids aged 10 to know the definition of adverbial phrases, subordinate clauses and subjunctives might be something to consider permanently!
 
Shieldsman said:
Yeah, the impact a spread will be no doubt will be different in a school of 2000 compared to one sub 200. Moving forward, the removal of the SPAG test at KS2 and the need for kids aged 10 to know the definition of adverbial phrases, subordinate clauses and subjunctives might be something to consider permanently!
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I don't even know what any of those are and I've had a book at number one in its genre chart on Amazon. :lol:
 
safccfas said:
Contact with the kids for a start. Start the day with a call via zoom, teams or good old fashioned telephone. Talk them through the work, let the kids do the work and then check back in with them a few hours later to mark it and take them through their learnings. Repeat the process in the afternoon. Teachers calls could be done in groups to make it viable.


This is exactly the experience I’m having. My kids go to a good school and I expect more. I even contacted the school and asked for more work as they were finishing it every day within an hour. Their response was that I should go online and download some more work from them. No ive got a business to run from home and YOURE the teachers not me ffs. I don’t know what they should or shouldn’t be learning. Really disappointed in my school. Appreciate that some schools out there are doing a fantastic job but sadly not the case for us.
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While teaching 5 lessons per day, a 25 minute tutorial from 8.30 am, working in an environment where many of their colleagues are absent self isolating so their workload is increasing? Dealing the pressures of working in an environment trying to get 1700 kids to adhere to Covid procedures? Then preparing differentiated activities for students within class and at home? Of course students at home have to be supported but where are any teachers supposed to get the time during a working day to carry out morning and afternoon calls to dozens or in some cases hundreds of students self isolating at any one time? Mental.
 
rentaghost said:
While teaching 5 lessons per day, a 25 minute tutorial from 8.30 am, working in an environment where many of their colleagues are absent self isolating so their workload is increasing? Dealing the pressures of working in an environment trying to get 1700 kids to adhere to Covid procedures? Then preparing differentiated activities for students within class and at home? Of course students at home have to be supported but where are any teachers supposed to get the time during a working day to carry out morning and afternoon calls to dozens or in some cases hundreds of students self isolating at any one time? Mental.
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read the context before you jump in man. Talking about primary. So pretty much everything you’ve said is redundant. Mental
 
safccfas said:
read the context before you jump in man. Talking about primary. So pretty much everything you’ve said is redundant. Mental
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I appreciate you may feel that you’ve had a poor deal from your child’s school. Not suggesting it’s the case in your instance but in my experience when setting work for kids when they are isolating they can be very selective in the tasks in which they have been allocated. I really find it difficult to believe any school worth it’s salt would set 1 hour worth of work a day and would expect parents to be kicking off if that was the case as you have done.
There’s three different potential situations here. The one where the entire school is shut - yep, then I’d be expecting staff to contact home to speak to parents not children ensuring the kids know what to do although most of this contact is now effectively done through online platforms such as Google classroom. I wouldn’t expect this to be done on a daily basis. More so a ‘how are you getting on call?’ Google classroom is the way to communicate instructions.
Then there’s the situation where a couple of kids are off - that’s a nightmare from the teacher’s perspective as they have 27 kids sitting in front of them who have to take priority. The third situation is the one where the teacher themselves is off. Speaking from first hand experience, parental demands can be far too excessive in this situation. It’s difficult to set work / phone home when you’re ill in bed with the virus.
 
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Shieldsman said:
I appreciate you may feel that you’ve had a poor deal from your child’s school. Not suggesting it’s the case in your instance but in my experience when setting work for kids when they are isolating they can be very selective in the tasks in which they have been allocated. I really find it difficult to believe any school worth it’s salt would set 1 hour worth of work a day and would expect parents to be kicking off if that was the case as you have done.
There’s three different potential situations here. The one where the entire school is shut - yep, then I’d be expecting staff to contact home and ensure the kids know what to do although most of this contact is now effectively done through online platforms such as Google classroom.
Then there’s the situation where a couple of kids are off - that’s a nightmare from the teacher’s perspective as they have 27 kids sitting in front of them who have to take priority. The third situation is the one where the teacher themselves is off. Speaking from first hand experience, parental demands can be far too excessive in this situation. It’s difficult to set work / phone home when you’re ill in bed with the virus.
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it was just their class. 30 kids sent home. Teacher still at school marking work as it was sent back. Terrible really.
 
safccfas said:
it was just their class. 30 kids sent home. Teacher still at school marking work as it was sent back. Terrible really.
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In that case an hour’s worth of work a day is poor. I’d also question if public health England recommended the class was sent home then why the teacher remained at school.
 
