Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[vikingTON]

1 hour ago, Gaz said:

Please don't fall for the spin that teachers are enjoying being at home right now. We're not. We're trained to teach kids, and that's what we want to be doing.

That'll be why the Cafe Continental in Gourock like every other pretentious wine bar effort in the country is rammed so often with teachers celebrating their next batch of holidays that you can set your own calendar to it. 

[trainspotter]

1 hour ago, Dee Man said:

8pm doorstep claps, fireworks and pots and pans for teachers next IMO.

Torn over this one - would be willing to rattle the pots and pans in appreciation of my dear lady and her colleagues but I'd prefer if she was using said utensils to make my dinner instead.

[Shandon Par]

Sorry (not really) if it has been mentioned already but today is International Nurses Day. Good work nurses. You're very much the Kevin Nisbets of the fight against this virus.

[Granny Danger]

1 minute ago, Shandon Par said:

Sorry (not really) if it has been mentioned already but today is International Nurses Day. Good work nurses. You're very much the Kevin Nisbets of the fight against this virus.

Like Nisbet you say?  I look forward to see her at Tannadice next season then.

[Bairnardo]

29 minutes ago, Steven W said:

Given that I'm home schooling my son, do you think I should be paid for that? Would be intrigued to hear the teachers unions' opinion on this. (Be under no illusions I'm no right winger)

Lol. Not sure if serious

25 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

Work shy public sector employees bleating about their conditions!

If you have encountered a work shy teacher I assume you complained and sought that the problem be dealt with?

22 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Interesting to see that in the teeth of a global pandemic where kids are having their education ruined that the first thought of some teachers is their pay packet.

Meanwhile other employees are facing the end of their livelihoods.

Utterly predictable and utterly sad.

Aye, folk should work for free. 

15 minutes ago, virginton said:

That'll be why the Cafe Continental in Gourock like every other pretentious wine bar effort in the country is rammed so often with teachers celebrating their next batch of holidays that you can set your own calendar to it. 

And no one should celebrate the start of their time off?

[Granny Danger]

Just now, Bairnardo said:

 

If you have encountered a work shy teacher I assume you complained and sought that the problem be dealt with?

Piss off you, I’m wanting a response from a work shy teacher.

[Salvo Montalbano]

We shouldnt be opening schools in scotland before the end of the summer holidays, no chance. But we should consider lengthening the school day in august by 30-45 minutes for kids to get extra tuition and catch up, isn’t a catch all answer but as close as possible to giving the government time to come up with distancing measures etc.

There is no chance the teacher's union will allow that unless there is a roughly 15% pay rise along with it.
Even then I imagine it would be rejected

As much as it wouldn't fit with whatever people may think, the biggest reason schools can't just open up for an extra 30-45 minutes a day is actually bus contracts. In my school we've had to have a b*****dised halfway house model rather than starting our new "definitely all about improving attainment and not about saving money, nosiree" timetable because the bus companies wouldn't or couldn't come at the times we wanted them to at the start and end of the day. These sorts of things often have to be done 2 years (or more) in advance to tie in with where and when the bus companies are able to deploy their buses. And if you try to break a contract and re-tender there are huge financial penalties to the local authority.

[Guest JTS98]

I've been in contact today with two international schools in different countries who are going to be limiting class sizes in the near future. One will be cutting to ten students per class, the other to seventeen. Both advertise on the basis of 22-student maximums in normal times.

I'd imagine that when kids first get back to school in the UK there will be at least calls for smaller class sizes than normal. But what are the practicalities of this? Are there enough spare classrooms and enough available teachers to cut class sizes? I doubt it.

I think we'll be looking at rotating kids on a morning/afternoon basis. I'd agree with what Mixu mentioned above, that a lot of what takes place in schools - and I'd add colleges and unis to this too - doesn't need to happen. At least not in a communal setting.

This staffing and space issue could lead to a much leaner school experience, but that doesn't necessarily mean a negative.

[Qos91]

afaik this isn't a home testing thing, they really need to ram the thing into your tonsils for the sample.
I'm extremely tangentially linked to some of the efforts to commandeer testing from non-NHS labs and one of the things that they're running up against is because this is an RNA virus, the tests are much much more vulnerable to contamination, degradation and so on than DNA viruses (single helix is much more reactive than double helix) which is proving to be a stumbling block in getting a work flow up and running with inexperienced staff.
Obviously this doesn't apply to existing virology labs who do this all the time but they're equipped with positive pressure rooms and all the rest of it. It's (partly) a matter of getting all the volunteer lab space ready to the point where they can process samples without generating a load of crap results.

I got tested on sunday. They make you test yourself in your car now. This was a mobile unit ran by the army.
They hand you a test and give you instructions and then hand it back.
Cant see why test at home kits cant be given out if we are expected to test ourselves anyway.

