Advertisement
If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)
Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie
The annual ASTI Easter strike threat
Options
Comments
-
teachinggal123 wrote: »As a teacher, I’ve seen/heard similar many times. In real life as well as the staff room. You can see this attitude from teachers all over boards.
I’m embarrassed by it.
Genuinely curious to know what kind of circles you run in!! I have never heard any teacher I know, trained with or work with describe teaching as "the most stressful" career or in any way comparable to an ICU doctor!!0 -
Genuinely curious to know what kind of circles you run in!! I have never heard any teacher I know, trained with or work with describe teaching as "the most stressful" career or in any way comparable to an ICU doctor!!
Have a read through what teaches are saying on this, and other, threads on boards. Similar has been said multiple times.0 -
Genuinely curious to know what kind of circles you run in!! I have never heard any teacher I know, trained with or work with describe teaching as "the most stressful" career or in any way comparable to an ICU doctor!!
My sister-in-law and her parents say that to us (all secondary teachers). I have to bite my tongue. I know that all stress is relative to the person. It just seems an insensitive thing to say to my partner, an ICU doctor0 -
teachinggal123 wrote: »Have a read through what teaches are saying on this, and other, threads on boards. Similar has been said multiple times.
Just curious - do you get targeted for 'going against the grain' in the staff room or are we wrong in assuming there is groupthink amongst teachers?
Also do secondary school teachers ever discuss why they get 3 months summer holidays whereas their English counterparts only get 6 weeks?What are they doing in the Hyacinth House?
0 -
My sister-in-law and her parents say that to us (all secondary teachers). I have to bite my tongue. I know that all stress is relative to the person. It just seems an insensitive thing to say to my partner, an ICU doctor
A friend once made the point that parents with one child are those that go on most about how hard it is to parent a child and teachers are the workers that find it hardest to return to work after Summer and Christmas holidays.Slava Ukrainii
0 -
Advertisement
-
I heard this discussed in the radio this morning and the takeaway was to get testing going at 3rd level. To my knowledge, there is very little in person stuff at 3rd level at the moment. https://assets.gov.ie/129982/35f38622-e397-4468-96a9-4b499f85a2be.pdf
This sounds promising and a no-brainer. The unions should be pushing for the measures suggested in c1.12 in a sample of schools. Starting right now.
Obviously for the rest of the country people working in other crowded setting should be doing this too.
I read somewhere that 600 out of the 25000 non symptomatic people who had been tested for covid in the temp pop up centres were positive. About 1 in 50. Yikes.
You see this might have been useful with a view to keeping schools open but at this stage I only see it as a data gathering exercise. I mean once people at risk are vaccinated then what will it matter who has or hasn't been infected or is currently infected with Covid.
The issue of consent and perhaps mandatory testing or antigen studies of perfectly healthy people is a very fine line. Similar to mandatory masks and MHQ, what exactly is the exit strategy?
It's easier to make restrictions and rules than it is to unwind them.
I won't be submitting my family to testing just to satisfy a data drive, if they are healthy and the vulnerable are protected then I don't see why its necessary. It will quickly be rejected by many when they realise that a positive test means the whole family is quarantined for 2 weeks.
The legal fallout from this pandemic is going to keep legal teams busy for years to come.
"widespread rapid testing could be deployed in all
schools by September 2021".
Why? Are they going to drop the mandatory masks for secondary in lieu of rapid testing? Vaccines not working? Vaccine roll out won't be completed? Because they are the only reasons why this should be even considered.
I fail to see the benefit by September and they can't just go testing children without consent, attempts to exclude children who aren't submitting to being tested will likely be taken to court.0 -
Teacher unions can't back pedal fast enough on this.
A huge amount of anger bring directed to the unions by teachers who want the unions to withdraw even a threat of action.
It was the last straw for some who have decided to leave the unions. The ASTI management in particular have come in for substantial knock back from their teaching members who are sick and tired of a large cohort of retired teachers effectively making the decisions.0 -
Everyone seems to miss the point that ASTI strikes never achieve anything - when have the ASTI ever achieved anything? They are a joke of a union as their leader can’t string a succinct sentence together - you’d fall asleep by the time he reaches the end of his first sentence.
If you've never been represented by the ASTI during a dispute then you'll never know... Ask a few teachers who have and you'll change your mind on "never achieve anything"
Don't forget Travers as well , if it weren't for ASTI we would have had teachers grading their own students for state exams.
