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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Why are teachers not teaching live lessons online

914 replies

Shouldistayorshouldimove · 10/04/2020 20:25

This is not a teacher bashing thread.

Talking online with another mum in my son’s class today, both ourDCs are in p1 (Scotland). She is outraged that teachers next term will be posting work online rather than actually teaching using Zoom etc. Her argument is that universities are doing it so why aren’t teachers? And how is she supposed to work from home and educate her children?

Personally I don’t think teaching a bunch of 5 year olds a live lesson using Zoom is going to be all that effective and would probably require quite a lot of supervision anyway. AIBU to think that tasks posted online are quite sufficient given the circumstances? So as not to drip feed, I am also working from home with 2DCs.

OP posts:
Clavinova · 11/04/2020 21:27

Are you still going on about the report from Bexleyheath School you brought up in another thread

I am only going on about it because LolaSmiles posted this;

"It's almost as funny as someone with children in the independent sector claiming to know lots about Pupil Premium shortly after claiming that someone on the telly was unlikely to be eligible for Pupil Premium because they have a modern looking kitchen, whilst telling teachers that "it's not rocket science" to work this out."

etc. etc.

(would love a reply to my question to you from it-way to leave me hanging, ha ha!!)?

I think you posted 30 minutes later - I had already decamped to the garden. Grin

LolaSmiles · 11/04/2020 21:30

The school doesn't have to spend the exact amount on an individual child (or any of the premium on one child) but it can use the money to provide a laptop, stationery, uniform, music lessons, revision books etc. for one child if it chooses to.
Schools can spend their PP funds in a range of ways, mostly in their PP funding plan that's done at the start of a each year.

However you said:
The school could always spend the child's pp money on the £50 iPad - now there's a thought.

You're backtracking now people who know what they're talking about have pointed out how PP works and so your silly "there's a thought" looks ridiculous (just like you claims to know lots about PP whilst telling people it's not rocket science to judge a child's PP status based on a kitchen).

Clavinova · 11/04/2020 21:30

Clavinova is a troll. Don’t feed the trolls

I joined the thread very late - I think the arguments were well underway. Grin

Wallywobbles · 11/04/2020 21:31

First I'm in France so the rules are pretty strict and very clear here.

4 kids in private here. I'm a private uni teacher. On my teaching (by zoom) days I get everyone out of bed at 7 so they've finished using the internet by 10.30. They have one 15 min face to face session a week with 4 other kids. Otherwise it's work sheets etc.

I teach from 10.30 to 4.30. Kids finish any outstanding work after 4.30. We are incredibly lucky that we've got enough computers. Only myself and one of my DDs doing an American High School Diploma need to Zoom.

My uni has bought the top Zoom package. But students still abuse it. They video me using their phones. They use pics of me as backgrounds. They are in bed with their boy/girlfriend. Their families are watching tv/ listening to music in the same room. They don't turn the video on. Their connections are poor. Mine is worse. My back up is to drive a km up hill where there's decent 4g but I'd have to be home within an hour. Lessons are 2.5 hours.

And these are 20+ year old plus students. No 5 year old is going to be able to use unsupervised video conferencing. It's the most utterly stupid thing I've ever heard. Your friend (and one notable poster) has rocks for brains.

LolaSmiles · 11/04/2020 21:33

Clavi:
I am only going on about it because LolaSmiles posted this

I'm challenging your claims about Pupil Premium, namely your claim you can tell a child's PP status from a random press story based on observations about their kitchen and their mum's hair.

It's hilarious that someone who claims to know about Pupil Premium shows such little understanding.

Clavinova · 11/04/2020 21:34

You're backtracking now

No, I'm not - you don't have to dissect every word I post. Apparently one school spent pp money on a bicycle for a pupil so the child could get to school.

LolaSmiles · 11/04/2020 21:39

No, I'm not - you don't have to dissect every word I post. Apparently one school spent pp money on a bicycle for a pupil so the child could get to school.

Again, nobody has said a school can't spend money in that way. We're back to standard Clavi throwing irrelevant examples around.

You've repeatedly shown your lack of knowledge on pupil premium and dislike it when posters working in the state sector with pupil premium students challenge you.

Just to make it abundantly clear, how one school spends its PP funds is irrelevant to another school.

You can tell us that another school has spent their PP funds on a rainbow dancing unicorn tutor but that doesn't prove anything other than one school chose to pay for a unicorn tutor.

Hercwasonaroll · 11/04/2020 21:40

Clav you disect every work everyone else posts so expect the same treatment back.

