To think the gap between private and state education is growing wider due to COVID 19?

[katedan]

Especially at years 10 and 12, there is lots of talk of grade boundaries will make up for the current situation and the children getting less education but kids in private schools are receiving virtual lessons all day so apart from the location there is not much difference. Children in the state sector are getting a mix of lessons and work set. My worry is next year private school pupils will significantly outstrip the state schools and due the fact that they will not get much off what they would have received percentage wise if this had not happened the grade boundaries will still give the top 10% an A etc it is just that the top 10% could be mainly private school kids.

I don't imagine any exception will be made to allow for the difference in the quality of education currently being delivered. I know if you are paying 5k a term still you would expect your child to still receive a good quality education but surely all children should be entitled to an education at the moment and should not be disadvantaged by the fact state schools are not providing 6 hours a day of education.

Yes there is a gap but its primarily between privileged children with access to superior education during lockdown (whether via a school with greater facilities or parents with greater means, ability and time) and children with access to neither.

This isn't really a private versus state debate. Its the ongoing debate around children's life chances being dictated by circumstances entirely outside their control, rather than their abilities or work ethic. Fundamentally we know that is unfair.

I think there will just be a complete divide between the 'haves'and 'have nots'.

My children go to school in quite a middle class area. Eldest (high school) has work for every subject, based on his normal timetable via Google classrooms
My younger two are primary, and each day there is a video to watch, and a pdf of a work sheet to print and complete after.
They have a weekly zoom assembly. They can do this because they know that the kids mainly live in homes with good wifi connections, devices and printers. I, like many of the parents was in the fortunate position of being able to just order my Y6 daughter a chromebook to work on, y8 son already has one. Mainly 2 parent families so shopping,supervision whilst one working all manageable. Parents who, whilst under pressure wfh, still have a good level of education and are confident helping kids.
Compare that with the inner city school in which I teach. We had to deliver packs of basic materials (exercise book, pencil, pen, ruler, pack of colouring pens) to each child. Many single parents who will have to take the kids out for shopping often as there is no car, no wifi, one smart phone in the house with several kids so we can't provide any work that needs to be printed. Parents who are not confident to help, or don't speak the language the work is in.
I think decades of work on 'closing the gap' will just evaporate.

i think that there are plenty of children in state schools also recieving a good education who have a quiet space, a computer and parental support. I think the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged will be significant. The children who have no quiet space and the family share 1 smart phone with limited data to access education on.

I don’t think the impact of private schools educating online will make that much difference. The advantage/disadvantage will be more obvious between state school students who either do or don’t have home environments that make learning at home as easy as possible.

While I have no doubt that teachers who are providing online education are doing a brilliant job teaching, I can’t believe that the quality of learning is the same online as it would be at school so I don’t think private students will be at much more of an advantage than they are already anyway.

Yanbu. I doubt politicians care though as their own kids will be privately tutored, uneducated masses are easier to control.

Boris couldn't care less as an Eton old boy.

I’ve seen the opposite actually. Two kids the same age in my friendship group. One kid at private school gets a couple of hours work set each day, teacher available via email for help. One kid in state school registering for every lesson and full class teaching online. There will be a wide range in between and outside of those examples I’d imagine too so for that reason YABU.

My children at private school are missing out, we live in a rural area with s**t internet so we can't have more than one device online at a time. I'm working full time from home so can't spare much time. Children with parents currently not working for whatever reason and reliable internet will be at an advantage.

It will widen the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged. We have space for the DC to work, they have the technology they need, I stocked up on pens & paper, they are getting video lessons. DH and I can help them. We have a garden if they want a break.

DS1 is yr 12 it would be very hard to manage to reach your potential without at least some of the above.

My DC are in private schools but I am sure that there are state schools in better off areas where the same will apply.

The one thing private schools can also do more easily is flex term dates and school days. The school already provides a supervised study area until 8pm outside of lockdown.

I dont think it's quite that black and white but of course in general it will be true. Absolutely those in over crowded housing, with poor access to technology, and / or lower parental support will do even more badly than the average state school experience - given the length of time this will go on for a lot of children / teenagers will be lost from education altogether and are unlikely to catch up without extreme measures that will be very hard to implement successfully.

It's a lot wider than private/state. It's to do with resources and parental engagement/encouragement. Even if your child goes to a school that sets no work, you can use other resources (including BBC Bitesize) to ensure that they access education if you have the desire, time and technology to do so.

We’re 5 weeks in to the lockdown with only 3 being school weeks and only 2 being the new term so the more disadvantaged kids shouldn’t fall too far behind if the lockdown ends very soon. However, much longer than this and I can’t see how they can make up lost ground.

I’m aware lots of parents are saying they aren’t bothering with the education stuff as the teachers will catch everyone up but I’ve spoke to a teacher friend and whilst they will try to cover some bits and pieces, they can’t redo a whole term so they’re relying on the kids/parents to try and do as much as possible otherwise the kids will lose out.

