Covid-19 Virus

Dido raised the white flag. And she said she wasn’t going to do that.

 

I think in the context of a national emergency we can discard ‘nice to do’ things like EIAs. But I wonder how this lockdown would fare? The plan appears to be treating everyone the same - which is the complete opposite of what the the EA duty is.

But yes, I accept the opportunity to make changes that could meaningfully improve NHS capacity in the present has now passed.

 

But surely equally keeping over 55s cooped up while under 55s are free to do what they wish is discrimination on the grounds of a protected characteristic, although it may be justified?

 

Engagement ring ?

 

Can anyone tell me if, from what they can gather, I will be allowed to continue offering my personal training services (you know, my job) outdoors in a public area under this new lockdown? Once again the information is vague and ignores personal training specifically:

You can exercise in a public outdoor place:

● by yourself
● with the people you live with
● with your support bubble (if you are legally permitted to form one)
● in a childcare bubble where providing childcare
● or, when on your own, with 1 person from another household

What on earth does that last one even mean?

 

Sounds like you’re able to go ahead. There’s a whole raft of things that were banned in March that are permissible under this lockdown.

 

Following Boris’ latest lockdown, Emma Saunders retweets a nice message from Kabs with club contact details if anyone is in need..

Nice touch from both ..

 

Found a bit about personal training on the pdf in the end. Am definitely able to continue.

 

Now Boris has confirmed elite football can continue anyone know who Xisco will play up front. I am assuming Gray and Deeney out till mid February until Tier 5 reviewed

 

Probably just your customers that are banned knowing this government...

 

Sounds about right!

 

I wonder if Minder's on tomorrow?!
I'm glad I ordered a new translation book last week!
Keep safe everyone.

 

Starmer wanted schools to stay open on Sunday, and wanted zoos closed. Changed his tune Monday afternoon once journalists had been briefed that Boris was closing schools.

Useless government, useless opposition.

 

Unfortunately I can no longer take Starmer seriously since seeing the version of him on Spitting Image, that voice.

 

God help us if that incompetent buffoon is still in charge by then!

 

So I'm reading online the penny has dropped and schools are finally recognised as a significant route for the virus to spread

I've only been saying it since last summer

 

We don’t play elite football.

 

Having the schools closed from March to September was bad enough, do you think they should never have been reopened?

 

Maybe we should have closed the hospitals too then. They were and still are a massive route for the virus to spread. But that isn't the only criteria, is it?

Regardless of anything else, it can only be seen as a national embarrassment that we've failed to maintain a proper education for our children. Despite the spiel put out extolling its virtues, there's simply no way the online provision hits the mark for the vast majority of pupils across all ages.

 

Maybe @zztop can confirm, but there's a strong rumour online that DfE staff were briefed yesterday morning that primary schools would not be closing and that exams would be going ahead.

 

It's completely bizarre. All I can say from my experience is secondary schools weren't given any heads up whatsoever as of 5pm, and the 8pm announcement is the first that my family member (headteacher of a primary school) had heard about it.

Obviously it wasn't completely unexpected, but these 11th hour decisions are totally irresponsible. As it was in February, it was inevitable schools would have to close eventually. Every teacher I spoke to in December knew it was a case of when, not if. Why not make the announcement on the 18th December, when the school's broke up? Or even announce with the Christmas restrictions? Or new year's? Even Sunday night would have been preferable to letting the kids mix for a day, adding little to no benefit to their education, before closing anyway.

Sorry for the rant but it's baffling

 

It's mental. My wife is a science teacher at an upper school (weird 3 tier system in Central Beds) and they were all in yesterday for training, a lot of which consisted of planning for how to accommodate kids coming back in over the next two weeks. Total waste of a day.

 

Yeah, we expected something from the school at 8.01pm on the assumption they'd have been teed up in advance. But in the end it didn't come until 8.45pm and then it was basically just a 'we have to plan everything tomorrow so for now we'll just do what we did in the first lockdown' message from the headteacher. We'll hear more later apparently.

