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.

Try homeschooling as others have been doing since March - Sept.

Is that in reply to me @splattherat?

So if every other child is back at school or nursery etc, I'd need to remove mine for a year for 'the greater good?'

As is often said on here, it's not a race to the bottom

If you tell our Y10s they have to repeat this whole year I can think of many of them who will become school refusers.

They could just change the targets, seeing as they are made up anyway.

They could do away with GCSEs while they are at it, given they date back to when people still left education at 16.

Year 11 would normally already left by now pretty much so there is no free year. Yr10 will move onto yr11 in September and there will be catch ups to be done. GCSE &(Alevel) grade boundaries will be altered (as they are every year) it will be ok

I think an idea would be for kids to all go back in the same year group as they were, up to at least half term. After October half term, the new academic year begins so they would have had 6 weeks 'catch up'. Obviously this affects kids starting nursery and reception but in the grand scheme of it, after everything what is an extra 6 weeks wait?

Public exams next year to be moved back to June and July.

Of course that is, if social distancing can stop by September. I think the public's tolerance for social distance will seriously wane by the autumn. It's not sustainable long term.

I haven’t read every post so this may already have been covered. DFE are currently in discussion with exam boards to reduce course content for GCSEs in 2021.
There will be huge discrepancy between children who have Key worker parents, home working parents, furloughed parents, poorly educated parents etc. There will be studies obviously which will tell us what we mostly know, probably 5 years too late to help any of the children

@ Zeezee82 If that is the case I wish they would hust get on with it and communicate this information to teachers, pupils, parents ASAP. Its really not fair on those of us who are fighting on with our teens and the teens are fighting on trying to do keep up with all the work. While other teens have been up all night, had long lie ins, continued to meet up and brag about it right through lock down and spend their time on TicToc and doing make up etc.

Ex secondary school teacher with primary kids. They repeat the same stuff year after year. Every kid will be in a different place after this lockdown but every kid was in a different place before it. Hopefully adaptations will be made and expectations altered but lots of kids miss out on periods of schooling for various reasons and the ability to get on academically is down to a lot more than how many worksheets you have done.

If secondary go back in September then they will just have to make allowances for year 9 and 10 studying for GCSE. If they can't return until Jan or later they should just resit the year.

I would think GCSE’s next year for current year 10’s % points for grades will be slightly reduced to account for loss of learning.

Feel blessed my dd’s high school is doing lessons as normal online, my dd prefers it as is in a class with quite a few who love to distract everyone, she is yr 8 I don’t think she would be amused at having to repeat a year as she is doing the work but I would be surprised if her whole class is, seems to only be 10-12 that check in for morning register each day. Those who haven’t done any work will surely have to repeat a year? Or no reception class for next intake and all children stay in current classes but with extra work in class - school until 5pm and extra homework to get them caught up so the following year everyone is back where they should be and we take in reception children ( meanwhile nursery funding would have to be increased to allow for the ones that would have moved on to school to have a years free nursery)

This should be an option for children who haven’t had the benefit of home schooling or any decent schooling ( check out the key worker schooling provision in some places thread). There is no one size fits all and money will have to be spent on rebooting missed education.

I know a lot of year 13. All of ones I know are hoping to defer their place a year as they don't want to pay fees for online learning. Many units have said all learning will be online for next academic year.

Exactly @Splattherat !!

My husband said this, too, and I said it wouldn't work. After all, it is only just over a term that they've missed, I don't see the need for an entire year do over

Impractical to do this. What we assess can change if it needs to. So many people seem so stuck on needing to maintain the status quo- why is that necessary in the current climate? GCSEs can still happen, but perhaps this year's year 10 will be examined on fewer poems for example or we could study one less novel. Other year groups can just go at a suitable pace and build on skills and goal posts can be moved a bit. In English, for example we spend years honing skills and practise these many times over. Educational institutions will surely adapt and expectations for the next couple of years may be slightly different. Do as much online work as you can and keep them reading.

As a nation, on the whole, we’ve pulled together and supported bloody everybody through this crisis.

Elderly population
Vital service workers
People shielding
Supermarket staff

There’s been fund raising, volunteer groups, clapping, cake making, PPE donations.

Excellent displays of community support, and very rightly so. It’s been commendable.

But, where is the support for the children of this country???

They are suffering hugely.

No information for years 10 and 12 working towards life changing exams.

University students that are still being charged extortionate course fees and accommodation, despite no access to their university.

No guidance on home schooling, so getting any education at all is a lottery faced by each child.

Unions now obstructing every idea proposed to help deliver an education.

Vulnerable children left in difficult home situations with no support.

Who knows how many children, particularly of teenage years, who don’t ever recover from this and whose life takes a different path as a result?

Where is the national outrage on this? Where’s all the volunteers, fund raisers? Retired teachers could be sat at home making recorded lessons. Funds could be raised. Volunteers could help delivering supplies.

