So, why is there a discrepancy with how schools are managing lock down?

[PuttingoutthefirewithGasoline]

Not intended to be teacher bashing I suspect its the SLT and Head.
NOt the teachers

But in my area we have private and grammar schools who just carried on as normal but on line and we have some secondary providing some lessons on line and a mix, then we have some churning out power points, patchy marking? NO contact with the students verbally?

I myself work in an educating setting as support staff, I have 2 small dc - and I have also been at work - virtually every day?

I totally get that KS1 dc may not be able to access on line stuff but again - our school pointed us to websites with no pinned down help whereas other primaries have given out weekly work?

EG - a theme - space - spellings on space - small comprehension - and some maths?

How come some schools have managed this so well - and others have almost been willfully resistant to the most basic support?

I just find it ironic that I am here, interacting and talking to students every day, assisting them with work on line - through typing and the occasional virtual meeting, when I am simultaneously trying to navigate my way around KS1, to find out what my daughter should be learning - hampered by the fact she is also on the SEN register and is behind but its not been made clear to me on what....because the argument is - her school teachers also have children at home

So I am helping my students but also trying to help my own when I only want basic guidance and for the secondary child I want more live in put and opportunity for live questions and feed back?

Do the teachers at grammar and private not face the same issues as us all - who are working with children?

I can't answer your question, but you could always browse other primary school websites and see what they offer? DS2's primary is putting up daily maths and English activities plus bits of news and extra ideas. "I See Maths" has been a particular hit with DS2 (and DH).

DS1's secondary seem to be giving feedback by email only. Maybe 1:1s are offered to those in greater need.

There are 24000+ schools in England.
24,000 ways of doing things.

At least before the conservatives destroyed local government you had just 343 ways of doing things...

Blue I do loads of 1:1 whilst teacher teaches..

KrakowDawn is this really why they are all so different and there isn't one accountable line or body?

Different cohorts, different staff, different budgets, different resources available.

There was no time to plan a cohesive and consistent approach, everyone just had to wing it, so everyone had different ideas.

I think people need to give very careful thought to the demographics of different school populations before drawing comparisons. One school may be reasonably sure that each child has their own computer, internet access, and parents that understand the work and can explain it to them. Another school may have families who have no computer, or only one shared between multiple family members, limited access to other resources such as books, or parents that struggled at school and don't feel able to explain things.

We have been forcefully told that it is not helpful or appropriate to compare...they're all doing their best. That shut us up! 😂

Private school and state school- think about it! Who's got the cash?

And- we did have a coherent approach- taken away by Gove.

I think a large part of the difference was dependent on how much the school already did online. As computing / IT isn't a core subject, this varied a lot between schools. It was much easier for schools that already used an online platform (seesaw / purple mash / MS Teams / whatever) to adapt to the new approach.

Also, I think a big factor is the socio economic background of the average pupil. If most of the pupils have access to a laptop for at least some of the day it's easier. If many pupils don't (eg one family laptop that is being used all day by a parent who is wfh) then it's much harder for the school to teach these pupils effectively at a distance.

There was literally no time to have this planned and rolled out and decided what we would be providing. If there was than maybe there would be a benchmark set. And honestly I have members of staff asking for help with a range of IT problems every normal day in school, so imagine how hard it is now.
it's hard for some members of staff to get to grips with technology and zero time for training on these online learning platforms. Some schools can have 20 youngish teachers who are very technologically aware and other schools may only have 4 teachers all of which still struggle with a whiteboard. That's not me being disrespectful to them, they're fantastic teachers but some people must really be struggling to teach remotely.

Also depends on whether the individual teacher is trying to look after / homeschool their own small children.

It’s not fundamentally down to heads/SLT. The government and DfE did not give guidance/instructions to schools as to how to operate teaching throughout lockdown, no guidance as to standards or expectations, so there have been discrepancies in how schools have managed this completely new and unexpected way of working. How schools have managed has a lot to do with circumstances of the staff and SLT I suppose, but ultimately, if every child was to receive identical provision, there would have needed to be more input from on high.

It highlights the lack of standardisation. Just like the way some NHS hospitals have managed non covid treatments far better than others. At the end of the day, schools, hospitals etc are managed by humans and staffed by humans. All with different management abilities, aptitudes, etc. Just the same way that even in "normal" times, two different teachers can teach their subject to similar cohorts in very different ways according to their own personal experience & preferences.

Not sure what the answer is unless you want to go down the "McDonalds" approach where every school and every teacher does the job in exactly the same way with exactly the same equipment/resources etc.

I don’t know why there isn’t a national online scheme with lessons, activities and resources available for all.
I’d like benchmarks of what ‘Outstanding’ looks like, demonstrated for teachers, staff, SLT,parents, inspectors, governors and random members of the public. Instead of the messy hodgepodge that confuses.

As computing / IT isn't a core subject

I think Covid has exposed this as a really serious issue, especially in this modern world when IT reaches into almost all walks of life. When I first heard that computing/IT wasn't a compulsory subject like English and Maths, I couldn't believe it. My son has just left secondary and didn't do a single lesson of computing/IT throughout his 7 years there. It's crazy that can be allowed to happen.