And while you know I'm skeptical of the benefits of the online learning stuff, at least give schools a chance to do it in an orderly way. It has no hope in hell of working if everything is put in place on the hoof like this.

 

If the consequence was dead people then no, they should have stayed remote teaching until a vaccine

 

My section within DfE were updated first thing yesterday morning as to what the opening/closing plans were that, in conjunction with PHE, had been agreed based on available info over the weekend. The plans were to keep Primary Schools open, and only stagger the secondary schools. The impression was that the DfE wanted to fight for every day of face to face teaching that they could due to it being superior to online provision in most children's situations.

I then became aware that the Perm Sec was called to a meeting in late morning based on further data, and she was unnavailable for the rest of the afternoon. I knew nothing after that.

 

I've asked a lot of my players from Maya aged six,who is as bright as a button with very bright parents and she is happy just reading books. She can almost learn independently which is good as Doris is not looking forward to home schooling!
Most of the other children ranging from seven to eighteen whether they have zoom lessons or online pieces to complete say most of their classmates ( and in some cases themselves) do not either participate or complete the work. This is slightly false as most of Joel's friends ( Joel is thirteen today) didn't do their homework before Covid.
Quite a number of children say their teachers are not able to set up the zoom classes correctly and having mentioned elsewhere my experiences with a local head,I can see their point.
All in all it's a complete mess and a bit like years of underfunding for the NHS and it being forced to deal with areas it wasn't designed for ( obesity,alcohol and drug abuse) education is now being exposed for the exam factory it has become,at least in the state sector.

 

I'm not sure if you have school-age kids currently but what do you imagine 'remote teaching' looks like? I wonder if there's a perception it's most of a day sat in front of a screen watching and participating virtually in normal lessons, essentially replacing sitting in the classroom for sitting at home? It really isn't.

Our experience was the first lockdown required the use of about 4 or 5 different online services or apps (with different log ons), plus a bunch of YouTube links and a list every Monday of ideas parents could explore for the week. There was no live lesson delivery, little structure and certainly no direct interaction between our daughter and her teachers (or her class mates). It was very much pitched as something to be done for an hour or two at most - so it came no where replacing what she was missing out on. This is particularly an issue for primary school pupils.

And based on what I've heard from others, that's the norm. There have been a handful of shining examples publicised but they're usually private schools.

 

Agree that's not good enough. So the main issue you have is the current quality of remote learning, rather than remote learning itself?

Secondary seems a bit better from what I've seen but then every school is different. My niece has been given quite a full day of zoom teaching today so hopefully that's a sign of things improving but again, every school is different.

 

Agree that online learning is a poor substitute, but different schools have made massively differing effort levels where it's concerned.

My wife's school are excellent and she pretty much does the full curriculum either remotely or with assignments / resources. These were all reviewed, marked and feedback given.

My kids' school are utterly abysmal and seem to have treated lockdown as a holiday - set a weekly load of optional worksheets from the usual online resources. They didn't make the the kids submit them and nothing was marked. They didn't do a single remote lesson and the only contact was one pointless phonecall. On a wider note, it is considered the best middle school in Leighton Buzzard, but it has become apparent in the time my kids have been there, that the reputation is completely undeserved. It's based on having old buildings, nice grounds and history. The leadership have rested on their laurels for so long and the attitude has dripped down to the teaching staff, who seem to think that just attending is reward enough.

 

Your wife is still at school?

 

I think high-quality remote learning could be an ok short-term measure, if it was combined with periodically rotating classes into school so they can get some face to face time with teachers and peers too. Say two weeks in, two weeks out for a few months.

The social element of schools for children of all ages is massive as they develop skills on that front that will last a lifetime but I think it's something that's overlooked or easily dismissed by a lot of the adult population. While it's probably an acceptable cost for us as adults to sacrifice our socialising in the middle of a pandemic, the same can't be said for children. In my opinion anyway.

 

Au contraire. A large number of parents who actually 'pay' (at some effort/sacrifice) school fees (as compared to those payees how 'utilise' the school fees as part of some labyrinthine tax minimisation/liability scheme) are very unhappy at what 'they' are actually 'getting' for their money.