Surely, repeating this school year is the only way?

[YardleyX]

In what world would it ever have been thought an option to just finish school for the year in March, and then carry on to the next year as though nothing’s happened?!??

Some schools have worked exceptionally hard to continue educating during the pandemic, but official line from the government is that the “curriculum is suspended”.

Therefore, unless the entire curriculum is being re-written, all the way up to and including A level, how can there possibly be an expectation for every child in the country to just ‘move on’ in September?

Year 11 and Year 13 could move on. Impact would therefore be no schools have a Year 11 this year, and some provision needs to be made in order to accommodate this years Reception intake.

Hardly ideal, but better than an entire generation of children falling so far behind, and in lots of cases probably never catching up.

Most likely everyone will be expected to move on and there will be a gap in every child's education. So every kid aged between 4 and 21 (?) will do slightly worse than they would have without the virus.

My other half is a teacher and says that they "will just go over the missing parts and catch up next year" but I don't see how that is possible since they struggle to get every kid through the curriculum as it is.

But I also can't see how they could gave everyone skip a year without the next intake of reception starting a year later. And all the other knock-on effects.

It wouldnt work unless they changed the school starting age from 4 to 5 forever. Because otherwise one year there will be a double intake - I.e. all of this years reception kids, plus all the ones who should have started reception in september.

Where are the Y11's meant to go? All you are doing is doubling up Y12/L6 provision -how will that work or help?

Also what will happen to uni admissions in 2021 when there is a vastly reduced intake, ie those taking up deferred places from this year/mature students. How do you expect Uni's to manage financially?

At the other end of the spectrum what about all those expecting to start school now, what are their parents meant to do? How will this affect nursery provision if more (older children) have to stay in nursery provision longer - will there be fewer places if children can't move up to older rooms? How will this affect parental employment - is there a risk of a negative impact on women in the workplace and the knock on effect of reduced earnings and pensions?

What about child benefit? Ok, it can be paid until the day before the YP reaches the age of 20 if they are in approved education/training. However this is currently the exception, under your suggestion this will become the norm and the cost to the taxpayer would be increased (or it would be an impetus to change child benefit, either scrapping it or only paying it to primary aged children for example).

Whichever you cut it, it's rotten

The thing is, if you miss a year now you are starting people in school a year later for ever - you cannot run a double reception with children from 2 different intake years and still be dealing with it in 13 years time when they do their A-levels.

So you raise the school starting age to 6. Where are the nursery places to cope with that?

I think the problem is some kids are learning almost nothing, some a bit and some are doing pretty well with home learning. They aren't going to be equally behind when they return.

To be honest I wonder if our system of going up to the next year whether or not you can cope with the work is the right way. I can think of loads of classmates who would have benefitted from another year with some reading and writing practice rather than just dumping them in lessons they couldn't follow due to low literacy.

What about all the kids moving school? Silly idea. It’s completely impractical!

But it's not that simple. The knock on effect would be massive.

Where are small infant schools (or any schools!) with reception-Y2 supposed to house the new intake? Where are they finding the teachers?

There's so many flaws with repeating the year I can't even list them!

The 30 free hours provision would need to be extended. Where’s the cash coming from?

Think it through.

It wouldn’t work.

So we can just ‘suspend the curriculum’ to no impact, then?

Makes a mockery of the entire education system and of the teaching profession.

Repeating the year would be a real kick in the teeth to every child who's worked hard the last few months and every parent who's on their knees trying to cope with work and schooling.

Not to mention where are you putting the extra children and how are you making it up to Unis and Colleges with no first years?

Who said it’s with no impact? No one.

But repeating the year isn’t the he answer. It creates more problems.

Surely the answer is to slim down the impossible curriculum for next year and include some catch up work.

My son would lose his shit if he had to repeat a year

Easy to say “it wouldn’t work”.

Moving every child on a year “doesn’t work” either.

Imagine year 10 pupils who have had poor provision from their school throughout this?

As if year 11 is not hard enough anyway! Many will never catch up, will become totally despondent with the impossible task set them, and will drop out of school at 16 with no qualifications.

The tax payer will end up paying for that too.

Children don’t need to repeat the year if you think about it a lot of the school day is actually not learning especially in primary
There’s assemblies, playtime’s etc the actual learning time isn’t huge and it won’t be massively detrimental that a few months are lost
Secondary age children are more able to keep up as can work more independently

Don’t underestimate the learning experience of this situation though - even less learning but in a diff environment is actually good for children it teaches resilience and resourcefulness plus I would say that for the vast majority of children so much extra time at home is probably really good for their emotional development. There are so many positives and I don’t think in generations to come there will be anything marking out these children as different in anyway it will just be something they lived through and made the best of and king term academics won’t be affected.

I do know for SEN it is different though and there could be issues through lack of routine/therapy/respite etc and that of course is a huge issue

Of course there’s an impact! A massive one. But the impact of repeating the year would be bigger and far more wide reaching.

If wouldn’t work unless school starting age moves to 5 and university starting age moves to 19 (permanently)

What happens to the 4 year olds who are meant to start reception in September? An extra year in nursery? So what happens to the 3 year olds who a are meant to be starting nursery? Their parents have no childcare? Etc etc. It just isn’t possible.

I think next year that some subjects should either be dropped like PE and RE as compulsory subjects so they can concentrate on the core academic subjects. Or the school day be extended by an hour. 6 months is around 17/18 weeks of education. So every week is almost a days lost time, over 38 weeks that's 38 days, so roughly 8 weeks clawed back. Combine that with no RE or PE, or assemblies and you can get some of the time back.

I'm not saying PE and RE aren't important. But there are other things that are more important for these children than those subjects.

There’s nothing to stop Year 13 moving on.

And nothing to do Year 11 moving on.

Hence, one academic year without a Year 11 in place.

I’m puzzled anyway about the knock on effect to universities.

If many of the current Y13s defer, that’s greater competition next year, so higher grades may be asked.

And those competing for the places would be the current years 12/13, half of whom had grades awarded with no exam, and half awarded with a lot of the curriculum missing.

My son would be so bored. He is one of the oldest in his year and really ready for new challenges. I know he is lucky but it wouldn't work for him. England (I know different in other locations) has never had a particularly flexible approach to placing children but as a result teachers are good at differentiating. It might be different say in the US where keeping back a year is more of a thing. For some children I can see that a little more flexibility could be beneficial but not as a blanket approach.

It’s not the year 11 end that’s the problem, it’s the reception end.

They can't repeat a year. For one thing, they have completed 6 months of the curriculum already.
We will pick up when they all come back, the same way as we do when we start each new year. We will assess where each child is, looknatvthe curriculum objectives and differentiate where necessary.
For example, when we do time in Maths, some children are still only capable of half past and o'clock and some can work out timetables. Some don't know to start on 0 on a ruler and not the end and some can work out area. We differentiate work and try to get children up to the same level.
I said at the beginning of lockdown, if parents only managed to embed things like telling the time on analogue and digital clocks or working out time problems using a tv guide, that would be amazing.
Some children will have had parents who have been able to extend the work we have sent out, those children can't be expected to repeat work just because some children will have done nothing.
Schools know their children and parents, contrary to some on Mumsnet's opinion, they will do their best for the children. That might mean a different curriculum in September, who knows?

I’m confident that primary school children will be able to catch up. Every class I have had starts from a different place and we adapt what we are teaching to meet their needs. Can’t comment on secondary as not my area of expertise But I’m sure secondary teachers are also able to adapt teaching, I understand that it will be harder for older ones as they have less time to catch up.

You are greatly under estimating teachers ability to course correct.