Shieldsman said:
In that case an hour’s worth of work a day is poor. I’d also question if public health England recommended the class was sent home then why the teacher remained at school.
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exactly. I ask the head and she said she was following PHE protocol. personally I think it’s a total over reaction followed by a completely sub standard level of home education for the kids.
 
safccfas said:
exactly. I ask the head and she said she was following PHE protocol. personally I think it’s a total over reaction followed by a completely sub standard level of home education for the kids.
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Just maybe be aware if 1 child in the class has a positive test then it's public health England - not the schools decision to send the kids home for a fortnight. The nature of the beast in primary education and secondary for that matter is that kids within a 'bubble' (which is a joke concept in a school anyway) do not socially distance, indeed they are forced to sit in close proximity of one another without wearing a face covering. Therefore if one in the bubble tests positive then it's standard procedure from PHE to send the whole bubble home.
 
Shieldsman said:
Just maybe be aware if 1 child in the class has a positive test then it's public health England - not the schools decision to send the kids home for a fortnight. The nature of the beast in primary education and secondary for that matter is that kids within a 'bubble' (which is a joke concept in a school anyway) do not socially distance, indeed they are forced to sit in close proximity of one another without wearing a face covering. Therefore if one in the bubble tests positive then it's standard procedure from PHE to send the whole bubble home.
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yeah it was PHE. Which is fair enough from the Heads pov. She’s just doing what they say. Surprised the teacher and the ta didn’t have to isolate. Definitely one rule for kids and another for teachers.
 
Both of my kids isolating at home now, and the eldest now with a positive test as it's spread through her classlike wildfire in the last week.

In a way I'm glad it's happened when it has so we have time to isolate and hopefully be sorted in time for Christmas. I'd be massively fucked off if my parents had to spend Christmas at home because they are dragging them in until the death over the festive period even though realistically all any bugger does in the last week of term is make Christmas decorations and watch home alone etc counting down the clock to the holidays
 
safccfas said:
yeah it was PHE. Which is fair enough from the Heads pov. She’s just doing what they say. Surprised the teacher and the ta didn’t have to isolate. Definitely one rule for kids and another for teachers.
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Which is a total joke. Some of the staff in schools are 50s, early 60s. The class in which they have been teaching for a couple of hours, or in the case of primary all day has a positive case and they don;t get sent home???? You'd think the government thinks teachers are disposable. :neutral:
Marty Moose said:
Both of my kids isolating at home now, and the eldest now with a positive test as it's spread through her classlike wildfire in the last week.

In a way I'm glad it's happened when it has so we have time to isolate and hopefully be sorted in time for Christmas. I'd be massively fucked off if my parents had to spend Christmas at home because they are dragging them in until the death over the festive period even though realistically all any bugger does in the last week of term is make Christmas decorations and watch home alone etc counting down the clock to the holidays
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I can see that being an issue in the last week of term and a load of kids kept off. If I had kids of a school age I'd be keeping them off from this Friday coming. I just couldn't take the risk that they were carrying it and passed it on their gran over Christmas.
 
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Roker Mackem said:
Sods law the first will come in last week to end your family Christmas
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I spoke too soon 🥴 I got a phone call from the school this morning saying my son has to isolate due to a positive case in his class.

He has to go back on Thursday 17th but I thought it was 2 weeks they had to isolate?
 
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addicted_to_safc said:
I spoke too soon 🥴 I got a phone call from the school this morning saying my son has to isolate due to a positive case in his class.

He has to go back on Thursday 17th but I thought it was 2 weeks they had to isolate?
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Oh dear.

Its two weeks from last contact.. so must have been Thursday when Corona case was last in?
 
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