To be sick of school directly undermining me

Check the council website regarding moving schools. It’s a simple process.

The school sounds shite. My kid’s primary school does have the whiteboard screen at the front of the classroom but everything else is in exercise books. DS2 is still in primary btw so Im not talking about donkeys years ago.
I’d ask to see their learning policies and the evidence based studies showing that 5 year olds on a bloody iPad all day is a suitable method of education.

This bothers me too. And i don't like the fact that Apple push their tech in schools either, it's a cynical marketing ploy to get kids hooked on all the ultra expensive i- products.

Our school is similar - even homework is online and they giving letters for parents saying year 2 kids doesn't know how to write and advising to limit screen time at home. School should be with ZERO screen.

apparently they are spending a chunk of every day on the ipads.

who said this? The school?

This issue aside, are you happy with the school?

I don't look up YouTube for personal reasons on a work device - but yeah having the same login isn't ideal. I do so much research from home though it's a pain to log in and out

My dd is 27, and I still remember her lessons showing occasional YouTube video and she also used Mathletics. But there is a big difference between watching a short YouTube video on a rainy day or to supplement a specialist lesson, and using a learning software program for a small period of time to being reliant on technology for teaching.

I completely agree. Here we are trying to keep boundaries on screen time, keep the kids living in the 3 dimensional world, and there they are ramming screens at them at any and all opportunities.
I was absolutely shocked that our councils parental permission form included a section which asked me to agree the school was not responsible for any inappropriate material my 7 year old child might access using IT at school! The brass neck of all brass necks.
And they used Tik Tok at school assembley last year too. That went down like a fart in a lift with the parents.

@LainaDelBoy are you saying some parents can monitor usage and some can’t? I would be:am concerned. I’m not Luddite but I think they are being used Willy nilly and they are increasing screen time hugely. We’re rural with long bus journeys and they aren’t using them for “private study” on the buses !!

@LainaDelBoy it is to save on the photocopying text book bill. It’s a pain in the arse. Teaching kids to annotate a pdf electronically wasn’t conducive to engaging with the actual text. Nightmare.

It absolutely was! Silly sod had googled something pretty unambiguous about “teens” the dirty bar steward. I’m even be careful of your yoga tbh. Keep everything separate. I got a reconditioned laptop for about £150 and keep personal and work very separate.

There’s a “scheme” in place in our school. Parents are supposed to sign up to pay £xx per month and then at the end of their time in primary school they pay £xxx that’s left to keep it or the school keeps it. I refused to pay for tech that is outdated. My older son in secondary now was given an iPad that the support was dropped for in 2022. His best friends mum paid for her son to keep his iPad, Apple no longer support that model, so it’s a very expensive paperweight at this point as it no longer can download the operating systems required. It’s a system whereby the school gets a “kickback” of £XX every time someone purchases the iPad to keep.
The school also no longer needs HLTAs in every class and just has 1 TA covering a whole year group.

My son has just started secondary and is completely overwhelmed by the amount of apps and websites and logins.

and honestly, so am I! Email after email with apps for monitoring homework and lunches and paying for clubs and so on.

They have very very little concept of time

The Op has got herself in to a state on the basis of her 5 year old’s version of screen use at school

I have absolutely seen this at various schools I’ve worked at as a teacher. My previous school was a private international school, and their primary years programme had a BYOD policy from grade one.
Between daily Reading Eggs, activities on SeeSaw, lazy teaching in PE which seemed to be exclusively YouTube videos, music lessons involving lyric videos, language lessons with 20min kaboom games in a 45-min lesson, ‘inquiry tasks’ which seemed to consist of watching endless videos… the screen time was ridiculous.
My own DS did one year at the school and ended up completely addicted to the iPad. We got rid of it as soon as we unenrolled him, and are so pleased that there is no screen in sight at his new school.

While I don’t do it myself, I sympathise with teachers who overuse screens. Behaviour is so awful and it’s the only guaranteed way to keep students quiet and engaged in something. It’s pushed endlessly by SLT. Paperwork and admin is so overwhelming that I’ve walked past multiple lessons with students on screens while the teachers frantically do admin on their laptops.

Its so sad and definitely not what teaching is supposed to be about.

I don't t think your 5 or 6 year old is a reliable source of information as to how long they are spending on screens each day.

That certainly isnt universal. My children have never been set a single piece ofo line homework at either primary or secondary school

You’d love our school- the HT is very selective about technology and campaigns about low screen childhoods. It’s a private school but it seems to be a growing trend.

What you described sounds excessive and I’m reasonably lax about screen time.

Yes, and what this poster is describing is very common across English state schools. It used to be called Wider Opportunities, can't remember the name now, but it's run by county music hubs and is open to all schools in the area. It's hardly the case all state school pupils never touch an instrument. Children I've taught have learnt violin, ukulele, drums. If they show promise, there is a pathway for small group lessons etc.

I suspect it was the content of his search history that got him sacked, not just showing it! I doubt I'd be sacked for my history of yoga and revision videos 😃

No necessarily - my daughters attend a state primary, and from years 3 to 6, a specialist teacher comes in 2 days a week to do music lessons for all the classes. Every child gets an instrument and they put on a little concert each term led by the music teacher - they do a different instrument each term. This has included African drumming, guitars, violins, keyboards, trumpets, singing, steel pans.

They also have specialist PE teachers come in to take all the PE lessons from years 3-6, and a dedicated forest school lead. The time the children are in music,PE and forest scho then makes the 3-4 hours PPA time for each class teacher, rather than employing cover.