Should education be suspended?

[Cantteach]

I honestly believe that the most important area we can invest in is education. The ripple effect that a good education system has on every other area is immeasurable.

However, I am seeing increasingly on social media and through various conversations that parents are struggling with the home schooling set up. For many families their worlds are upside down. They are dealing with lockdown trying to protect their household while worrying about the health and safety of family and friends. Many families are also dealing with unexpected redundancy or wage cuts, while others attempt to work from home and look after their children. And as for the key workers who are doing an amazing job, picking up their children and then having to start school work, I don't know how they are coping.

We all know that there are some children who right now will still be receiving excellent education, while some are receiving none. For most in the middle it's a daily battle of feeling you should try, arguing with your child, tears, failing and promising yourself you'll do better tomorrow.

As the government needs to create a recovery plan for this missing term (please, please only be one term!) and virtually everything will need doing again anyway, aibu to ask that the government drop the pretence of home schooling?

No- the mental health of many children and carers would be improved if we accept we can't replace teachers and we all start a fresh when this is over.

Yes- even 10 minutes a day is better than nothing. Allowing parents to stop will make the issue so much worse.

And yes, is a vaccine isn't found this could go on for a very long time. I hope this does worry anyone further but I have read a 2 articles suggesting that while the lockdown will lift due to the continuation of social distancing schools may not reopen until January. Home schooling certainly can't be maintained until then so just tackle the problem now. And before anyone says that won't happen, history is full of examples where you think oh my, how did those people cope?' and quite simply because they had no choice. I personally don't think it will last that long but I wouldn't bet against it either.

Thank you OP, you put it so much more eloquently than me and I can tell that you are a very caring person That will be the death of us! It is also what keeps our public services going.

I'm just concentrating on stopping mine from killing each other. Their EHCPs have been suspended so no chance for any education.

Haven't read the full thread yet, but I agree with you, OP.

We teachers always bemoan the fact that the curriculum as it stands is not helpful to students in later life and doesn't prepare them adequately for adulthood. So now we have a golden, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change this - and yet we are trying to still force this unsuitable academic curriculum onto kids and parents.

I'd be all in favour of ditching this and setting relevant work.

English - read. Anything, but read every day. My teen has gone off curriculum and devoured The Hunger Games and various other teen books since the lockdown began. There are plenty of ebooks of you don't have physical versions. Or read news articles, cooking instructions, adverts, the sodding leaflets coming through your letterbox.
Also, write. Write a blog, write a diary, write instructions to achieve in your favourite video game, write to your MP. It doesn't matter, but write.

Maths - now is the time to learn about percentages, mortgages, interest rates. Plan a new layout for your room by measuring its size and the size of your furniture. Work out your shopping bill, work out whether the advertised savings are really such, watch loans adverts and work out how much borrowing £100 would cost you in a year.

Science - if you have a pet, learn about behavioural science - teach them something new, reward them for good behaviour. Observe the life cycle of plants, watch ant trails and birds, do some gardening. Use Corona to your advantage and reserach the disease and the effectiveness of different ways of keeping safe, learn how vaccines work and why their development takes so long. Look at trends in Corona graphs. Research how your body protects itself from disease. Explore the Science of cooking, learn how to heat up/ cool down water/ baby milk/ whatever quickly, try to repair somethings that's broken.

Languages - listen to music in other languages, watch movies/ Youtube with English subtitles, use BBC Bitesize, read food labels in different languages and see whether you can pick out the ingredients without looking at the English version.

History - compare the Spanish 'flu to today - what was similar/ different? Why is there tension between China and the US? Why is the EU struggling and how did it form? Why are there political differences between England/ Scotland/ Wales/ NI?

Geography - look at the spread of CV since the beginning - how did it spread, why? What are the conditions like in those countries? Trace the spread back - plenty of maps out there to help.

Art/ DT - Easter is a brilliant opportunity to make gifts. Learn how to sew, how to alter clothes, how to mend broken items. Plenty of low-cost ways and Youtube for tutorials.

I could go on. I'd be happy to veer off the curriculum and teach stuff that is relevant. I'd be happy to set work, point to useful resources. Just before the schools closed I had to sew a piece of clothing back together for a 16-year-old because theirs split, they couldn't afford new and couldn't mend it themselves. What if they could learn it now? We'd even get more engagement.

