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.

My view is that at the moment it’s one term. The summer term other than for the year-before-public-exams cohort is often a consolidating term. One term can be caught up, and the whole cohort is impacted, which makes it easier. Schools have to support differential learning anyway, so it seems likely that in that distribution there will be many more that need consolidation support in sept/oct than “normal”. But I also think some classes over the summer would be a very good idea - research I believe has shown how the long summer impacts attainment anyway especially of lower income children. Interestingly however I think the educational impacts of shutdown have hit two parent working households too, so the attainment may be different there too. I think the focus should be on making sure every school can offer adequate teaching from sept. And possibly consider starting in early to mid august and having a 2 week half term.

they should be back in school by now, my son is an only child and it's been hard on him. The current science tells us that transmission from children is miniscule so should they go back without social distancing and thus there's transmission from all lthe adults in close proximity, and the Govt will cover the cost of all the temporary staff coverage, or do they go back with social distancing and the government will throw up a ton of extra classroom spaces and cover the cost of even more temporary staff shortages?

In theory it sounds good and would help kids like my youngest who is behind. Not so much for my eldest who is miles ahead.

I am sick of this same thread coming up on Mumsnet every week. You can't just have everyone repeat a year. It won't work, and provisions will be put in place for the fact that there is a gap for pupils doing exams etc.

I think it will depend a lot on the child and the school and to allow a bit of flexibility for children/schools who do think it would be worthwhile would be good. Also - and I am going to shout this in case there are any bots around - THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO THINK ABOUT AND PUT IN PLACE CHANGES TO HOW OUR SCHOOLING IS DONE - to open up more primaries so that that THE HUGE HUGE PRIMARIES WITH MASSIVE YEAR GROUPS ARE A THING OF THE PAST and to PROVIDE MORE ASSISTANCE TO SCHOOLS WHICH NEED IT FOR EXAMPLE WHERE SMALL GROUP WORK FOR PRIMARY CHILDREN FOR MATHS AND ENGLISH WILL BE OF BENEFIT and to think about how pastoral care should change throughout , investment in teaching children emotional intelligence and things which will help prevent abusive relationships/not being able to COPE in the future and so on.

Sorry about shouting. Worth shouting about I think.

I have realised from my stint teaching at home is that within a year group there really are significant differences in what the children are capable of in the average primary (I know that will be obvious to teachers, but it wasn't really on my radar before). So having a year group with different needs is not necessarily going to phase your average teacher where there is sufficient support.

Some dc will be ahead. If their teachers have sent through good work and a parent has had time to teach it 1:1.

I personally prefer the option to permanently delay reception start to 5 rising 6 instead of 4 rising 5 as that is done in many countries and can be shown to be better than what we do now anyway

Alternatively you could do this and just carry one extra year through the school years so all schools would have an extra bumper year. It would be a challenge for some schools but not impossible I think.

Unfortunately, either option will ravage universities that year as they will have no undergraduate intake for one year and since both DH and I work in universities - on a purely personal level I'd prefer neither option of course.

Dd1 is year 7 and is following full timetable with all work submitted and marked/feedback provided. I’m surprised but her school has been amazing and I don’t feel she’s actually behind.

Maths for dd2&3 concerns me but we’re doing our best. A lot of primary work is repetition and dc working at home can mean they each get more done in 2 hours than 5. I can’t see they’ll be a whole year behind though. SATs expectations will be useful as a guide to how behind dc are.

A responsible government who cared about improving attainment would set up a task force to address this issue. Ideally they would look at the evidence and come up with a plan that would put in support where needed.

Not something I expect of this government though - they are woefully disjointed and hugely removed from understanding what people's concerns are.

After 5 or 6 months of this, the private school pupils will be a long way ahead.

of course

but the solution from some posters is to make sure ALL the state schools children stay behind.

Sadly, there is not a solid history of a Govt 'Task Force' ever sorting anything. It tends to be expensive window dressing.

This Govt has been on the 'back foot' from the beginning with Covid 19.
So with Schools.
And probably with Brexit implementation too, (whatever your views of it, they will make a Horlicks of leaving) but that's another thread.

They’ve pretty much done 2/3 of the year. My DS is a mid year birthday and is well ready to move up to Y6. Plus summer term has lots of consolidation and fun things. Think of time on sports day, plays, school trips etc. It’s a shame to miss them but not as much solid learning as earlier in the year. I guess the best thing would be to build in need to repeat year if someone is really struggling but otherwise move up and do more in September.

Don't private schools have longer summer holidays? They can't be 5 or 6 months ahead on the basis state schools are missing 13 weeks but can do work, some more than others. So say they only achieve half of what they would have achieved at school and lets right off one week as lets face it this term they'd have sports days and trips so maybe 6 weeks to make up.

