Aibu to think private school provision at home can be done in state schools too?

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Just that. Private schools are doing active live teaching via zoom, FaceTime and Skype. Full school days. Teaching via video link, then sending kids off to do work which they send back and gets marked, then another lesson. full school days of work. Even pe online! Parents don’t need to do anything and can get on with work.

State sector get home learning packs. No info about how to do bus stop division or similar technical stuff. Not heard from anyone at school since Friday, no information at all bar work timetable on website. Where are the teachers? Why are can state sector teachers not actively teach online and stay in touch with the kids? Why not more engagement? We are all having to work at home alongside our kids, why aren’t teachers doing this too?

They have to justify the fees. Come summer term they'll want to be able to bill for the full 6k or whatever

I opened my laptop at 8am (I teach years 7-13) - my day was as follows

Registering 5 year groups of 5 different subjects that I lead for online textbooks (had to done year group and subject group separately)

Answer individual students emails re coursework (I lead vocational Education) that were coming in on a very frequent basis from years 10-13

Keep updating social media as communication from awarding bodies is lacking and I'm finding out new info from Twitter 4 hours before I receive an email

Trying to plan and resource learning for all my classes that will not impact essential requirements (I know that at least 50% of my students will not be doing the work so I can't set anything that is definitely required for success in their final assessments/exams)

Home schooling my MLD/ASD son

But I had a timetable of a double yr 10, a yr7, yr 8 and a yr 11 class so should have I ignored all the above to facetime the few students from these groups who had the facilities?

We are at a state primary school with a v high proportion of key workers (lots of doctors, teachers etc). Our school is supplying work for each year group on a weekly basis, but with daily interaction from the teachers with the children. It's enough!
We both work in professional jobs and what the school supply is about what we can manage.

Private schools will always manage to provide more as they have greater financial resources, (and also parents on their back - and I say this as the wife of someone who was from an entirely privately educated family, and himself a border!)

Probably rewriting schemes of work so they can be taught remotely, dropping off work to some kids by hand while marking the work that is emailed back to us, whilst trying to homeschool our own kids too. Ffs

The assumption by plenty on this website is that children in the state system are destitute, can only wear uniform at weekends, as they have no alternative clothes, sleeping on bare mattresses in the floor.
Of course that isn’t the case for all state school children but I can tell you it is for a number of children in my class alone.

I’ve said already comfy, nobody is emailing anyone anything here. That’s my point.

I think it’s incendiary for a teacher to be posting garden shots on social during school hours

I think that teachers are setting a good example by spending their lunch break in the garden. It's outdoors, away from the desk, no contact with anyone outside the household. Good for mental and physical health. I bloody well hope kids are doing the same!

the vast majority of private schools are setting work via an online platform, with only a minority running online lessons

Mine decided to focus on ensuring our current systems (online learning platform, school issued laptops, kids tech) are all working properly rather than going straight to online voice/video lessons. We're going to regularly survey parents / kids / teachers to find and adapt to what is working well. And, no doubt, we will be doing some live lessons - but it seemed a bit silly to jump in feet first.

I'm really glad tbh. I'm knackered from learning how to manage all the new stuff. I want to try zoom with my a level class this week, but need best practice advice and the go ahead from the DSL. As much as I like the teens I teach, I'm not 100% sure they'll behave appropriately so I must find a way to keep them, and myself, safe.

Three kids in 3 different independent schools. I’ve been amazed, I’ve barely seen them. Alarms set for 7.30, online at 8.20. One even has to log in for assemblies They can see the teachers online and all the classes (don’t ask me how)? Homework set as normal. DD even had her violin lesson remotely and is doing a speech and drama mock exam this way later in the week. The other one was even outside doing “PE” while linking up with the teacher. She was doing practise netball shots. Apparently some others had devised their own circuits. Another one has his consultation by phone later in the week about potential uni plans. He thinks he’s doing more work than ever (lowers sixth). I only see them at lunchtime and then after about 6pm when the homework is done!

I was really surprised to read your post OP.