Is re-doing the academic year completely out of the question?

There will be many dc who will not be able to keep up, through no fault of their or their parents.

Dc of traumatised and shattered NHS workers, grief stricken dc, those with disabilities for whom this change in routine is disastrous...and I'm sure many more examples I can't think of.

I understand it has its challenges but would it be completely impossible?

I only wonder becauss my university is allowing us to defer without incurring any additional fees (with fee credit). It is such a relief to know we can just 'start again' come September.

Dc would get the chance to settle in again properly, no one would be disadvantaged any more than usual for exams and those about to leave primary/secondary would get the chance to see their friends and get some closure.

Butternutbrownie the problem is the children that come after. You’d have to permanently raise school starting age to 5/6 with everything delayed a year. I guess at the other end you’d have sixth formers turning 19 during a-levels and extending time at school past adulthood. I personally wouldn’t want mine to wait an extra year for school. Others would be delighted by that. It will be a hard decision for the government to make.

Isn’t an issue with repeating a year also that they’ve done 2/3 of the year already before lockdown even started near as dammit.

I’m a teacher but I mostly teach adults so it’s a totally different ballgame to my own primary school aged DC. I am, however, trying my best because I think it is downright dangerous to leave them without an ounce of education for potentially months. They’re not key stage one, they’re key stage two and my eldest will be undertaking his SATS next year. I don’t feel like we can prance around doing crafts and building Lego all day, they’re not babies and they need to learn.

You’d have to permanently raise school starting age to 5/6 with everything delayed a year.

Would that be impossible, I think some countries start even later? (That's not a sarky question btw, I'm no teacher so probably ignorant of many different factors!)

If this goes on all the way to September I just can't see how they can plough on ahead with the new academic year. I imagine there would be a large amount of stressed children and teachers trying to teach a curriculum based on months of missed learning.

I don’t think it would be impossible but I suspect it would be unpopular. Assuming a September start, It’s the balance between a lost term and a bit versus changing the system permanently. If this drags on to January or beyond then it starts to become a different balance.

You’d have to permanently raise school starting age to 5/6 with everything delayed a year.

Would that be a bad thing? Over my lifetime in Ireland we have moved from a system of children starting at 4, to now with the addition of 2 years of funded Early Childhood Education the school starting age being much closer to 5 or older and not finishing school until 18 turning 19. With experience of both I definitely think not beginning formal education until 5 is a pretty good thing. I sent my eldest off to school just turned 4. If I had my time back again I’d have held off seeing the benefits with my younger two. There is possibly an argument that this blip could offer an opportunity to make that change but maybe that is a separate thread.

Yabu. The problem is that many of the parents I know are now using online tutors. Some children are being heavily home schooled by their parents.

Some teachers are working as paid tutors whilst schools are closed.

So stopping education isnt possible. It you choose to stop then there will just be a bigger gap between those educated during lockdown and those who weren't.

It's a very difficult situation...I'm not sure what the answer is.

I have a primary and secondary age dc...I am concerned about their education. We are doing work every day. But, I'm no teacher..miss can help, I can organize, I do my best. It's really hard.

My eldest is expected to do six hours school work a day...he has work for every subject. I'm struggling to keep up.

I have no time for anything most days between school work, keeping them fed and exercised.

I'm stressed beyond belief. I'm fucking sick to my back teeth of reading about good ideas for lockdown if you're bored. I'd bloody love to be bored right now. I just want to sit and read a book.

Don't know why it says miss can help...I meant to say I can help

My eldest is expected to do six hours school work a day...he has work for every subject. I'm struggling to keep up

6hrs is a lot. What age is that? My eldest is working from 9-4 each day but she has exams coming up if they go ahead (not UK) but she is 14 and working mostly independently with the odd question here or there. For the younger ones we target 2-3hrs per day including independent reading. I think I’d lose my mind if it were 6hrs, I can see your issue.

He's 12...to be honest, I doubt we're making six hours a day but we're trying. I can see how schools don't want them sitting at home doing nothing and I'm incredibly grateful to the teachers but I find things take much longer at home...I spend lots of time grappling with technology, printing things off, trying to work out what actually needs to be done and how.

lazy Can I ask a question? If, as someone did suggest earlier I think, the government decided that all children re did the year would you still expect your children to work this term?

