Gavin Williamson

Has downgraded last night's Barca result down to a 2-1 win to Bayern.

I'll get my coat!

 

Like the one on twitter, the author A A Milne been downgraded to B C Milne

 

ABBA have been downgraded to AC/DC.

 

If you break down on the motorway, just call the BB

 

When he's on telly he always reminds me of Frank Spencer.

 

I cannot unsee it......

 

Can you all just shut up and go away?

 

Frank about Gavin Williamson.
“Oh my god, it’s the ballcock”

 

Pressure from Labour now to get all kids back full time.

 

I honestly don’t understand how it can be ok to have 2000 11-18 year olds plus around 300 staff in cramped classrooms and small corridors in an area that it is in local lockdown. I don’t understand how clinically vulnerable staff are going to go and work in that environment with the advice being no PPE is to be worn. I’m not saying I know what the solution is either but I just honestly don’t understand how this can be ok. For all the talk of bubbles and what not, let me be clear, social distancing in a full school is literally impossible. 300 students plus all staff who come into contact with them (who then also come into contact with other sets of 300 students) is not a bubble! We also have more than 300 students per year group so there’ll be extra students than are allowed in each year to figure out what to do with too. There are lots of siblings across different year groups too so that adds another cross bubble link.

 

Major counties who have opened schools have had massive spikes. Secondary schools are the issue, it's clear kids aged 12-16 are able to spread the virus. I'm all for J&I kids going back but something more targeted, creative and innovative needs to be done for secondary kids.
Schools aren't on the doorstep anymore with creation of supersized academies. This means kids using public transport with other adults, that's if we've enough buses / trains to go around to around. Politicians wants schools open and Boris also wants folk back in the office. What could possibly go wrong?

 

That reminds me of another thing, the kids have been told they don’t need to wear masks on school buses, just public buses. How does that make any sense? All the ‘bubbles’ will be mixing on the bus and then no one is to wear masks in school.

 

Exactly and all the confusion will lead to spikes leading to government blaming local councils (non Tory), headmasters, teachers, bus companies, drivers and school children for not following the confusing advice.

Just like they've been doing since coming into power, call heads and tails and you can't ever be wrong or to blame.

 

My kids have both been off since March the eldest 6 and youngest is 4 which if we ate led to believe it's safe for kids at that age why haven't they been back?

The lack of information and clarity for teachers is frightening and very worrying with September not far off now and still no real plans in place to get kids back safely.

Did we expect anything else? I was on radio York in May discussing the issue around schools and made the point that elderly and vulnerable people were sent back into homes to pass on the virus in a massive unforgivable error by this government and my kids weren't being the next lot of Guinea pigs.

5 months they have been off now and I'm struggling to see anything different to when they were asked to stay at home so I'm not confident going into September especially with cases rising again.

We all want kids back to school learning but not at any cost.

 

Nail on the head!

 

If you shut the schools & cancel public exams, the exam-year kids are going to suffer. Most of the A level awards furore is based around the wishful thinking that there was some way to avoid that. That's what we chose to do. That's what lockdown means.
If there was a way to replace exams with an algorithm that achieved the same outcome we would long ago have done away with exams. There isn't which is why we haven't.

 

Strange that the algorithm created favours the rich and privately educated. Who'd have signed off on that? Maybe someone who had an eye test on the M1/A1 whilst driving at 70mph?

 

It's hardly a surprise that this government went that route is it. I'm more just surprised people are surprised about it. Once the exams were cancelled a S#!t storm was inevitable

 

Well, up until sometime after 2010 there was a system that included formal exams at the halfway point (AS Levels), and A Level courses contained a modular coursework element. This was changed by a certain Michael Gove during his time as Minister for Education with his able assistant Mr D Cummings.

While the previous system might not be perfect, it would have allowed more accurate results based on performance rather than using previous results to estimate the results for the current kids.

For comparison, France went with the teacher assessed grades, which saw a ~6-7% rise in achievement (~63%-~70%) and they just said "It was a special year". No outcry.