The state secondary I work at, DS1's state secondary, and DS2's state primary are ALL providing a full day's worth of timetabled work every day, as well as teacher/student communication during the school day via different apps/google classroom, for questions, and also general encouragement. Many of the teachers are managing this online work whilst looking after their own children, or looking after key workers' children at school.

There has also been clear and regular communication from the Headteachers about what is going on.

From what I can see, the state schools here are managing brilliantly under very difficult circumstances. So, if there is a problem with your school, it isn't common to everyone.

OP you are completely out of order. I won't repeat the various points that others have made because if you can't see how stupid and ignorant your post was then there's no point.

For reference, our school had to send all kids home with pencils because a significant number wound not have them at home. Zoom? iPads? Give me strength.

And I'm sure the teachers putting themselves at risk every day by looking after the kids of frontline workers will be delighted to hear your view that they have 'no excuse' for not doing more. A parent made an excellent point to me on the last day of school: 'some parents are horrified by the fact that they are now expected to look after their own children'. I think you fall into that category and are blaming the easiest target: teachers.

I make no apologies whatsoever for the anger in my post.

The school my children go to gets pupil premium 80% higher than the rest of the country.

So no, I don’t think most of the children will have a handy iPad or laptop or even reliable WiFi to do work. And lots of the parents who do work are in low paid, key worker roles so wouldn’t be there to do it with them anyway.

I agree it would be lovely if private schools made their lessons available to all. But they won’t. So use your own WiFi to source some interesting lesson plans and do them.

Just a few general points re all of this as a state school NQT:

-The private school teachers using Zoom, or similar to live stream lessons are recording this using school servers for safeguarding reasons. Our remote access is so creaky that you can't upload a file to the VLE on it- it just won't work. So any files from there I want to upload, I have to email to myself and then put on the VLE. (And I have to do this quite a bit because we are not allowed external hard-drives in school because GDPR). Sometimes, it drops out altogether for an hour or so.

-There are some teachers out there (a very small minority but they do exist) who you really wouldn't want having excuses to have photos of teenagers on their personal devices. This guy, for example: www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/cheltenham-news/voyeur-gloucestershire-teacher-hid-cameras-1215747

I suspect this is one reason some children have still been asked to wear their school uniform. I don't think it's for the hell of it.

-We have started using Microsoft Teams for department planning and to discuss things like the rota for going in to look after key worker children. However, Teams is new to many staff and we are still getting to grips with the features, for some staff this is easier than others. Before we teach classes via teams, someone is going to have to make a decision about that, and how best we do it- these things do take a little bit of time and on Thursday/Friday our school was massively understaffed due to people self isolating.

-Not all of our staff have their own laptops, which immediately makes remote teaching more difficult.

-I am setting work for each class I teach daily. Some of it is a bit patchy/pulled together last minute as I wasn't really trained for this and I don't know how quickly/easily students can access things remotely. Students are submitting this at vastly different times, possibly because they are sharing laptops, or fitting in with their parents day or other reasons I'm not aware of. I'm getting about 2/3 engagement now we are on lockdown.

-Some students I teach really struggle with tech. I know we are told these kids are "digital natives" but actually I'd say their IT skills are much weaker than my generations'. At 14, I was html coding backgrounds for my own myspace page. Some of my Y10s need detailed step by step instructions to log into Seneca (this is not a judgement!). Getting them all logged into teams remotely would be a struggle. It's easier for schools who use things like google classrooms already or have the IT in school to get everyone on Teams on Friday.

-Further to the above point, today I spent some time explaining to a Y8 with some SEN needs how to attach a photo to an email so she could show me the work she had done at home. It took a few tries and about 20 minutes from me and her to get this right. It would be very hard to do that if I was live-teaching a class at the same time. Should she miss out?

-I teach at what mumsnet would probably describe as a "leafy" comp, but we still have children with very difficult home-lives (children who are homeless and living in B and Bs, children who live with parents who are addicted to drugs, children who are young carers, children who are refugees). We have a duty to make sure these children can access lessons too.

