Ditto

Vaccine vials withstand temperatures in the range -180C and 400C. I can remember being fascinated by glass and it's manufacture at school - it's amazing material! This BBC article is an interesting short read for vaccine vial manufacture. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55808640

I'd agree that as a top trio. To get a little more breadth, I'd suggest Advanced Learning's Progresso (or OneAdvanced's Cloud School) and SchoolPod. If primary only, also look at ScholarPack. Although currently mostly for independent schools, iSAMS is a mature product. Following their recent sale, it wouldn't surprise me to see focus on state sector going forwards.

I think the interesting point you raise is your comment about primary versus secondary in terms of willingness to change. For all schools, the points raised above I think are equally valid, the big ones bearing fear and/or reluctance to change, but I'd also add a lack of ability to look at long term total costs and benefits. I've seen reluctance to consider a shift in both primary and secondary schools, but the sample is small. A complete lack of time from SLT is also an issue, as they can be flat out maintaining the status-quo just focussing on day to day running he school, so just don't look elsewhere. Perhaps the bigger MATs have people who have the time to look at shifting. Some of the biggest MATs have moved, which is interesting when compared to standalone secondary academies. A fantastic data source for reviewing the 'switchers' profile is the blog from @bringmoredata - here is the latest commentary https://bringmoredata.blogspot.com/2020/12/mis-market-moves-2020-covid-didnt-stop.html

The Martian. Good, even very good. Kids stayed the course for 2+ hours. Many Oscar nominations, but none won, which is probably about right. For me, it lacked real edge of the seat tension and visually I expected a bit more.

Shame!

woof.... [The things we do to pass the time in lockdown eh?!]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p095jq8h Winter watch. 15 minutes of winter spectacles. No commentary, just delightful sounds of nature. On a big screen in HD or higher, this will look even more amazing.

Gov coronavirus site is showing this currently. For daily figures, if only it were true. I so much look forward to the day it says this for real, rather than as a result of a processing issue they are reporting.

I can hear the bird thinking, 'Great, unfurnished flat'!

How many of us knew that getting Covid is potentially a reportable event via RIDDOR? @smurfomatic, you might want to read the background on this and see if it can help persuading your employer to help reduce you exposure risk. https://www.hse.gov.uk/coronavirus/riddor/riddor-reporting-further-guidance.htm#disease-law

My wife actually like those last two! I'll try them on the kids later.

A neighbour and friend of mine is an NHS surgeon and has recently been helping his colleagues with with basic care work. - basic duties which is extremely honourable of him. Local kids have been making food treats and he's taken them in to distribute. I'm looking to do my bit, so some recipe ideas would be much appreciated. I'm sure I have an oaty/muesli style, tray recipe somewhere that proved very popular years ago. I'm looking for tasty items that keep a few days, but always happy to try something new. Suggestions very much welcome.

Get yourself a peerage, head of to the House of Lords, and your dreams will come true!

Probably going slightly off thread, but I'll risk it . I have bought and sold a couple of items overseas on ebays global program - all well and good. I fear the fully Brexit situation will put a spanner in that!

Whilst I can fully sympathise with the letter, our trust CEO would not be happy with this letter going out (even though they also run SCITT!) - it would be regarded as somewhat unprofessional, even if understandable. Also, I wonder if it is parents with the feedback - could it be those 'pesky' kids pretending to to be the parent

For Enterprise Admin, I'd recommend https://www.coursera.org/specializations/g-suite-administration. I did this and even though I didn't have Enterprise, but I found it very useful. For teachers, there is loads of stuff out there, and I don't think you need it to be Enterprise - G Suite for Education would suffice. Ideally, I'd recommend getting a couple of keen staff to be the 'champions' of G Suite. If they can do this as part of CPD , all the better. Getting them certified as Google Certified Educator level 1 and then level 2 would be great. I did my certifications with https://www.edtechteam.com/. I stumbled on a free offer but not sure there are any like that right now. I believe we have at least one G Suite Innovators amongst us - @Zoom7000 - but I'm sure there is at least one more. They'll have more up to date suggestions I'm sure.

I've seen this too! Even 2nd gen i7's are selling for much more than they did 12 months ago - not sure if the same for i5s? Also, GPUs equally crazy - I have a couple of GT 1030's that I picked up for around £30 a while back - they're selling for £60+. I bought a new EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti for the kids PC at the back end of 2016, some used are selling for the same now.

It is quite something isn't it! It's up there with flipping a jumper on Dell motherboards to remove the BIOS - do they still allow what? Still, has proved useful on more than one occasion.

Broadly, I agree. The data for the period when schools were fully open are (much) more relevant, and perhaps for the 28 days after they re-closed as I expect that is when the death figures would be recorded. However, the schools I am involved in were open to all the time for key workers. That situation is very different of course to a fully open school. I would also observe that the school I aim currently aligned to asked all staff to come in - only extremely vulnerable has any chance of working from home, and I know that the scenarios differed across the country. With purely my data analyst hat on, I think my conclusion is that neither the ONS nor NEU reports should be taken as gospel. As I suggested in my earlier post, what we need is much better research.

Staying well away from the 'p' word, the NEU statement raises some very interesting points about the ONS data. I see they have been invited to comment further.

The BBC report acknowledges school closure, which happens in normal times too, but I wouldn't say 'mostly' to the degree that I would dismiss the research. What is more interesting is the risk factor difference by gender. AFAIK, no one has proposed a different approach by gender. What this clearly demonstrates, is that the approach to battling Covid-19 isn't purely data driven. Social, (dare I say political (with a small 'p')) and economic factors are also taken into account - that makes it hard. As a result, no matter the decisions made, there will be those that support, those that don't and a myriad in between.

TechieMcTech face

I know your reply was a while ago, but following complete 360 degree shift by our parent trust, this functionality would be really useful. Could you explain the exact steps of what and where you made the changes. We are O365 so hopefully it's something we can replicate.

In commerce, that title would often require board level involvement, but sometimes controversially it doesn't. DevOps Manager appears to be the in phrase in that world nowadays.

Contrary to other recent reports, ONS suggest teachers are not at significantly higher risk of death than average. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55795608. The gender difference is very much significant and the fact that the number of female versus male teachers is very different ought to be taken account of too. At this point, I'm not sure when the article refers to 'teachers' whether it is excluding non-teaching staff. Given the number of non-teaching staff in schools as a percentage of all school employees, research really ought to look at the whole picture, not what can half the employees.