rachel.blog

Tag: schools

  • Full lockdown for Scotland

    Full lockdown for Scotland

    The covid situation in the UK is pretty dire right now with close to 60,000 cases per day. It’s worse than it was back in March at the height of the first peak. I read that hospitals in London are now cancelling vital cancer surgery. This is the reason covid is so deadly. It may […]

  • Aberdeen back in lockdown

    Aberdeen back in lockdown

    Another lockdown has been imposed on Aberdeen today after a local outbreak starting at The Hawthorn Bar on Holburn Street. This is actually very close to us but none of us have been there or indeed gone to any pubs for quite some time. There’s a rumour circulating, and I’m unsure of the veracity of […]

  • Be cautious, COVID app, wild swimming, and distance education

    Be cautious, COVID app, wild swimming, and distance education

    The lockdown has mostly ended here insofar as much as it can end. Things won’t return to normal until there’s a vaccine but shops are allowed to open and people can go for holidays. Nevertheless our life hasn’t really changed. I’m still working from home. Ben is still working from home. The kids just finished […]

  • State schooling in Scotland, more on the DC situation, and long-term changes after lockdown

    There’s an article in The Sunday Times about Scotland’s “failed lack of leadership” for state school pupils during the lockdown. This echos my own thoughts and I have wondered why there hasn’t been more criticism about this. The lack of education of state school pupils during lockdown is appalling and I really don’t think they […]

  • 19th March 2020 update #COVID2019

    Schools will be closing on Friday this week for the foreseeable future. It’s unlikely they will open again before the summer holidays which means they’ll be shut until August and potentially longer than that. Much depends on what happens in China when they lift their restrictions. Children of key workers and vulnerable children will still […]

  • The school garden

    I spent most of my day off yesterday in the garden at school with Ben and a friend, weeding and putting in new plants. There’s a small garden there but it has been neglected and is a pretty sorry sight. Someone at some point has put in some bamboo which was a big mistake because it just takes […]

  • School playgrounds

    I’ve got myself involved with a group of mums from school to revamp the school playground. It’s currently an asphalt desert with a dearth of nature and things to play on and probably looks much the same as it did in Victorian times when the school was built. I’ve even seen prisons with better playgrounds […]

  • Praise for the NHS

    We’re all very healthy and haven’t had much need for the NHS since we moved here but the school asked us at the end of last year to organise an appointment for Daniel to discuss his autism and Tourette’s syndrome. It was something I’d been thinking about doing at some point but hadn’t got around to […]

  • How many iPads does a school need?

    Contrary to what people might think, I feel that spending lots of money on shiny new iPads for schools is money poorly spent. I don’t deny that iPads are great learning tools – I can attest to that – but they’re very expensive upfront and don’t last all that long before they become obsolete and need replacing. […]

  • Wallpaper

    I’ve been ripping wall paper from a wall in the spare bedroom in our new home. I’ve never done this before and only began because it had started peeling away already and looked rather unsightly. The wallpaper has come off fairly easily but the backing paper sticks so I spray it with water and then scrape it […]

  • Opinions are great, except when I disagree with them

    Opinions are great. I love listening to people’s opinions more so than the boring nothings of fence-sitters. Ok, so I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes people’s opinions rile me but there’s something challenging about that as it forces me to question what I think. For this reason, I like listening to RadioNZ’s The […]