Also ask any teacher who's in a non unionised school, typically you'll find that in a lot of new schools where there's a churn of new teachers every year.
Ya the leaders are as dull as dishwater, but then again you'll never see how they perform when it comes to closed doors. A fiery leader would probably turn a lot of people of unions... anyhow, at the end of the day it's the members who decide to give the strike mandate, not the leaders.0 -
Teacher unions can't back pedal fast enough on this.
A huge amount of anger bring directed to the unions by teachers who want the unions to withdraw even a threat of action.
It was the last straw for some who have decided to leave the unions. The ASTI management in particular have come in for substantial knock back from their teaching members who are sick and tired of a large cohort of retired teachers effectively making the decisions.
There's a lot of emotive language in here, mixed with unsubstantiated musings.0 -
Just thought I would pop this here
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40262978.html
More than 10,000 people working in health and social care and a further 10,000 people working in the retail sector contracted the virus, accounting for 30% of around 70,000 cases over the period of 105 days.
The period being December to March 20 and despite school being closed for most of that period The number of cases detected among people working in the education sector was lower (4,512)
So HCWS are vaccinated, retail workers should be vaccinated but it is interesting that in the shorter period of time that schools were open 17days - schools open in Dec, 20 days - March mainstream primary + 6th yrs education is almost half the figure for health care and retail (10,000), compared to (total, time covered by data 105 days). Good thing they closed them so.
So per day it seem HCW and Retail were about 95 cases per day while education 121 cases per day. Interesting.
Seems to match the ONS data from UK0 -
Advertisement
-
Locotastic wrote: »You see this might have been useful with a view to keeping schools open but at this stage I only see it as a data gathering exercise. I mean once people at risk are vaccinated then what will it matter who has or hasn't been infected or is currently infected with Covid.
The issue of consent and perhaps mandatory testing or antigen studies of perfectly healthy people is a very fine line. Similar to mandatory masks and MHQ, what exactly is the exit strategy?
It's easier to make restrictions and rules than it is to unwind them.
I won't be submitting my family to testing just to satisfy a data drive, if they are healthy and the vulnerable are protected then I don't see why its necessary. It will quickly be rejected by many when they realise that a positive test means the whole family is quarantined for 2 weeks.
The legal fallout from this pandemic is going to keep legal teams busy for years to come.
"widespread rapid testing could be deployed in all
schools by September 2021".
Why? Are they going to drop the mandatory masks for secondary in lieu of rapid testing? Vaccines not working? Vaccine roll out won't be completed? Because they are the only reasons why this should be even considered.
I fail to see the benefit by September and they can't just go testing children without consent, attempts to exclude children who aren't submitting to being tested will likely be taken to court.
To be honest, I don’t know where to begin with this reply.
Nobody said anything was mandatory or without consent.
Also, I’m just baffled that you wouldn’t want your family tested in case you were positive and had to quarantine for 2 weeks. Maybe you just phrased it badly, but how anyone could be so misinformed at this stage of the pandemic is baffling.0 -
-
Just thought I would pop this here
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40262978.html
More than 10,000 people working in health and social care and a further 10,000 people working in the retail sector contracted the virus, accounting for 30% of around 70,000 cases over the period of 105 days.
The period being December to March 20 and despite school being closed for most of that period The number of cases detected among people working in the education sector was lower (4,512)
So HCWS are vaccinated, retail workers should be vaccinated but it is interesting that in the shorter period of time that schools were open 17days - schools open in Dec, 20 days - March mainstream primary + 6th yrs education is almost half the figure for health care and retail (10,000), compared to (total, time covered by data 105 days). Good thing they closed them so.
So per day it seem HCW and Retail were about 95 cases per day while education 121 cases per day. Interesting.
Seems to match the ONS data from UK
Very poor analysis of the data. Baffling analysis to be honest.0 -
Just thought I would pop this here
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40262978.html
More than 10,000 people working in health and social care and a further 10,000 people working in the retail sector contracted the virus, accounting for 30% of around 70,000 cases over the period of 105 days.
The period being December to March 20 and despite school being closed for most of that period The number of cases detected among people working in the education sector was lower (4,512)
So HCWS are vaccinated, retail workers should be vaccinated but it is interesting that in the shorter period of time that schools were open 17days - schools open in Dec, 20 days - March mainstream primary + 6th yrs education is almost half the figure for health care and retail (10,000), compared to (total, time covered by data 105 days). Good thing they closed them so.