You can't tell a pupils PP status by their kitchen, frequency of parental haircuts or the colour of their shoes.
At this point in the year a lot of a PP budget will have been spent. Most schools run (ancient) windows so ipads aren't useful to access work via Microsoft Office or teams. Refurbished laptops are vv difficult to get hold of at the moment. Never mind the issues stated above with sending tech home.

ChloeDecker · 11/04/2020 21:42

I think you posted 30 minutes later - I had already decamped to the garden

Fair enough, it was sunny! Smile

Montsti · 12/04/2020 07:57

My 4 kids go to a (private) school in South Africa and will start online live lessons via Google Meet on Tuesday. My 10 year old will have the normal curriculum taught with live lessons (including assembly) for each subject. I assume the kids will be told to mute unless they have a question..There are 23 children in the class..my other 3 have between 10 and 20 in their respective classes.
My 7 year old will also have some live lessons and some recorded/work to do at home..

My younger 2 will have various live “lessons” including register/morning greeting and storytime at the end of the morning...

We also have all extra curricular dance classes (as young as 4) via google classroom. Lots of routines have already been loaded for them to practice before they go “live” as per our normal timetable..

We had a few days of this pre-Easter holidays and it worked well.

However I’m pretty much on my own as my husband is working long hours (from home) and its very tricky to get them all online with various codes etc...at 8 in the morning including a 2 year old (I sit with her on my phone).

As I said this is a private school and I know that the vast majority of state schools aren’t doing this for junior and infant aged kids. The senior school kids work with laptops in many schools so will be doing such work or being emailed lots of work to do..

Montsti · 12/04/2020 08:01

To add...those on bursaries have been provided with iPads and data etc...so they can access these lessons.

Montsti · 12/04/2020 08:39

One thing I will say is that I could never be a teacher and I applaud all teachers everywhere. We didn’t have fully live lessons at the end of last term...just a few and then were sent loads of work for our primary aged children to do. It was very hard to “teach” our kids particularly those of us with 3 or more children of different ages...

BubblesBuddy · 12/04/2020 08:52

The clear remit for PP funding and decision about spending it on pupils is that its used to close the attainment gap. Nothing else. Plenty of research has been done to show what type of funding is most effective. There are decisions made for individual pupils in some schools that just wouldn’t apply to other pupils in other schools. Each school should evaluate the individual needs of each pupil because their barriers to learning won’t be identical. A child that’s doing very well will have different needs from one with SEN for example. Therefore kitchens and hair are never part of the evaluation!

NewModelArmyMayhem18 · 12/04/2020 09:14

This is the same Clavinova who reckons no-one at super-selective grammars gets tutored - lives in a bubble?

FishyMcFishyfingersFace · 12/04/2020 09:19

Haven't rift - will probably be repeating.

Schools can not assume every child has a computer to access online teaching, never mind families having more than one so every child in education can have online access at the same time.

If you have two or more children in primary you would have to supervise them all at the same time on different screens to make sure they behaved. So they'd have to be close enough together to see them all at the same time, one child's class would distract another, would distract a third etc etc etc

We have 3 dc in education at the moment and it is likely our broadband wouldn't cope with them all doing online education and us having to do full-time hours of job searching.

There are so many other reasons - teaching a 5 year old etc the etiquette of using something like Zoom, teachers having to repeat lots of things because a 7 year old wanders off to the toilet as well as repeating things because someone's baby sibling cried in the background, repeating because someone's internet is slow and child couldn't hear etc. Would take all day for one lesson.

It's not practical. Our primary is sending out printed worksheets as they know there are some people who don't have internet access in the school as homework in the past was already done online and some parents were already signed up to get it on paper as they couldn't access it online. Where they would pull 100s of pounds from to buy phone/computer/ipad when still unemployed I just don't know. Homework now is workbooks and any online stuff is extra.

You are right OP it is not practical, your friend is probably only looking from their perspective and not considering other people are not in the same position as them.

NewModelArmyMayhem18 · 12/04/2020 09:28

We have lots of tech in our house but it did dawn on me t'other day that it would be really difficult in a household where you may only have one computer and/or laptop. Particularly if parents need to #wfh too.

I think hard copy booklets containing all relevant work set (and books/links) would have worked better but that is a very heavy postage cost burden on schools and very time-consuming to do. I know at DD's school that the children on PP often have to stay in school to do their hw (most of the school used resources are only available online including maths and science text books).

Rezie · 12/04/2020 09:37

I'm from northern Europe and here it seems that teachers can choose of they teach live lessons or not. Most my teacher family and friends teach this way. 1 nephew has only tasks and another nephew has live lessons.

All students above age 10 are provided with a device (tablet or Chromebook. Depends on school or class) even in normal.situations so they can use school books and do their homework so they all have the devices already.