-We are making plans and back up plans with our rotas and allocating work about what happens if (when?) teachers get ill. Remote teaching which relies on a teacher per class doesn't work.

-When it was announced schools were closing, so many of my teacher friends shared offers of help on Facebook, and I did too. Despite this, and despite seeing parents complaining in some cases, no-one has yet taken me up on it.

I'm setting work via our school's homework platform. I'm planning resources for after Easter. I'm marking paper 2 mocks and feeding back to my Y11s who are understandably so anxious about their gcse grades right now! I'm trying to be as responsive as possible via email during school hours. I'm uploading resources to our school VLE so students can access them at home. I'm trying to help some of the less tech savvy members of staff get their head around teams. I've agreed to be an "on call" back up for the school's rota, so I am checking every day at 7am whether I am needed or not.

And FWIW, I am on a 1 year contract (like many NQTs) and I am worried about being without a job in September- I had an interview lined up this week which will now not go ahead, I don't feel able to ask my head about my contract as I had planned to last week, because there's a national crisis going on. Yes, I will get a few more months pay than some others, but if schools don't reopen, I am stuffed.

Schools are coping with the day to day changes in school and what is doable and sustainable.
We have staff making up Fsms and dropping them off to some parents.
We have some live lessons online, some work that has gone out, some parents who turned up with children unaware of anything, We have signposted parents to sites and can not say what will happen next week.
We can't plan for the unknown and parents need to do the best they can.
We aren't marking or feeding back.

It is an emergency situation like on other.

Will private schools be charging us a full term fees for this poor distance learning ? If so I would rather not have this and pay for tutors via Skype during Covid 19. The online learning is not that great if I'm totally honest !

Private school can't just share lessons as such because lessons should be tailored to the specific audience so wouldn't make sense. There are loads of standalone websites and apps or paper workbooks available that people can access. As to fees, yes, at my school we are concerned that parents won't want to pay which is why we are working hard to provide quality resources, lessons etc.. We are also looking at teaching through July to make up lost weeks. Bottom line is the vast majority of indie schools are not Eton. If parents don't pay their summer teem fees, we'll likely close. Most costs are fixed and still need to be met. Ours are refunding the lunch fee but that's all for now. If you want a school for your kids to go back to, you need to pay the fees.

Huge is right , most independent schools have a high proportion of fixed costs and presumably you want to be able to return to the school you left. This will tip many over the edge so I buy I expect most will discount the fees if only as a goodwill gesture .

Private schools are very worried parents will stop paying fees (and I suspect many might, some through necessity and some through choice). So, they are desperate to provide an as-close-to-school experience as possible. That is not the case in the state sector.

In addition, most (not all) private school pupils are reasonably keen to learn and their parents are (almost by definition) committed to their education. So, if you do a zoom or Skype class most pupils ‘show up’. Again, this is not necessarily the same in state schools.

Finally, we are only at the start. Apparently the Italians were very good about ‘home school’ for the first three weeks or so but then slowly started losing interest.

https://www.facebook.com/foilarmsandhog/videos/899444937160368/

The reality !

Ha ha. I can imagine some lessons just like that.

I teach little ones so goodness knows how that would pan out with live lessons, especially for those and their parents who aren't quite so technically minded.

OP, your gripe is with your school.

By saying all us teachers are lazy, not allowed to post on social media in our lunchtimes and enjoying some kind of glorified holiday is demeaning and insulting.

Go email your school. Stop tarring us all with the same brush.

lamppost

I would like to reiterate - my 3 go to state secondary school and two are occupied all day every day in real-time lessons on google classroom. I am very impressed and thankful.

Dc are at a state school and get assignments sent via the school website and via Microsoft teams at 9am each morning. The work is submitted back then the teacher responds with any corrections. They are also contactable via email daily between 9-3 and have had voice calls with some children on occasion. Obviously if you pay a premium for any service you expect more though. Video calls in to homes could be a safeguarding issue that the public sector probably don't want to have to add to their worries!