So per day it seem HCW and Retail were about 95 cases per day while education 121 cases per day. Interesting.
Seems to match the ONS data from UK
Were the teacher infection periods only related to the dates they were in the classroom?
Or were they just anyone who works in an educational setting during the period of months?0 -
Just thought I would pop this here
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40262978.html
More than 10,000 people working in health and social care and a further 10,000 people working in the retail sector contracted the virus, accounting for 30% of around 70,000 cases over the period of 105 days.
The period being December to March 20 and despite school being closed for most of that period The number of cases detected among people working in the education sector was lower (4,512)
So HCWS are vaccinated, retail workers should be vaccinated but it is interesting that in the shorter period of time that schools were open 17days - schools open in Dec, 20 days - March mainstream primary + 6th yrs education is almost half the figure for health care and retail (10,000), compared to (total, time covered by data 105 days). Good thing they closed them so.
So per day it seem HCW and Retail were about 95 cases per day while education 121 cases per day. Interesting.
Seems to match the ONS data from UK
Again you are miss reading data. Most COVID cases happened in the weeks before and over Christmas. We began to suppress it then. Most was down to social interaction outside the workplace and bringing it in from there.
When cases peak it gets harder to test for cases and to check for contacts. At the moment we are gone from contact tracing two days of contacts to greater than two days while case numbers seem to be remaining high we are suppressing the disease further.
Someone was posting about the walk in test centers and the positivity rate. At present the COVID test we use for positive testing cannot detect a different between some one that has the disease and is spewing out infection and a person that had the disease 10-14 days ago and is in the recovery phase and no longer infectious to others. As wl the test is more likely to give false positives than negatives
The quick antigen testing where you test to see if people have antibodies is terribly inaccurate. I think it misses about 40% of people who have antibodies so isn't a great indicator of disease resistance on the communitySlava Ukrainii
0 -
To be honest, I don’t know where to begin with this reply.
Nobody said anything was mandatory or without consent.
Also, I’m just baffled that you wouldn’t want your family tested in case you were positive and had to quarantine for 2 weeks. Maybe you just phrased it badly, but how anyone could be so misinformed at this stage of the pandemic is baffling.
Why, if everyone who can be or wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, do we need to test healthy people?
They are talking about introducing rapid testing to all schools in September, why would we need this? MAYBE September 2020 but I can't see any reason or benefit to finding healthy cases post-vaccination roll out, can you?0 -
I want to preface this with many teachers do a wonderful job and are very sensible. However, my other-half who is an ICU doctor had to listen ad nauseum to his sister saying how stressful teaching during the lockdown is and how secondary teaching is the hardest job in the world. His parents who are also teachers agreed. They would tell him this after a 24h weekend call in the ICU. He works sometimes 6 days in a week. They didn’t garner support amongst us. I don’t pretend to think that their jobs are easy. But they have to acknowledge the perks that they have, that other people don’t. When my OH mentions how he would love their holidays they tell him that he couldn’t cope with a group of teenagers... Perspective is key... And you get more flies with honey...
That's a touching sentiment I almost believe you. I know a lot of people who complain about their jobs that makes them whingers like your sister in law and her parents nothing more. But keep driving the narrative there.0 -
Locotastic wrote: »Why, if everyone who can be or wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, do we need to test healthy people?
They are talking about introducing rapid testing to all schools in September, why would we need this? MAYBE September 2020 but I can't see any reason or benefit to finding healthy cases post-vaccination roll out, can you?
Something the unions can claim they won so we can see teachers back to work?
I was always of the impression that if rollout goes as planned this would in theory be redundant by late September. We would have all elderly and at risk, 90% adults with at least 1 shot by then.
Maybe it will still have some benefit to keep potential higher risk variants under control?0 -
Locotastic wrote: »Why, if everyone who can be or wants to be vaccinated is vaccinated, do we need to test healthy people?
They are talking about introducing rapid testing to all schools in September, why would we need this? MAYBE September 2020 but I can't see any reason or benefit to finding healthy cases post-vaccination roll out, can you?
Not everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been vaccinated. And won't be for months.
This report from Prof Mark Ferguson that I linked to is recommending piloting rapid testing now.0 -
Not everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been vaccinated. And won't be for months.