Apologies OP, I missed your question upthread. Yes, I would. Maybe not to the extent that they are currently working (full school day of lessons set by school during term time), but I'd keep them ticking over with the curriculum stuff, definitely.

I think it's naïve to see withdrawing the curriculum as a way of levelling the playing field for kids whose parents are either generally or temporarily unable to support them with school work. The advantage provided by able, ambitious parents whose dc are being brought up with cultural capital is not easily minimised, because why would those parents allow it to be minimised, whatever the school provision during the pandemic? They will be the ones maximising lockdown by finding ways to keep their dc stimulated by off-piste extra-curricular stuff as well as keeping the school work going, because they can.

I'm not defending schools who are setting excessive work and overloading parents and kids. It's a difficult balance and I'm sure lots of schools are being over-zealous. I just don't think there's any easy solution. And the most disadvantaged educationally will remain the most disadvantaged whether the curriculum is suspended or not.

I think getting all children to re-sit the year would create an even bigger gap between state and private education. Private schools won't keep children back because, if they did, parents would end up paying a whole extra year of fees on top of already having to pay most of this term's fees. Parents wouldn't stand for it and the schools would close.

So you'd end up with 15 year olds in private schools going back into Year 11 in Sept having had a term of taught input, marked work, feed back and online assessments while 15 year olds in state schools went back to the start of year 10 after a 4 month gap in formal education. Many would get bored and frustrated going over old ground and they'd face still having 2 years till they Could take their exams.

Students in independent schools would then either get to university and start their careers a year earlier or would have enriching gap years without losing time.

It would just be very unfair, I think.

The kids ahve coverd 2/3 of the work. There is no way they would be resitting this year.

Eveyr year has some repetition, school work is like a spiral that retouches on subjects at a slightly higher level.

The only years that will really have a problem is year 10 and 12, and that is because they have curriculum content that they have to cover, and no extra time to cover it.

My year 7, who is 12, 4 years to catch up on these weeks. Given that they are doing some work, and given that the summer term involves things like exams, sport days etc, the amount of CORE work that they MUST find time to cover isn't that high

Even before this started there have been parents using tutors on top of schooling. Some start in reception. Some children arrive at nursery with a good grasp of letters. There has always been parents that will support/encourage/push their children to fulfil all their potential. Isn't this the same? Some parents will continue to teach but I suspect that the majority of parents if told a full and comprehensive recovery plan had been made would stop formal teaching allowing most children to return to school 'together'.

As schools haven't been given guidance on home schooling you may think you are doing well because your child is doing the 2 hours per day set but the next school could be setting 4 and, as shown earlier, some set 6. There will be a huge imbalance. The easiest way to address that will be to treat all pupils the same when they return and the only way to do that is to presume they have all done nothing.

The easiest way to address that will be to treat all pupils the same when they return and the only way to do that is to presume they have all done nothing.

I am not sure dragging everyone to the bottom level is ever advisable. That's how you end up dumbing down exams and education in general.

LilacTree1
I am as calm as can be, but that doesn't mean not to be a bit realistic about the current situation!

To be honest I don’t agree. Teachers are trained to teach, parents are not. Some parents will be fab at it and it will cause other families so much more stress than the children would benefit from.
I was off school sick for over a year in year 10/11 and went on to college then university. I have and undergraduate and two pos graduate degrees.

The national curriculum is not the be all and end all. Health is.

Err no. We can't disadvantage our children even more than we are dog at the moment.

OP - you can just de-register yours from school though.

underneath what do you mean by disadvantaging our children more? Against who? The entire world is having the same problem. I am just wondering about the best way to prepare for the next stage.

As I said in my op I believe education is the most important thing we can invest in. I don't suggest pausing education without having thought about it a lot. I want my DC to return to school so won't be de registering them. I believe the teachers do a much better job than I can. I want everyone to have realistic expectations over the coming months and years of what can be achieved and how. In real terms I would hope this lockdown is fairly short at around 12 weeks, so children in year 8 will have to make up 4 weeks per year before they sit their GCSE's. I don't think that's impossible. Maybe options could be decided earlier so they can drop some subjects and free up some lesson time? I don't know, I don't have the answers but I don't think the current set up is working and I do think someone should be thinking about this.