GuyFawkesDay · 12/04/2020 09:43

Well I teach in a rural area. Some of my kids don't even have reliable internet, never mind cobra broadband needed for this. They don't have the tech.

My school cannot provide enough laptops for staff, never mind Chromebooks for the kids.

Some of our kids are out working on the farms they live on as they're desperately needed right now. I can't honestly say I blame them, it's a huge priority right now. Life has to adapt to this crisis.

How the heck can i live teach and simultaneously monitor my two kids on their respective live lessons on their own tech.

Almost impossible.

GuyFawkesDay · 12/04/2020 09:43

Cobra? Fibre 🤣

Clavinova · 12/04/2020 10:04

This is the same Clavinova who reckons no-one at super-selective grammars gets tutored - lives in a bubble?

When did I say that? I live close to London - loads of parents I know have employed private tutors at one time or another - primary, grammar, comprehensive and private schools. I was on one of those 'teacher bashing' threads when I posted that dozens of full time teachers in my area were leaving their schools at 3.30/4 pm to go to their tutoring jobs in private homes - apparently I was lying because teachers are too busy to do that. No doubt some of those teachers are now tutoring via Skype.

LittleFoxKit · 12/04/2020 12:47

Want to point a few things out..

Teachers do a LOT more work then parents assume. There jobs require more then just setting and marking work.

Not all jobs/professions have been able to make the change to online/wfh. My DH works in within service provision industry and provides training, the entire company has had to stop trading apart from a very few select members of staff (eg finance manager) because there is no way they can do anything or provide training to groups of 20+ online, there was no provision or equipment set up to do so.

The arguments that universities are doing it is absolute bull. There are adults in universities all over who are having melt downs, because online provision dosent offer the same benefits as face to face teaching and support, and university students still have to submit assignments and sit exams. If the situation even with online learning is having such a negative impact on adults, then I would have to imagine how badly it would negatively impact school students. Many university students are in full panic due to not having access to computers or technology at home yet still being expected to attend and complete work as normal, so imagine expecting a 12 year old without computer access put in the same position.

Due to both me and DH being very computer literate I can confirm just how easy it is to screen capture and flawlessly edit any form of video or even images, and I really wouldn't expect any teacher or anyone involved in childcare to put themselves in such a vulnerable position.

Secondly although some schools are providing video/live lessons, I've noticed from many of the posts that these are still requiring a large amount of parental input and monitoring to work and again would cause just as many complaints from all the parents who want video/live lessons so they can work at the same time and leave their child to it. It simply wouldnt work like that.

Surely it's better for the curriculum to freeze and any work currently provided to be done without too much pressure and minimal impact on mental health and teaching restarting from this point, then it is for the curriculum and teaching to continue as normal, thus leaving children without access to technology, and less favourable home situations to end up falling hugely behind due to the schooling starting again with the assumption that children have progressed as they normally would with normal classes?

Private schools have a different incentive to continue some form of lessons as otherwise many parents would ask for refunds, which would for many private schools force them to close. So they have no choice but to provide more comprehensive teaching. Also they do have considerable smaller classes and in many the attitude towards teachers and school is much more community focused and therefore easier to manage for teachers then in state school. But even so not all private schools will be provided online live teaching as it wont work for all students and all schools, as some have large intakes on burseries/armed forces scholarships and specialise in learning disability and disorders and large amounts of outdoor and practical education. And therefore cant assume that it will always work, nor that the children will have the correct equipment, but they are often in a position to provide more support in terms of loaning equipment.

Teacher bashing absolutely infuriates me, they try their best, in a shit situation with huge underfunding, parent animosity, and ridiculous changes to the curriculum (imo) and people wonder why the best teachers and the most passionate teachers leave the profession?
I'm shocked that in this day and age we actually have anyone left to teach our children with the way so many attack and slander teachers left right and center.

ChloeDecker · 12/04/2020 12:51

I think I love you LittleFoxKit!
Happy Easter! Cake

Hercwasonaroll · 12/04/2020 12:52

Clav some teachers may leave at 3.30 to do private tutoring. They will then be working all evening instead. I often leave school at that time so I can see my children. Then I work once they are in bed. Leaving school doesn't mean the work stops.

ineedaholidaynow · 12/04/2020 13:26

Can any teachers on here confirm whether the curriculum has been suspended as a number of PP have said it has, but I am not aware of that.

Clavinova · 12/04/2020 13:26

Clav some teachers may leave at 3.30 to do private tutoring.They will then be working all evening instead.

I'm sure they do spend several hours in the evening making up time.