Preparing to Return to F2F Activity... Again/Still

So the letter to parents/cadets has been released and contains this gem

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Would be nice to know that this was coming out, and what the content was. Is that Wing level, or from HQAC?

No doubt I’ll have some annoyed Sqn OCs contacting me shortly about the lack of comms.

That is sat on the announcement page of sharepoint, so I guess HQAC.

Don’t forget the link to Dawn’s twitter and facebook at the bottom too!

Well the CFAV letter was a pointless read.

Slightly serious question - will she hand over the ComdtAC twitter account when she retires?
As a wise colleague of mine observed, ‘institutions don’t tweet - people do.’

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She could change the tag and allow the new Comdt to take it over, or she could just hand over the account…

AOC 22Gp done the latter with his RAF_Gender tag

Would it be a loss if they didn’t use it all?

Probably, yes. Social media is a great tool when used right

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This.

Will be nice to see how the return to our F2F is managed in line with the government’s school guidance with year group bubbles… I’m thinking the overlap of controls in schools is about to be compromised and severely undermined by young people mixing outside of the school environment - be it formally via organisations such as ourselves, scouting, community youth groups - or informally by socialising in the parks (as they are at the moment!).

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Judging from what I’ve seen in the parks near me over the last ten days any efforts at social distancing in schools are going to be totally futile.

Cycled past a local high school yesterday which was open for the wider pupil base for the first time since lockdown started. There were gaggles of pupils stood outside the gate who were nowhere near 2m apart.

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I’ve seen very similar scenes at our schools, parks, riverbanks, youth clubs, MUGAs etc

I was discussing this with a teacher colleague this morning. He is a very, very angry man. His school has multiple sibblings sets which span year groups. At worst, if one household catches it, he could see 3 entire year groups “self isolating” for 14 days - with potential for knock on to other year groups if there are others infected in other “sibbling” households. So they structure year group bubbles. They put in tonnes of resources, monitoring and additional support for students whilst in school from Sept.

Yet the second they walk out of school they are mixing it up in the park, at youth clubs, at sports clubs, at cadets and anywhere else that teenagers go - increasing the risks to EVERYBODY.

So he asked what we’re doing. I had to admit I haven’t got a clue beyond it’s being looked at. His response “Oh - the Scouts know - they did a national conference about it”

Sigh…

As an aside, he teaches MFL. He’s been informed by SLT that “non mandatory subjects” will have contact time reduced to 1 hour per week for Y10 and Y11 from Sept. Mandatory subjects will be increased to 4 hours per week to “catchup” with a review and restructure in January.

All this without direction or reassurance from HMG that the scope and content of the 2021 exams will have been reduced to account for the fact that schools haven’t have F2F contact with students for 3 months OR that they will potentially continue to have disrupted learning over the coming 6-12 months. As he said, it’s almost like DfE are making this up as they go along… even though they’ve supposedly been working on it for 3 months!!!

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That’s an unconfirmed leak, I think. But we are still waiting for guidance from exam boards on what if any reduced content they might apply in next year’s exams.

Certainly my school won’t be reducing contact time in non-mandatory subjects; but we’ve been teaching a full timetable throughout.

That does seem to be the way this government like to play things!! Promulgate a leak to test the water, adapt/tweak policy based on outcry/response (or ignore it), then release policy at 2pm on a Friday afternoon for a Monday start!

So has this school!!

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I’ve got our Sqn enforced social distancing programme all planned out…

image

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Is this an opportunity for you to program any pacestick practice by any chance? :rofl: :rofl:

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How did you think I was going to ensure that they’re all evenly spaced?..

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@Batfink @tmmorris I don’t think they should reduce content, it will make the feckless who have treated this like a glorified holiday, sit up and take notice if the DfE turn round and say nothing removed get on with it and btw schools are not required to try and catch up unless the kids have 'standing LD.
Just based on taking to people at work, most of their kids have been doing as much if not more online than they would at school, but there are a few who have been doing sod all. One of the blokes moaned as the school had the audacity to phone them and ask why their daughter had done so little work and several teachers had emailed asking if there was a ‘tech’ problem. Mind you I’ve got the impression his daughter spends more time out the classroom than in it.

It’s not what the kids do outside, like schools if the guidance is whatever, then we have to comply. Although the comment about school year bubbles is an interesting one. If that’s what happens, looks like unless you’re CCF we won’t be doing anything. Our ‘year bubbles’ extend across 5 schools and 3 FE colleges.
When it was VE the road was full of people not from our road and distancing no chance. This has happened a few times over the ensuing weeks. We decoded not to play at all.