As for the lack of testing. I went online and could have been tested 15 minutes later if I stayed any closer to the testing unit.
There cant be that many people asking to be tested as we have only had one case since thursday in this region I think.

[Granny Danger]

3 minutes ago, JTS98 said:

I've been in contact today with two international schools in different countries who are going to be limiting class sizes in the near future. One will be cutting to ten students per class, the other to seventeen. Both advertise on the basis of 22-student maximums in normal times.

I'd imagine that when kids first get back to school in the UK there will be at least calls for smaller class sizes than normal. But what are the practicalities of this? Are there enough spare classrooms and enough available teachers to cut class sizes? I doubt it.

I think we'll be looking at rotating kids on a morning/afternoon basis. I'd agree with what Mixu mentioned above, that a lot of what takes place in schools - and I'd add colleges and unis to this too - doesn't need to happen. At least not in a communal setting.

This staffing and space issue could lead to a much leaner school experience, but that doesn't necessarily mean a negative.

If part-time schooling happens that will create enormous childcare issues.  Solve one problem create another, though I agree the status quo is probably not an option.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

Who's going to pay for that?

Do you get a salary or hourly wage?

Do you stop working as soon as the school bell stops ringing?

I mean i suppose if teachers objected to trying to help kids catch up they could always shorten the school holidays?

Also pretty sure teachers just got one of the biggest pay rises in the public sector in the last ten years?

[vikingTON]

8 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

And no one should celebrate the start of their time off?

One would expect that their apparent group devastation at being 'trained to teach kids and that's not what they're doing' would show through at such times as well; it doesn't though.

The last thing that the UK needs is to put yet another group of workers on a pedestal and pretend that they're some sort of heroic martyrs; least of all teachers whose purpose/perk trade-off is blindingly fucking obvious.

[Jacksgranda]

Food parcel day! Much the same as previous ones, but the bread is different - Morato American Sandwich loaf. When I get round to eating it I'll let you know what it's like. The Kara loaf is quite nice.

Thought we'd got 3 bags of apples this time, but it was just the one, I mistook the spuds for two bags of apples the way the tins were lying on it. 

Heinz vegetable soup this week.

[stumigoo]

Do you get a salary or hourly wage?
Do you stop working as soon as the school bell stops ringing?
I mean i suppose if teachers objected to trying to help kids catch up they could always shorten the school holidays?
Also pretty sure teachers just got one of the biggest pay rises in the public sector in the last ten years?

Teachers are paid based on their contracted 35 hours a week. It’s an annual salary with 195 working days.

[Jacksgranda]

3 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

December to March, like every other year.

There is no evidence that implementing the lockdown here, when they did, had any real effect on limiting deaths (Just as there isn't any to say that it didn't tbf).

Flattening a curve might make the peak smaller, but doesn't automatically make the area under it any less.

It is perfectly acceptable to say that the loss of life is tragic, and that the lockdown was (and is) ineffective.

The lockdown wasn't specifically designed to avoid loss of life per se, it was designed to stop the NHS getting overwhelmed with hospitalisations all at once, which would inevitably have resulted in horrendous scenes and more than likely even more deaths.

This has been explained to you more than once.

[Jacksgranda]

2 hours ago, Forest_Fifer said:

2 hours ago, Todd_is_God said:

At least you agree it's ineffective

That's not what he meant and you know it.

I wouldn't be too sure...

[Bairnardo]

5 minutes ago, virginton said:

One would expect that their apparent group devastation at being 'trained to teach kids and that's not what they're doing' would show through at such times as well; it doesn't though.

The last thing that the UK needs is to put yet another group of workers on a pedestal and pretend that they're some sort of heroic martyrs; least of all teachers whose purpose/perk trade-off is blindingly fucking obvious.

They have excellent holidays. No one is disputing that. You seemed to be implying that enjoying their holidays is an indication that they dont enjoy their work or are lazy. 

No one is martyring them. What we are seeing here is the very British style of queueing up to tell other folk they shouldnt be defending their contractual rights and conditions, and instead should be working for free.

If I am asked to work for free at any point between now and my inevitable death, I will proudly tell my employer to GTF. If you dont want to that's fine, but dont expect the same of those of us who place appropriate value on our time

 

[Theroadlesstravelled]

I'm sure there are a few teachers who want to be teachers but there are more than a few who are in it for days off and couldn't get a job anywhere else.

[stumigoo]

I'm sure there are a few teachers who want to be teachers but there are more than a few who are in it for days off and couldn't get a job anywhere else.

You’ll have some empirical evidence to prove that?

[Bairnardo]

2 minutes ago, Theroadlesstravelled said:

I'm sure there are a few teachers who want to be teachers but there are more than a few who are in it for days off and couldn't get a job anywhere else.

So they have less right to those days off or should be expected to give them up for no money?

A wage cut, in very real terms?