This report from Prof Mark Ferguson that I linked to is recommending piloting rapid testing now.
Yes but as the other poster validly points out a rapid testing scheme would only come in much later in our vaccination program.
At such a point how effective or useful would it be?
Someone saying it would be great now isn't really worth much..0 -
Advertisement
-
Bass Reeves wrote: »As a percentage of our nation.budget I. 2020 we proposed to spend 14% on all education. The percentage accross developed countries is 11% varying from 6-17% we spend above average from our budget on education.
And the percentage of teachers salaries from this proportion spent on education. Comparable to our standard of living our social welfare payments politcians salary doctors salaries public sector employees like guards semi private wages Esb etc.
It's teachers lining their pockets keeping class sizes too big so they have handy job with massive salaries and holidays every other week. Fecking teachers0 -
Not everyone who wants to be vaccinated has been vaccinated. And won't be for months.
This report from Prof Mark Ferguson that I linked to is recommending piloting rapid testing now.
By September, this is what it says. Is it not expected that the majority will be vaccinated by the time schools roll out rapid testing?
This would involve regular testing of hundreds of thousands of asymptomatic people. Even the WHO specifically says this type of serial testing should not happen other than for clusters considered close contacts of confirmed cases or areas with high community rates.
Community hotspots like we have done already, open up walk in voluntary test centres.
Regular testing of the entire student population along with their families post vaccination roll out is crazy re the cost, time v benefits (not to mention the legal minefield involved).0 -
FileNotFound wrote: »Yes but as the other poster validly points out a rapid testing scheme would only come in much later in our vaccination program.
At such a point how effective or useful would it be?
Someone saying it would be great now isn't really worth much..
From the report:
“1.12
The HSE and the Department of Education and Skills should immediately establish at scale a series of pilots and feasibility studies of rapid serial testing in a number of Primary and Secondary Schools, learning from the experience, practices, plans and training material in the UK and involving the cooperation and collaboration of teachers, parents and children. Such testing could start by training and testing in school and then progress to self-testing at home for the child and the entire household. These pilots and feasibility studies should have clear goals. Execution and evaluation of the pilots should be undertaken, at pace, so that if positive, widespread rapid testing could be deployed in all schools by September 2021. ...”
It seems that we are happy to listen to the scientists when they say vaccinate by age but not when they advocate immediate piloting of rapid testing.0 -
briangriffin wrote: »And the percentage of teachers salaries from this proportion spent on education. Comparable to our standard of living our social welfare payments politcians salary doctors salaries public sector employees like guards semi private wages Esb etc.
It's teachers lining their pockets keeping class sizes too big so they have handy job with massive salaries and holidays every other week. Fecking teachers
I have said earlier in this thread that I do not consider teachers under or over paid. But budgets limit how and where you spend money. We pay our public servants quite well in this country comparable to other countries. Our politician and doctors as well.
However budget limits decide how and where you spend money. The Education budget is 14% of our national budget. How much do you propose we increase it by. Where do you consider we take the savings from. Do we.need go increase it by 10% or more in your opinion. If so do we raise taxation, do we cut spending elsewhere. Give me your opinion.
Your last paragraph is not my words or thinking. In any situation choices have to be made. Making demands is easy it's the impact that these demands have accross society and there impact that has to be accounted for.
I think we get very poor value for money in our health services. Most of the issue revolve from historical administration and the way the system.is run.
An effect of it is we struggle to retain highly trained Nurses within the system. I know a young lad that a nurse. For the same hours in NZ he can earn double the money he earns in Ireland. Australia is similar.Slava Ukrainii
0 -
Bass Reeves wrote: »I have said earlier in this thread that I do not consider teachers under or over paid. But budgets limit how and where you spend money. We pay our public servants quite well in this country comparable to other countries. Our politician and doctors as well.
However budget limits decide how and where you spend money. The Education budget is 14% of our national budget. How much do you propose we increase it by. Where do you consider we take the savings from. Do we.need go increase it by 10% or more in your opinion. If so do we raise taxation, do we cut spending elsewhere. Give me your opinion.
Your last paragraph is not my words or thinking. In any situation choices have to be made. Making demands is easy it's the impact that these demands have accross society and there impact that has to be accounted for.
I think we get very poor value for money in our health services. Most of the issue revolve from historical administration and the way the system.is run.
