{"id":1071,"date":"2020-05-14T12:04:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T11:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/dec2020\/?page_id=1071"},"modified":"2020-12-09T11:17:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T11:17:35","slug":"localnews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/localnews\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Do The Right Thing, First Minister<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><em>An open letter to Nicola Sturgeon<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dear First Minister,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Life shouldn&#8217;t feel normal right now, so if your life still feels entirely normal, ask yourself if you are doing the right things&#8221;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019ll remember your own words from March this year. They were well said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But teachers, school cleaners, clerical and catering staff, janitors and pupil support assistants in those regions which have just entered Tier 4 of the COVID local protection levels, are now asking themselves slightly different questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>If life doesn\u2019t feel like the Tier 3 \u2018normal\u2019 anymore for everyone else in our neighbourhood, but it still feels like it in our workplaces, how exactly is the Scottish Government doing the right thing by us?<\/li><li>If schools are to be fully open in Tier 3 with \u2018enhanced protective measures\u2019 and fully open in Tier 4 with \u2018enhanced and targeted protective measures\u2019, what does the word \u2018targeted\u2019 mean and what precisely do these additional new measures look like in our schools?<\/li><li>If previously shielding pupils have been protected by being told to work at home, why has no directive been issued to protect our previously shielding, pregnant and vulnerable colleagues?<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>And they\u2019re fast coming to the realisation that you have no response to offer, because the truth is that right now your government is doing wrong by workers in schools, has no \u2018targeted\u2019 measures for Level 4 because they are completely fictitious, and is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-54993555\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">hypocritical when it comes to paused-shielding teachers and school support staff<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The right thing to do is to issue \u2013 immediately \u2013 a new Education Direction to all Local Authorities which obliges them to send all vulnerable school staff to work from home as soon as an Authority enters Level 4. It\u2019s no good leaving vulnerable workers to make their cases individually with their employers, as the Deputy First Minister asserted this week \u2013 that\u2019s a Level 3 state of affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Doing this will of course necessitate some form of blended learning for all schools in Level 4 \u2013 this is the targeted measure that you should be up front about. With blended approaches physical distancing between pupils can become possible, and infection rates in schools will come down, but if they don\u2019t then you have a duty to define the triggers in levels of infection and pupil absences that should demand a move to fully remote learning as the better educational option, as well as the safer option.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of us who work in schools are committed to educational recovery for our pupils, but that effort should not be at the cost of the health, or the life, of a single vulnerable school staff member.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You have their lives in your hands, First Minister. It\u2019s time to do the right thing by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yours sincerely,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Allan Crosbie<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Allan Crosbie is a member of the EIS national Executive Committee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Editor\u2019s note \u2013 this letter was not received in time to be included in the printed edition of the December SEJ, but has been included in this online version.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do The Right Thing, First Minister An open letter to Nicola Sturgeon Dear First Minister, &#8220;Life shouldn&#8217;t feel normal right now, so if your life still feels entirely normal, ask yourself if you are doing the right things&#8221;. You\u2019ll remember your own words from March this year. They were well said. But teachers, school cleaners, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1071","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1071"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2368,"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1071\/revisions\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sej.org.uk\/dec2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}