School teachers to strike over 'virtual maths teacher'

[noblegiraffe]

Staff at a school in Lancarshire are going on a 6 day strike because the school has hired a teacher in Devon to teach top set maths from Y9-11.

The teacher is beamed into the classroom via video link. The article says "Under the scheme, pupils use technology to interact with the teacher, including touch screens and electronic pens." although I'm not sure what that means. Hopefully it would mean that the teacher would be able to see what each pupil is working on in real time, although that sounds very expensive!

There is then an additional adult hired to be present in the room and presumably manage behaviour (if they could help the kids with the work, they wouldn't need the virtual teacher).

On the one hand, I can see that the alternative for these kids is that they don't have a maths teacher at all.

On the other hand, replacing an actual teacher with a teacher-on-a-screen is not an ideal option. Teachers cannot build up relationships with classes that they cannot see, walk around and interact with like actual human beings. There's a lot of things that teachers do in a class that isn't merely standing at the front and delivering content.

If this happens more widely you could then also see teachers opting to become virtual teachers because then they'd get to work from home, not to have to bother with behaviour management or bus duty or staff meetings, or even a commute. And I suspect they are only using this set-up with top sets because they are more independent and compliant, so bottom sets are still going without good maths teachers, and indeed are more likely to go without because the good teacher has elected to do the work from home option.

I don't think it's a positive move. But then classes not having maths teachers at all is a real problem.

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/staff-to-strike-over-schools-use-of-virtual-teacher/

The thing I loved in Covid was my commute down the stairs. But teaching whole classes online was soul destroying for everyone and there is no doubt that the students all got a worse deal... apart from the one I had 2:1 lessons with, where his TA would teams in too.

I did this during Covid.

my vulnerable students were there in person, along with a TA and I was online.

it was shit and really, really, really didn’t work.

surprised the school are even considering it.

This, I guess, would be very different to remote learning in that the kids are actually in a classroom with someone on hand to make sure they're actually doing the work and not just switching to FIFA the minute they've logged in.

But still.

I suppose it's slightly better than putting on a Corbettmaths video which is what we have had to do when covering absent teachers. At least the virtual teacher can answer questions? Not sure how that would work though.

Fuck, that’s bad. I hope the school staff have the support of the parent body on this ( looks like they do from the article).
Thin end of the wedge job.

It's not great, but the options probably include having a non-specialist teacher or endless cover teachers. I suspect the school has tried to recruit an actual maths teacher locally and has failed.

Our local secondary school has apparently had some time without any Maths teachers. Maybe some subjects are ok being taught by a non-specialist, but Maths really needs Maths teachers. Understanding pupils' misconceptions in Maths is really hard.

Was this primary or secondary? What were the issues?

Top sets maths is a group of kids that would conceivably cope better with a presentation-style of teaching.

Yeah I think this is the issue - as a parent I’d rather my dc had a real teacher but if it’s virtual teacher or no teacher then I’d take the virtual teacher, especially for maths because if you don’t get a really solid grounding at gcse you’re going to flounder at a level.

The problem is if usage spreads then there is an incentive for good teachers to become virtual teachers and then a different school is losing out.

If it was shown that teachers who couldn't cope with working in schools and who would otherwise be lost to education entirely were the ones going virtual, that wouldn't be so bad.

It's such a difficult problem.

Virtual schools are a real thing! (Minerva virtual, Kings Interhigh) I appreciate this is a different set up, but I wouldn’t worry about quality of teaching. I’ve taught at one of the big online schools for years and we can engage with kids pretty well. It works really well for some kids.

(also the commute is nice it’s true, but we still have meetings - loads of them! And without the bonhomie of a staff room/communal biscuit tin. And a huge marking load. Remote teaching as a job has pros and cons!)

I’d rather a virtual teacher vs no teacher or one with little knowledge but far from ideal.

Perhaps the teacher is excellent, an excellent teacher is invaluable but not that common unfortunately.

It’s pretty awful but as someone who studied maths at university I’d have taken a remote teacher in my final year at school over none or one with a less solid grip of advanced maths.

All the teachers I know love interacting with the kids though. I don’t see it becoming the norm.

I love interacting with the kids, which is why I could not become a virtual teacher.

But give some teachers the option of working from home and never having to teach bottom set again? They might find that more attractive.

Recruiting maths/science teachers is hard, so I imagine this is a desperate move.

