Is morality something you expect of others?

I am in the office at the moment but looked into the forum while having a break and could not avoid noticing this from trisher.

trisher Quote [Grandad1943 we did risk assessments on every activity the children were involved in (including a short walk to the local library) no one ever gave me a days training in it. We did what teachers always do-we managed.] End Quote.

Well, legislation states an employer must appoint a competent person(s) who can undertake the health and safety duties and requirements of their organisation. In that, the competent person(s) appointed must possess the necessary skills, knowledge, training and experience to manage the health and safety of the workplace.

With risk assessment, the qualifications required are dependent on the size of the workplace and the general level of risk associated with the tasks carried out. However, as we are always being informed on this forum how challenging the safeguarding of school pupils is, we can safely place the education profession in a high category of workplace safety risk.

Therefore the risk assessments that trisher has so proudly carried out are not worth the paper they are written on under the current legislation of the United Kindom.

I am also very surprised that a profession that is always advising that the children's safeguarding is paramount to the education sector allowed an unqualified and untrained person to undertake such risk analysis if safety is everything in that sector?

A link to risk management in any workplace/organisation can be found here:-
www.hse.gov.uk/simple-health-safety/risk/index.htm

If most people did not expect others to obey the same or much the same moral system society would break down. That is what has happened in Lebanon.

Interesting point Grandad - I wonder who is going to fund for teachers and school leaders to have all this advanced training by September.

Teachers want the pupils to also have "the finest protection" - let us hope they will have access to the means to achieve this.

In the meantime they are all doing their very best in a muddled situation. Thank goodness for all these wonderful teachers who are prepared to work their tripe out to try and do the best for the nation's young.

We've had thunderstorms rolling around on and off for the last few nights. But sadly very little rain and it's just as humid. Just checked the forecast - apparently 100% chance of rain tonight. Here's hoping!

I think I may just have been categorised as part of an "educational establishment" I never even knew existed and which I certainly never (in my opinion) joined and which certainly most of my colleagues would never have considered me. One of them actually nicknaming me Rosa Luxembourg.
Grandad1943 we did risk assessments on every activity the children were involved in (including a short walk to the local library) no one ever gave me a days training in it. We did what teachers always do-we managed.

I wish my wildlife camera were still in place outside to video it. Tomorrow's newspaper photos will be interesting.

Me too.

I haven't seen a spectacular thunderstorm for a long time.

Elegran I wish we had the thunderstorms here. I'm beginning to find the heat and humidity very wearing.

I do have some awareness of writing plain English. Does that count?

I don't believe that anyone, teachers included, expects or demands to be 100% safe in any job. The best anyone can hope for is that everything is done to minimise dangers.

I have been watching the most spectacular lightning strikes I have ever seen, occurring about every 2 seconds for the past hour, with continuous rumbling thunder. I hope that we are safe from those, and that none of them cause damage to any houses. It has been more interesting than reading arguments between irresistable forces and immovable objects, so I shall return to the window. It is getting a bit quieter, so I might risk going to bed soon.

I have never met anyone who views it in that way. Most of us have no idea what you are talking about when you use the term.

growstuff, in regard to your post @22:03 today, should you ever attend a first stage industrial safety course the first thing the tutor will instruct you in is that everything we do in life carries some degree of risk.

Should you ever then get as far as learning advanced risk assessment you will discover that those assessments not only evaluate the degree of risk in any operation in their first stage analysis but also instruct how those risks can be reduced to acceptable levels in there second and third stages.

If the working activity cannot be brought within those acceptable numeric parameters then the work activity cannot commence or if already in operation has to be suspended.

In the above thought has to be introduced into the safety analysis so as the working procedure can begin or be restarted for to tell an employer that their business cannot operate in any way due to safety concerns is simply not acceptable in almost all cases, solutions have to be found. The foregoing then takes careful thought ingenuity and originality to bring the risks to within acceptable parameters.

However, I find that within education voicing the hazards there are to be found in fully reopening the schools for all children in September is abundant. That stated bringing forward how those hazards can be solved or the risks reduced to within acceptable parameters as laid out above is simply non-existent within the education establishment.

That is why many view it as an establishment, set in its ways, unable to adapt to the challenges that this crisis has thrust upon it.

Think about the situation in the Leicester sweat shops and multiply that millions of times because that's the reality. The virus doesn't care whether it's infecting adult textile workers or teenage pupils.

If I have an obsession it is in regard to people being safe in their places of work and that obsession I have retained for the last thirty-five years.

To be quite frank, you really don't seem very obsessed about safety in schools.

There are 8,820,000 pupils in English schools - nearly 16% of a population of 55,980,000. Until now, they have not been forced into environments which are considered unsafe for the general public. The potential damage which outbreaks amongst such a large proportion of the population could cause, doesn't bear thinking about. It won't just be the pupils and staff who will be affected, but the families and communities in which they live - and, of course, the economy. The government has a moral duty to ensure that doesn't happen.