An effect of it is we struggle to retain highly trained Nurses within the system. I know a young lad that a nurse. For the same hours in NZ he can earn double the money he earns in Ireland. Australia is similar.
What % do we need to increase well considering we have had an almost 130% increase in special education classes in the past 10 years I would say those classes need continued significant spending. I would say the cuts to SEN spending and allocation of hours need to be reversed. Do you think teachers salaries should be cut to fund this? Do you think reducing our PTR to the EU average of 20 would benefit children and the country as a whole. I do I've thought in classes of 24 all the way up to 34 theres a significant difference in level of attainment in smaller classes.
Where the money comes from is anyones guess take your pick at where there are inefficiencies in government spending I'm sure there are in education as well as health social welfare and beyond.
You said this earlier.The reason we have the highest teacher pupil ration is we pay our teachers more than most comparable EU states. In other countries more money goes into school capitation and teacher pupil ratio's. As well teaching years are longer with primary school summet holidays about 2 weeks shorter and second level the same and more. As we the school day is often 1-2 hours longer. Are teachers willing to go down that road
This implies you feel teachers are overpaid and underworked here its an open and transparent system my salary and training is open to everyone. If you feel aggrieved then join the profession you can show us how it is done.0 -
I have asked you how much you think it will cost and how you I tend to fund it within the parameters that we already have one of the highest percentage of education spending with regard to budgets percentages accross developed nations.briangriffin wrote: »What % do we need to increase well considering we have had an almost 130% increase in special education classes in the past 10 years I would say those classes need continued significant spending. I would say the cuts to SEN spending and allocation of hours need to be reversed. Do you think teachers salaries should be cut to fund this? Do you think reducing our PTR to the EU average of 20 would benefit children and the country as a whole. I do I've thought in classes of 24 all the way up to 34 theres a significant difference in level of attainment in smaller classes.
Where the money comes from is anyones guess take your pick at where there are inefficiencies in government spending I'm sure there are in education as well as health social welfare and beyond.
You said this earlier.
This implies you feel teachers are overpaid and underworked here its an open and transparent system my salary and training is open to everyone. If you feel aggrieved then join the profession you can show us how it is done.
Yes there is I efficiencies accross government spending however demand within those departments will swallow any savings.
It quid quo pro if you pay you teachers more you have to accept the reality of higher class sizes and a reduction in funds you can use elsewhere. That reality. I was not implying that teachers were overpaid rather that the education budget has limits teachers have to accept that budgets are limited.
It like two sets of parents with the same wages one with a single child and one with three children. Everything being equal the children in the larger family will not receive the same as the single child will whether it be in presents, clothes or maybe grinds for exams.
I am semi retired nearly sixty years of age I do not think I be training to become a teacher. The stock reply of joining the profession is just that an attempted put down. It the reply to prevent debate and tries to imply that nobody else has an input into education except teachers.Slava Ukrainii
0 -
-
You could close small two class schools. Any single sex schools that are smaller than let's say 150 kids could be merged with another single sex schools. In primary sector you would suddenly lose a whole pile of higher paid headmaster positions, administration would be streamlined and you would limit unhealthy division of genders.0
-
From the report:
“1.12
The HSE and the Department of Education and Skills should immediately establish at scale a series of pilots and feasibility studies of rapid serial testing in a number of Primary and Secondary Schools, learning from the experience, practices, plans and training material in the UK and involving the cooperation and collaboration of teachers, parents and children. Such testing could start by training and testing in school and then progress to self-testing at home for the child and the entire household. These pilots and feasibility studies should have clear goals. Execution and evaluation of the pilots should be undertaken, at pace, so that if positive, widespread rapid testing could be deployed in all schools by September 2021. ...”
It seems that we are happy to listen to the scientists when they say vaccinate by age but not when they advocate immediate piloting of rapid testing.
Thats a lovely quote but you never attempted to even consider the point that is vaccination has achieved the goals planned by September, will the rapid testing program have the same or significant value?
Your Quote mentions the whole household, so in September you want us to rapid test lots of vaccinated adults??? As if the vaccine program goes to plan this is whats being advised above no?0 -
Advertisement
-
Locotastic wrote: »Teachers unions aren't happy.
Wow - you literally added a full stop to leave out the point my quoted line was making 😆 ! Almost as if you want to score points rather than have a reasonable debate!
It’s the scientists who are recommending the rapid testing rollout and immediate piloting of same in secondary schools.0
Advertisement