There’s no reason really why this all had to fall to the schools. Of course already poorly funded schools were never going to cope with this on their own.

The public has been endlessly generous with their time, money and efforts since lockdown began. Why no campaign to direct some of this wonderful kindness into our children?

The GP surgery in my village are heartily sick of their daily cake delivery, but the bakers just keep on coming!!

University students that are still being charged extortionate course fees and accommodation, despite no access to their university.

This is a pretty irrelevant point- apart from the charged for accomodation bit which is neither here nor there for private accomodation, but most universities have refunded the last terms accommodate fees for university run accomodation.

But ofc universities have charged students fees as students have still been taught, level 6s have still graduated and everyone has still sat exams and assignments and completed their current academic year (with additional provisions, support and changes as necessary in place). The only way universities could have refunded the final terms fees would have been to close completely which would have been ludicrous as most university students only had TWO teaching weeks left at the point of lockdown due to the easter holidays, before it hit exam season anyway. Many would not have wanted to stop and therefore have to repeat the entire year when for the most part it was all submission of course work and exams after Easter.

I do feel that repeating the year would be unnecessary as by the time the schools closed a lot of the academic year had been undertaken.
Many kids will be learning to use there initiative working from home and older kids taking more responsibility for their own learning.
My bigger worry is the future. What sort of working world will they be entering? How will there mental health be at the end of this? Where is the end of this? And the kids of all ages who aren't getting any support or stimulation at home will their life paths ever recover from this. Repeating a year at school isn't going to make a difference to the widening gap of inequalities that will marr generations to come.

I actually agree with this. All school kids to repeat the year, and either a) accept new reception kids in Sept and prepare for a bulge year to go through the school for the next 12 or so years (Coronavirus will be costing the country money for decades anyway) or b) permanently change the school entry age. Personally I think a) is the better option.

A whole generation of kids will be educationally impacted by this and it isn’t fair on them to just sweep over half a years loss of education under the carpet. Yes, so parents will be doing an amazing job, but a lot of parents can’t or won’t home educate.

DH and I both work more than full time hours. DD(6) has been going to keyworker school throughout. The school refuse to educate her, so I somehow have to homeschool her when I can have a break from work at about 6pm on an evening (if anyone has tries to educate a 6 year old at 6pm in the eve, you will know they are too tired) or try to catch up on the one day I get off on a weekend. It’s not possible and my poor DDs education has taken a massive hit.

I understand why you think that clearlyweary but 'bulge' class sizes are not an answer for the younger pupils. And what do you propose for the work that was done between September and March that doesn't need repeating.
Best thing you can do with a 6 year old on an evening is read a bedtime story rather than trying to educate them at 6pm.

This is an interesting thread - I didn't realise so many of us relied entirely on the state system to educate our young.

Learning and development isn't a static thing, like the national curriculum devised by governments. The curriculum doesn't even adhere to how generations of psychologists understand how best we learn e.g. what age to introduce long division, theory of physics or multiple choice exams.

I think that year 6 children will be fine, bar the social aspects of leaving a more nurturing primary school environment. The specialists will spend a lot of time in yr 7 ensuring that these kids have learned what they need to progress to national exams through a more self-learning system. I think this has always been the case in yr 7.

Perhaps we are muddling passing SATS with learning and educational development? If so, then for this COVID-19 year we abandon SATS so that the educationalists can do their job!

It's possible that parents will be needed to provide additional support to their kids educational development well into 2022 to ensure their kids have caught up with the curriculum.

IF schools are back to normal in September, then yes, just catch up as best they can. BUT if as seems more likely, they don't and don't re open properly until January, then you've nearly lost a year of education and the only option is to just re-start where you left off and write off the year.

GCSEs can still happen, but perhaps this year's year 10 will be examined on fewer poems for example or we could study one less novel

English Lit is probably the easiest one to reduce the scope of the exams where you have lots of optional parts of the paper. Very easy to change the exam to "answer 3 questions" instead of "answer 4 questions" when the exam consists of, say, 12 questions on 12 different texts.

Nowhere near as easy with Maths, science, history, geography, languages etc. Schools don't teach the topics in any particular order. So, in Physics, removing the radioactivity question(s) will only help the schools that havn't taught radioactivity yet - for those who did it early on, it's no help at all. The exam boards can't just remove topics that schools may have already taught. To do that, they'd need to halve the syllabus to allow schools the time to teach things they've not already taught in the remaining year that they have left - i.e. make it a one year course instead of two. That is still not fair, as schools that have already randomly done the 50% will then have the time to do it all again which would almost guarantee high success rates, which is still an unfair situation.

Nothing is going to be 100% fair though- it never was and it never will be, but I do agree that some subjects are easier than others to modify exam content for. For this reason, I believe government should allow next year's cohort to be assessed in a different manner which takes into consideration what they have been taught.