My child’s primary school is not doing any online teaching

[Yandle]

My dd is in year 6. There are no online lessons with her teachers. We are sent links to the Oak National Academy website with tasks put on a very old fashioned database called “purple mash”.
After all my friends who have children at other local schools in my area, told me about their children having online lessons daily, I contacted the head at my dd’s school and asked if they would be doing online teaching.
The answer was a firm no.
The reason given was that the school has a large number of children who do not speak English as a first language.
I don’t think this is an acceptable excuse and I feel very annoyed that the school is using this as a reason. Surely the school should be doing MORE for these children?
My dd has been watching the videos & doing the very small amount of work set but I feel she is missing out (along with her peers) when my friends children are having live interactive teaching on Microsoft teams.
Is there anything I can do? I know I can’t make them teach online lessons but I can’t help thinking that other schools in my area who also have pupils who do not have English as a first language, manage to teach online. They obviously care more about their pupils.

@NoOneOwnsTheRainbow

FFS schools can't win. If they're online everyone whinges and if they cater for people who can't get online, everyone whinges. These are the only two options but it's not good enough because Davina-down-the road's school has a teacher who beams themselves holographically to every pupil's house to one-on-one teach them and cooks the kids a gourmet lunch too. Get a grip.

@WorriedMillie

Our school is doing daily check in zooms plus 2 x afternoon zooms a week, not teaching, just maintaining connection. All optional Friend’s primary isn’t offering anything due to shared devices. She has kids in her class with three siblings and only one device between them

Well having siblings and one device should not be an issue. Our primary are doing different times of the day for different classes... Problem solved; unless of course you have twins or even Octuplets, but even if you have a couple kids in same class then they can go on together.

So how do those kids learn at school?
I don't get it, just because English isn't your first language doesn't mean you can't understand it?!
I say this as a British born Sikh whose mother tongue is Punjabi, I still understood English at school and on the TV as a child.

Or, do you mean kids that can't speak English at all? Recent immigration? If so, there's a larger issue than just online learning.

Download the national curriculum and teach your kids yourself.
If my immigrant parents can do it so can people born in this county.
(My parents didn't trust the state to give brown kids a fair chance at education, so educated us, school was an attendance tick box exercise only)

My daughter is y1, we have one live phonics lesson a day and live story time 3 times a week. Plus two videos a day (English and maths) and follow up worksheets. The live lessons are staggered for different year groups.There are twins in my daughters class and they log on together. The live lessons are recorded so anyone who can’t make it can watch later. The kids in school are watching the live lesson. It works really well. As a working parent I am very very grateful for it. Yes I sit with her for most of it but I can deal with emails etc without interruption for half an hour. It gives a focus to the day and some much needed interaction with other people for my daughter. It’s a big improvement on lockdown 1.

(We have kids with English as a second language and they manage perfectly well)

(There are approx 5 children in school - the teacher is working from home and the children in school are supervised by a TA and/ or student teacher.)

Have a search on here OP. Many parents complaining that the home learning is too much and the requirement to participate in live sessions or all day schooling is unmanageable.

The Oak academy provides these online sessions and they are actually very good in the main. The government provided this. It is one of the few good things they have done. Why not use them rather than moan?

The government provided this. It is one of the few good things they have done.

You won’t be surprised at all to hear it wasn’t their idea and in fact all they did was provide funding. It was teachers that sorted it out and went to the government to ask for money. And set it up over the Easter holidays, meeting an extremely tight deadline.

That’s why it actually works.

True and they are good lessons - very accessible

We don’t either, have recorded videos and guides on the lesson

noblegiraffe I should have known it was too good to have been government organised!