The future of schools with no teachers: kids in a hall on screens

[noblegiraffe]

This just came up on twitter as a laudable story of a school saving on supply teachers by herding kids into the hall, logging them into laptops and having them teach themselves from videos or websites, while kept in order by a non-teacher who won't be able to help them.

As we have fewer and fewer teachers and more and more lessons that need supply, this will probably be the future of schooling. We know from lockdown how utterly inadequate it is. No discussions, no practicals, no personal relationships. Even with the best AI tailoring the content (which is isn't right now) it is a grim and sterile scenario.

And now we know why the only thing that the government has put significant funding into in recent years is Oak Academy. This is what they want. This is why they have slashed teacher training providers during a recruitment crisis. This is why they are playing silly buggers with pay negotiations during a retention crisis. They don't care that kids don't have teachers.

schoolsweek.co.uk/solutions-how-an-academy-trust-slashed-its-supply-costs/

As in - all her homework is virtual/software. Exercise books never come home.
Same as primary - as a parent, I never see their books until the year is over.

I agree pupils cannot teach themselves which is why I rarely do supply work anymore - too often, it isn't my subject, it's not valuable work so you are set up to fail (or previous supply did a piss poor job so the absent staff member may feel they might as well set any old shite as it won't get done), or it's teach/copy from the textbook. This is why tablets are not an appalling idea for cover, as long as the tasks are clear. As a replacement for long-term staff absence though it's as tenable as having a non-specialist in place i.e. not very.

Other people wouldn't be happy with the above because they want their kids to learn stuff beyond reading and writing.

This was Lockdown 2 and all twelve did better than they would have/were doing at home - that's why they were there; to be nagged(!), given computer access/help logging in for teams and fed by yours truly on occasion. The outcomes were always going to be variable (as when used with mixed ability, differentiation by outcome sometimes feels like it pays lip service).

How do you think it would scale up to 60 kids?

Just VLE tasks on tablets gets repetitive quickly, if that is all it is.
A robo-teacher/lecturer/Oak Academy teacher on a big screen: could work short-term if kids used to it/trained for it. Passive learning won't replace active though. Nonetheless, a specialist delivering a filmed lesson/lecture could well be better for the kids than a non-specialist winging it/being told to teach from PowerPoints for six months.

We barely get any planning time? 6 minutes to plan, prepare and assess an hour's lesson. Even with centralised resources it takes longer than 6 minutes per lesson.

But you get PPA time.
It's just session prep time that you're talking about @noblegiraffe

@MrsHamlet apologies, I should have said that I was referring to KS1 and KS2 .

But you get PPA time.

It's just session prep time that you're talking about

PPA time is 6 minutes for a hour lesson. That’s to plan, prepare and assess.

How do you think it would scale up to 60 kids?
I think it could work as a whole school system for one-off absences if trained from year 7 and severe consequences for those disrupting. If they were used to the system then it could easily replace generic cover.
Would I enjoy controlling that environment, hell no.
Those that want to learn will do their best, regardless of the environment. A lot will switch off though unless cattle-prodded. Bit dystopian, eh?
You cannot fool your audience though. Kids see through bullshit so if they don't see it as worthy of their time, they won't engage.
Using it long term, cannot see it myself. I know they debunked learning styles but surely that one approach won't suit all. I often think that about PowerPoints though.
As Seth in the video says, you may as well have all education delivered at night by lectures globally and experts to answer questions during the day...

What do you mean by history useless, geography useless?

I get 2 hours of PPA to plan and assess 16 lessons. And guided reading. And any assemblies I have to do (I do one weekly). And my after school club.

It doesn't go far. And is frequently interrupted.

Apologies for using though 3x in the above
Children choosing their own learning materials always comes up in futuristic school scenarios; a virtual montessori approach.
I am not sure whether the average child has that willpower and self-regulation and determination. Same as those accessing games when should be coding. Those with a curiosity/thirst for knowledge and wanting to learn for learning's sake may be trusted to access whatever youtube videos can bring them knowledge - my son is a self-taught chess player.
Nonetheless, many pupils need the guiding hand, a caring and committed teacher has. Practicals, demos, projects and above all, personality.

A lot of the parents and kids are so awful nowadays that I don't think anyone will want to be a teacher soon so this is the way to go.

I agree. No-one will want to be a teacher soon so the sooner they start doing this the better.

There is no point training thousands of teachers up as they just end up leaving. It is a complete waste of money.

That's a probably a very sad but true fact.

I did SMP maths GCSE and A level. Got an A for each and thought it was amazing. There was very (very) minimal teacher input.

But there is no point training thousands of teachers as they all leave. So this is the way to go.

So many parents and kids are so entitled today that you can't expect people to want to teach them.

Same here. I did SMP in the late 70s and 80s. We just went through the book ourselves at O level. I did not do A level.

That is the only reason you hate OA?

Really?!?

There are SOME interesting applications of this. For example, in remote island secondary schools, with very few pupils (let alone teachers), being able to 'join a virtual class' can expand the number of exam subjects that can be offered.

It's also interesting that the likes of Eton, Harrow, etc. do provide virtual learning for sixth formers who are home-educated/abroad (and extremely rich). They clearly see some value in it.

Oak Academy and so-called personalized software - yeah, mostly rubbish. But being taught some subjects virtually, for some of the time, definitely looks like the future. I'd hope some visionary teachers might get in there early and try to steer it.

I'm interested in your perspective because we home educate, so to some extent it's up to us to decide what is important.

I imagine there are some people who end up in jobs for which history and geography have proved useful. I know children whose knowledge of history far surpasses mine as that's their interest. Their sense of how we got to where we are and their general knowledge makes them pretty good conversationalists. Those soft skills are important!

I don't want to digress too much, however.

In terms of online learning, learning maths in the same small group over zoom just did not work for my kids. It's wonderful to see them thriving again, helping each other out and solidifying their understanding by explaining to each other.
We tried various other zoom lessons during lockdown and they just didn't come close to the vibrancy and immediately of being face to face.

Post lockdown we've found two excellent very small providers of online lessons that work well now it's an active choice. For both it's a labour of love and one of them made the point that they perform the lessons rather than teach them.

If schools go the way of having lessons delivered by video en masse, it's a guarantee the powers that be will want to drag home ed kids in so that all children can be guaranteed the same one size fits none world class education.

Last year when there were lots of teachers having to self isolate with covid, and not very many supply available, this sort of thing was the norm- we had whole year groups in the hall, with a few teachers supervising them. As we didn't have laptops, they mostly did textbook work.

It wasn't learning- it was crowd control. I don't think that an oak academy lesson would be any better, either.

Oak academy resources, in my experience, are hard to customise, too-last time I looked, they didn't download into an easily useable format? So I don't think they are very useful to teachers.

But yes, I do think there are at least some tories who think this is an easy solution to the teacher crisis.