I don’t know why there isn’t a national online scheme with lessons, activities and resources available for all.

Yep, fully agree. But apparently teachers prefer to create their own "scrappy worksheets" rather than use centralised/standardised resources.

The SLT and Head are teachers

It depends on lots of things but for us, the priority was supporting the large proportion of families who really rely on school to keep safe and well, so academic progress took a back seat behind the very extensive safeguarding work. Some schools have far more key worker children in than others, so have fewer staff available to run the home learning. Some schools are better run than others.

There is a national online academy Heffalumps.

I teach in an independent school. All KS2 have their own iPads and we could be 99% sure that KS1 would have access to a device at home. This made it possible for us to move all lessons online. I can't imagine that can be the case everywhere unfortunately. Because we're a large consortium, all of our systems and files were already online meaning that teachers could access everything from home. Again, I'm not sure that a small primary school would be able to have the same set-up.
While we have had KWC in school every day, including the holidays, we have not been needing to deal with feeding hungry families in the same way some schools are doing - we've been able to focus all our attention on the academic side (and pastoral obviously - we have to call every child, every week).
It's been bloody hard work teaching a full timetable remotely. Lessons take an awfully long time to prepare and finding a quiet space when I'm teaching live Google Meet lessons is challenging, as is helping my own children around my lesson times. The parental expectation is there though because they are paying fees so a service needs to be provided. It does mean I'm working crazy hours though - starting before 6 and still marking at midnight once my kids are in bed. I don't know how sustainable it is long-term.

It's a bit like asking why TESCOs is operating differently to your local corner shop or why a GP surgery in Devon isn't exactly the same as a GP surgery in Cardiff.
There is no answer to it really other than that all heads, SLT, governing bodies, local authorities and teachers are different, the guidance for home learning has been none existent and you can't please every parent (not a criticism - it's just everybody's circumstances are different). Some parents want online, some want worksheets, some want more work, some think it's way too much etc.

Oak National Academy

I'm not a teacher but I'd think there are various issues:

Keystage 1 need more support
Some Keystage 2 will also needs lots of support
Grammar schools have a very able cohort of pupils who are well able to manage on line, probably alot of them very motivated and involved parents
Private schools smaller classes kids likely to have access to tech, books etc parents can afford tutoring
Other secondaries lots of variables like the area they are in, children with special needs.school facilities.
The buildings will have a big effect on how they cope with the return, if they have spare classrooms or are already crowded, if they have one entrance or 2 or 3, if they are a small, medium or large school.

None of that is 100% e.g. my DD was great with onine learning at 5, my GS at grammar school is definitely not very motivated and his parents take no interest but as general ideas it would explain some of it. Of course there is also the fact that SLT can be great, good, OK or dreadful.

It would be amazing if they were all the same.

User, GCSE IT was abolished as it wasn't challenging enough. The theory is that they don't need specific IT lessons because they learn those skills through general use of the applications in other lessons.

There was a national scheme.
Then it got abolished and schools were able to do what they liked.

I had to buy a tablet so my dc could do school work. Not sure everyone can afford that. We don't have a printer though everyone seems to assume we have.
Not everyone can access all the resources. The school I teach in are mindful of that and print a work pack for every student once every 2 weeks. I think that's a lot of effort to go to.

Schools are not a one size fits all, due to size, budget, cohort of pupils, staffing and the parents.

Reasons could be:

1. Staffing-staff off ill, bereavement, leave, they had lots of supply staff and have been furloughed by their agency, specific issues have arisen that has taken staff elsewhere.
2. Budget. These are set beforehand the academic year starts and funds were assigned elsewhere than IT and infrastructure because they didn’t predict a pandemic.
3. Their pupil/parent makeup is largely made up of those who can’t afford equipment/decent connection etc and as the promised initiative from the government to provide laptops hasn’t materialised, leadership have taken the decision to not widen the gap even further.
4. Maybe they surveyed the parents asking what they wanted and the majority said the preferred having resources their children could do at anytime, such as the weekend because they cannot run to a little live timetable of lessons at home
5. Maybe more keyworker and vulnerable children are in school than in other schools, which needs more staffing.
6. Maybe the staff want a holiday

It could be none of the above and all of the above.
Who knows?
As I say, schools are not a one size fits all.

To be fair there is a big difference between what different schools are offering.

DS’s school (he’s in year 6) have put a full timetable of activities on Google classroom from day one. There’s maths, English and another subject every day. There’s a weekly timetable but work is posted daily to spread it out. Work is handed in and commented on and the teacher posts everyday, sometimes just chatty things to keep some normality. She records herself reading the class novel for them to listen to. In the Easter holidays, she even posted daily challenges or activities. If she’s in school, she warns them in the morning that she may not be able to reply straight away.

His old school, where his cousins still go, have posted a few worksheets on the school website. They didn’t set up a class email address until after Easter and explicitly wrote on Facebook that parents should not expect a response the same day as the teachers have families at home too. They’ve posted pictures of the staff gardening and walking their dogs on FB. Fair enough, this is all probably true, but advertising it won’t help the teacher bashing! My sister has had to organise her own curriculum for them.

They are both schools with a similar demographic by the way and highly sought after schools in nice areas!