Nobody has disputed that schools should do all they realistically can to have pupils back in September. However, that requires realism, not rhetoric about "morality" and grandstanding.

Earlier in this thread I said I thought there'd be a U turn by Thursday. I think the Thursday deadline might be missed, but the signs of a U turn are already there. It's no coincidence that the Test and Trace system has been completely reorganised, which is one precondition everybody has said is absolutely necessary. Chris Whitty has been ordered to re-examine all the advice and conditions for opening to all - again no coincidence. Headteachers are also being urged to come up with their own Plan Bs - an admission that Plan A is not expected to be successful. They are also being urged to upskill staff's technology skills. Oakland Academy, which provides online learning, is being heavily promoted.

The unions have been heavily involved in finding solutions.

I welcome all the above because they're pragmatic steps towards providing the best that is possible in the circumstances. However, it has to be recognised that providing a "back to normal" service, which is what people are being promised, just cannot happen.

Elegran in regard to your post @21:29 today, to state that I am "obsessed" with the teachers and the teaching profession is simply not a fact.

As I have stated previously in this thread, I work full time in our own company, and in that I sometimes post prior to going into the office and on return in the evenings. Occasionally I may post while having a break if I am working from home but that is very infrequent.

If I have an obsession it is in regard to people being safe in their places of work and that obsession I have retained for the last thirty-five years.

The Covid crisis has made me even more determined that in working alongside those that have attended their places of work throughout this unprecedented time shall have the finest protection that can be brought to then while they attend their workplace duties.

And that is an obsession I am very proud to possess.

And I feel strongly that I want my children to be safe. It is the teachers in my childs school who I trust to do this in the safest way possible not people on the internet whose knowledge of issues such as safeguarding appears minimal to say the least.

lemongrove You are mistaken if you think teaching unions have any real clout. Maybe you have an example or two of when anything unions have wanted has ever happened.

Elegran

They do manage their budgets, Lemongrove. what they can't manage is a sudden need for very large amounts of money when their budgets have all been spent. They have had no opportunity to squirrel away any surplus, as costs have risen over the years but grants haven't kept up.

Many schools have "managed" by cutting things people complain about, namely special needs provision (which is costly and doesn't provide returns in the form of exam performance) and subject options, which is why many schools can't offer music or some foreign language teaching. They have also cut cleaning contracts, so schools are only given a thorough clean at the end of term or academic year. I think many parents would be shocked at how many mice and rats live in school buildings - I've seen them when I've been sitting on my classroom marking after school.

The latest funding formula, which has been packaged as "levelling up" is smoke and mirrors because it favours more affluent schools with fewer special needs pupils. Schools will sometimes ignore special needs, in the hope that parents will find other schools for their children, so that they are left with the ones who are easier and cheaper to teach.

Personally, I don't think that situation very "moral".

I don’t think this thread is ever going to get back on track as regards the OP.

It isn’t all teachers , it’s a mixed response from them though, and all the teachers and ex teachers on GN simply won’t allow any dissenting voices.It’s also the teacher’s union flexing it’s muscles.Those of us who have DGC who have received little or no education for months and months know the harm this has done to our children.
As long as schools put all they humanly can in place to open in September, that is all anyone can ask.Are there risks? Probably.Is it worth getting on and doing it? Yes, it certainly is. No other group of workers have 100% safety from this virus.
I think many of us feel strongly about this matter ( in one way or another.) I certainly do.

Grandad What exactly is this "education establishment", of which you write so often?

They do manage their budgets, Lemongrove. what they can't manage is a sudden need for very large amounts of money when their budgets have all been spent. They have had no opportunity to squirrel away any surplus, as costs have risen over the years but grants haven't kept up.

lemongrove By what criteria do you judge that schools are well enough funded?

Lemongrove That I spoke sharply to Grandad1943 even though I would not normally have done so is evidence of how strongly I feel that he has repeatedly overstated his case on this - to the point of obsession.

Why are you surprised that I object to the way he condemns ALL the teaching profession for supposedly having months of doing F. all, and then blocking instructions to take all children back full time nto schools for purely selfish reasons, when I personally know many teachers who have been working even longer hours than before lockdown, first at learning how to use a completely new medium and then at designing and giving online lessons and doing follow-up checks that it is all understood, marking online "homework" keeping records, and phoning individual pupils and their families to reassure them that their education has NOT come to a grinding halt - and incidentally soothing many fears about non-schooling concerns. Then they have been preparing to receive pupils back in schools and rebuild their classes again in a safe environment.

A very few have been "outed" in these threads as not doing all this - I imagine a few workers in other spheres have not been perfect, either - but how come that it is just ALL teachers in ALL schools who are somehow villains to some posters? Do we believe that ALL supermarket staff are slovenly or rude because someone experienced rudeness from a sloppy assistant in their local shop?