Just got back in from one of the most draining afternoons of my 12-year time at the school.
It involved the head, a deputy head and an assistant head, and us 3 IT folks, beavering away on getting Google Classroom up and running. The framework was already there, but populating it, allocating teachers to the 859 different classes that we have and fixing the problems that cropped up was mentally exhausting. (The school didn't seem to realise until today just how handy it is having staff who can handily write scripts in different languages, while juggling SQL queries... fun, but utterly shattering to do.)
While this was going on, all 1700 pupils were being marched in and out of IT rooms to make sure they had their Google login details.
The reason for all this? We'd been told the head of the trust had ordered e-learning to be fully set up for the weekend, with letters going out to parents. Once it became apparent that we'd have to wait for a final sync and bits would just have to wait until Monday (the tool we use takes 5 hours+!) then the full thing came out...
This is from the head herself - the Government has issed an edict to all schools that they MUST have e-learning set up, or "work from home" plans, in place today. They also have to notify parents that this has been done today. It seems they're still planning a shut down but are saying nothing publicly to avoid causing panic.
I suspect there will be other plans afoot as well, but I don't have any info on those!
EDIT: The government edict was issued to every school in the land yesterday. Only heads are meant to know about it, apparently!
Originally Posted by: Retron