But as custom and practice, I don’t know… When I was a governor of a primary school a teacher requested wfh; she would do the lesson planning stuff and suggested a TA could be present in classroom. At the time we all thought she was a cf and her request was given short shrift, but post-pandemic maybe more teachers have this in mind.

Secondary.

they were year 7 at the time.

main issues - no physical tells. I couldn’t see when they weren’t getting something and adjust my lesson.

worksheets etc had to be printed out in advance so if there was a bit they didn’t understand it was really hard to change the lesson and add in an extra level of explanation and a couple of questions to check their understanding.

i did manage to fix it so that they could see me and the presentation at the same time (I was a little circle at the bottom) as they hated the “voice from nowhere”.

also once set off on doing longer sections of work I was functionally blind. They’d type answers into teams but I couldn’t see behaviour or go around and look at books and talk to any of them.

very, very, difficult.

When I was teaching in lockdown and hybrid the following year, we had a computer package that monitored the students' Chromebooks. You could see exactly what they were working on. However, this wasn't easy to do when you were actually trying to give input. If they were off task, you could pause their Chromebook for a set period of time.

Two issues with this: 1) they would complain that they couldn't do their work because you shut down their Chromebook; 2) the savvy students would borrow an old school Chromebook (saying that theirs was out of charge, or whatever) and bypass the newer controls.

I can't imagine having two way interaction in Mathematics, as it is so difficult to work on the screen rather than on paper. They could work in their exercise books, and take pictures, but this would be so difficult to keep in order (it was hard enough having them submit their work electronically).

I can see that it would be just about manageable for a tiny group of motivated and trustworthy students - but a class of 30, five days a week?

At the very, very minimum, I think the teacher would have to be present in class for at least a day a fortnight. There would also need to be very capable LSAs, and drop ins from SLT.

It’s not ideal, but I’d prefer a great, qualified, remote maths teacher than a teacher in person who wasn’t able to teach to the level required. There is software to help remote (or in person) teachers to see what students are doing on their devices.

@Octavia64 main issues - no physical tells. I couldn’t see when they weren’t getting something and adjust my lesson.

I think when I was picturing this, there would be a camera in the classroom so that the teacher could see the class that they were teaching. But it doesn't say that in the article, does it?

Teaching a class without being able to see them is really, really hard. When we taught remotely, our kids weren't required to have their cameras on (rural internet wouldn't support it) and you were basically teaching into a void. It was horrible.

My 16yr old DS would much prefer to be taught all his subjects online as he hates being in a classroom with several disruptive kids. (There’s no streaming at DS’s school so there’s annoying kids in every single class.)

However, I think it would be better if the kids could log in from home rather than be in the actual classroom.

We did that in covid and it was a failure because the kids didn't have anyone actually making them do the work.

I’m sure some would but I just can’t see huge numbers. I am far more concerned about the falling pupil numbers and how that is impacting schools. If I was choosing between schools I would want the one without virtual teachers

I think it could be done really well. Someone who is excellent at presenting and answering detailed questions teaching a large group paired with maths teachers in classrooms who have enough skills to help the students practicing the actual problems. It could be done as an alternative take on the flipped classroom script where children watch videos outside of class and then do practice work/homework in the classroom.

There needs to be a teacher in the classroom though, not just a body maintaining order. It’s just that maybe that teacher wouldn’t be quite as excellent as the one who can answer the tougher questions.

There are a fair number of teachers who don’t necessarily understand every underlying reason for something in a stem subject. They aren’t phds who have dedicated their lives to studying just one niche area after all. I know maths fairly well, but sometimes the questions my 16yo gives me stump me. I can work the problem and most of the time can explain the basic derivation, but getting to the true “why” I sometimes have to admit I don’t know the complete answer anymore. It’s just not my area of true expertise.

that does not sound like what is being proposed.

Surely the school is only doing this as a last resort anyway? What good will a strike do? It won’t magic up more maths teachers within commuting distance.

If teachers can be virtual, why can’t children? Because it seems being present doesn't matter. But we’d all say no to that because we understand children’s social needs are best met in person. And then you have to ask why then is the teacher’s physical presence any less important. And of course it isn’t.

Virtual everything is ruining the world. We are just complicated monkeys and we need each other. Loneliness and isolation are already epidemic.

Someone who is excellent at presenting and answering detailed questions teaching a large group paired with maths teachers in classrooms who have enough skills to help the students practicing the actual problems.

I think if you have a maths teacher who has enough skills to help kids having difficulties when working through questions, it would be a far better idea to train them up to be able to teach at the front too. Then you only need one teacher in the classroom.