An even bigger education gap between good state & private due to covid?

[Inanutshelldaze]

Just thinking out loud here....
Bit of background, yr R & year 2 are kids in an excellent state primary. School has been setting little phonics, maths & reading excercises via seesaw that's it. I felt very proud as we have read alot, I've listened to them reading daily, printed out related twinkl resources, watched bitesize religiously & bought workbooks for core subjects! I was delighted with myself & didn't mind doing the work as the kids were more than happy to more than the school sent.
Speaking to a neighbour this afternoon who has similar aged kids in a non selective prep & she was complaining the kids were only getting 2 hours of live classes & homework of an hour after.
She has been doing the same as me so hers wouldn't "fall behind"!
She also said similar aged kids in selective & super schools were doing full days of live classes, homework & being tutored...!
I went from feeling fantastic about our work to a failure☹️ covid is going to cause huge gaps for years to come😒

OP you're doing plenty, don't worry! I'm a reception teacher and honestly don't think your children will be any further behind than the children doing live lessons at a private school - reception children aren't likely to take that much in from it anyway!
I think the gap will be more prominent with the children whose parents can't/don't do anything at all with their kids, or leave them sat in front of the telly all day!

Thank you , I thought we were doing great too & then felt so deflated when my neighbour was disheartened with their school who was doing so much more than ours...!

Anyone else?

Don’t assume that an hour on a laptop with a teacher and a class of kids is better than half an hour close personal attention with you.

My children are at private school, they’re year one and nursery.

The year one only has 4 children in her class so she’s been able to catch them up quickly.

I don’t know if this will cause a further gap necessarily as she’s always had only 4 in the class.

They did do lots of zoom and good work packs during the break too.

To pupils currently in KS1 not much

To those in secondary, probably considerable, just because of the difference in the number of schools with good online learning platforms. Sutton Trust found way more private schools achieved this than state schools and loss of a whole terms from mid secondary onwards is important

Grappling with what to do about 2021 GCSEs & A levels (and 2022 if this autumn term does not go well) and what to do with a cohort when most have no hope of covering enough of the syllabus, is going to be the next big question for exam boards to grapple with.

And those who might need to build more ‘catch up’ modules in to the next stage. There will always be some students missing bits, but not most of them missing a sizeable chunk

Yep, it won't matter a damn in primary tbh, it's secondary state pupils who've been royally fucked over by patchy provision. Absolutely shattered.

I agree with others- Primary probably won’t show much differences, especially ks1, but Secondary will.

The biggest gap will be between the children of parents who were able to put in the time and tried and those who either couldn’t or didn’t. A reception child who has had parental support every day will be ‘ahead’ despite whatever the school has done.

I think the same will run through all year groups, including Secondary- those who have had the luxury of parents helping with or encouraging education will have done best.

After parental impact, the next biggest effect will be how the school have been (there are really good state and poor private schools, although mostly it has been the private schools that have continued teaching because of fees.

Children who have had no parental input (for whatever reason) and a school which hasn’t provided work will be worst off. They’re sadly also the group that will have least chance of catching up for the same reasons.

It's terrible on the kids, will really hightlight the inequalities in our education system. I would love to send my dc to a private & would if we could afford it but we simply cant...