I'm starting to think the biggest danger is the "Lost Generation" hysteria. I mean if enough newspapers/tv shows/parents tell everyone aged between 4 and 17 their lives are ruined there is a danger they will start to believe it.

I have to say that my reception DC has learnt more in the last 10 weeks at home than they have in the 6 months at school prior to lockdown. It's been tough but our particular school have given good support. Not all children will benefit from repeating the year or be suitable for delayed starts.
I also agree with a pp that you could say they have done a different type of learning, spending time with family, learning basic life skills, importance of infection control, hygiene & health (over presenteeism) and resilience. They are also less likely to take things for granted IMO.

There is ZERO chance years will be repeated so its not even worth a debate.

I think pupils should be moved on as the majority will have no problem in catching up. However, I think the government should look to providing extra resources (money in a ring-fenced budget) to provide “catch up” clubs after school, run by qualified teachers to support the minority who will struggle without extra help. Access to these clubs should be monitored as they will fill with the most privileged children, who are not the target group. I would get the Sutton Trust to oversea the scheme to take the party politics out of the equation.

What learning are they missing that is going to be so detrimental that they cannot get a job later on? Honestly everyone is having to lose out and make sacrifices a few months of learning is not going to mean your child cannot go on and complete their studies and do well for themselves. Life skills are just as important why dont they learn that instead to fill in a gap.

Alternatively you could do this and just carry one extra year through the school years so all schools would have an extra bumper year. It would be a challenge for some schools but not impossible I think.

It wouldn't be a "challenge" for some schools, it would be completely impossible.

The only years who do not have time to catch up on this lost time are the current Y9 and up.

This is exactly why I'm so sick of people getting so offended by those of us who don't support Lockdown. There is absolutely no good way to repair the damage that has been caused to children by this lockdown. People keep saying how insignificant this 'small' period of time is in the grand scheme of things so it's worth it to keep others safe but they clearly don't understand how significant even small amounts of time is to children! It's disgraceful. And the longer it drags on the worse it is getting. But of course if you disagree with lockdown and the way it has been handled (i.e. throwing children under a bus) then you're actually a horrible, selfish person who hates all elderly and vulnerable people and wishes them dead!

Aren't schools made to take "bulge classes" when there are more kids than usual for a year? Could that be an option for the children in the younger years who aren't ready to move up?

I am really really worried about this.

I have twins due to start secondary in September. Both have lots of additional support at school for reading and writing, DT1 in particular is probably reading at a Y3 level.

We are doing as much homeschooling as possible, but unfortunately I am working full time and DH is very dyslexic so he’s not much help.

@cyclingmad not so easy when your child has SEN.

I'm a maths teacher in a secondary school. I'm genuinely not worried about the younger years and their maths education. Our curriculum is a spiral, so they'll see everything the missed this term again next year anyway. So we'll teach it from scratch rather than assuming it's revision. As long as the kids have been doing something to keep their skills ticking over, they can catch up with some hard work next year.

I AM concerned about how the current year 10 and 12 will cope. They don't have the luxury of seeing everything again next year, at least not from scratch. The extra time I will need to spend teaching them the stuff they need to know from this term will come at the expense of revision time before the exams. That's already extremely limited in the ALevel course, so those year 12s need to be learning new content. I have been recording explanations and sending them to my classes along with work that we would normally complete in school. Most of my year 12 are actually coping really well with remote learning, some have even said they prefer it and would like me to continue recording the videos even when we're back at school. We'll have to see about that, as I probably won't have time then.

People keep saying how insignificant this 'small' period of time is in the grand scheme of things so it's worth it to keep others safe but they clearly don't understand how significant even small amounts of time is to children!

Of course the alternative view is that this small period of time is indeed insignificant and those who believe otherwise are scaremongering.

The truth is that no one knows. My parents missed out on significantly more schooling due to the war - my mum doesn't see it as having been a problem at all, it was just how life was at that time. I imagine they had significantly less support during and after this period too. It is slightly different from the socialising aspect But of course there is not the chance of being bombed this time round so who knows.

I think the answer may be to have all children taught in pods of 15 for the rest of next year (via substitute teachers being recruited & others) in these smaller groups the rate of learning will be greater and by the end of the school year 2020/21 the majority will have caught up.
As for the sitting of public examinations, grade boundaries are adjusted every year anyway so there will be no problem making sure they proceed unhindered.

I think let the kids go back into their current year until October half term (assuming all schools go back in September), let the new reception kids start after half term too so they have 6 weeks to finish their current year. Probably loads of flaws in that plan but a lot of primary kids will want to spend a bit if time with their teacher before starting a new year and that teacher knows them.