The teachers will not be doing double the work to teach the current term and next term in parallel.

I agree. I work in an international school in the primary school. I teach English and Maths live every morning. The other subjects are taught by posting a video that I make along with materials on Google classroom. The children are working on a 100% timetable. They are not going to fall behind. I am thankful that my children go to my school too so I'm confident that they can start school in September again where they need to be. I know we're lucky.

Private schools aren’t all teaching virtual lessons, it’s about half of them.

The assumption that a virtual lesson is automatically better than an online resource is flawed - it’s entirely possible to teach a crap virtual lesson and there are some great videos and websites out there.

The assumption that all private school pupils are accessing and engaging with virtual lessons may also be flawed.

I’m not sure- DC state Secondary school is providing highly quality lessons for each subject. Often on the form of a ppt with links to videos / online textbooks. Some subjects like maths/ MFL have online platforms anyway which they are already familiar with. There is very good feedback from teachers including extra explanations when necessary. Admittedly all of this depends on children having a laptop and good internet access but that’s not a state / private issue. Another local secondary is only setting recap lessons- apparently it takes a couple of hours max even for the most dedicated students. Glad we avoided that school!

I have twins - both were in grammar schools but we moved one to private for year 8.....and I can absolutely agree with you.

Due to the pressures of parents paying fees the private school has really stepped up - my daughter’s day is about the same as her normal school day before lockdown. She has lots of contact with staff and other students (electronically of course) and literally does about 4 more hours per day than her twin brother at grammar school.

To be honest, since my children are in year 8 I was not too worried about them studying this term - until I noticed the inequality of my daughter’s private school compared to my son’s grammar. So now we have started tutoring him ourselves at the end of his school day as we are worried he will fall behind.

For a start his grammar school day has been reduced - he logs on at 8.40am for the register, his first actual class is at 9am but his last class finishes at 2.10pm (used to be 3.30pm). That I don’t mind but the school said they would give out 1.5hrs of homework a night - that’s not happening.

He regularly logs on to find he doesn’t need to do a class. Not planning on doing gcse computer? Ok don’t need to log into the computing lesson then. Yesterday he was wandering in the hall at 9.10am and I asked why he was not in class - he said he had PSHE and he was told to log off and go find a good deed to do for the lesson.

Once he was given a free day and told to do ‘filing’ on that day. Another day was also free due to it being a screen free school day (which just meant more screens than a usual school day as they wanted to play computer games with each other). We have filmed him for his drama lesson pretending to be an alien. If he has actually ever had to write anything as homework during the lock down he has never mentioned it - and I ask him everyday what his homework is because I let him do that first before we start working with him.

My daughter on the other hand is doing online tests, preparing interesting analytical essays - and has homework most nights.

I get that it is hard for teachers and I am only hoping that the lack of effort with his year group is that the teachers are putting more into the gcse and A level years. Which I would be fine about as being in grammar the year 8s should be able to catch up in year 9 and it’s the GCSEs and A levels I think should take priority.

I have had a laugh though at some of my daughter’s private school PE teacher lessons. The one about where the PE teacher suggested the girls set out 100m tracks for sprinting practise on the pavements outside our houses or ‘the fields in our gardens’. I have been to quite a few of my daughter’s friends houses and I don’t know anyone who has either fields in their gardens or 100m of pavement outside their houses! I think private school teachers perceptions of the houses of private school students is a bit misguided!

I am very concerned about this too. We are lucky to have good state secondary schools in our area and my DC thrive there under normal circumstances and the teachers are fantastic.

I have a very academic DC in Y10 who has always been predicted the highest grades across the board. She is completing all the work set by school quickly and easily. What she is now missing out on is the "extra" stretching/further thinking that she normally gets in class through the direct teacher/pupil interaction. She is strong in maths and science but I'm not sure how she can tackle new topics by herself that she has not yet been taught in school (I'm afraid I'm in no position to help bring very poor at maths and science myself). There is still a lot of the curriculum left to cover and I'm so worried they are never going to catch up on these missed weeks/months.

Compare to local private schools who are providing full timetable teaching via zoom etc. The abyss between state & private Y12 is deepening and widening every day, even for the very able state school students. I dread to think the effect it is having on the less able or those lacking support for their learning at home.

This is in no way a dig at the state school provision - I fully understand and respect all the reasons they have given for why online timetabling and teaching is not possible or appropriate. However it remains a simple fact that my DD is already falling significantly behind her private school peers. The un-level playing field is now fully tilted. How on earth are GCSEs next year going to be fair for anyone.

I agree in general about widening the gap OP. But my state secondary school kids are getting a full timetable on Teams.

I am SLT in a state school with lots of disadvantaged students. The widening gap between advantaged and less advantaged students is a real worry to me and many members of staff in my school. We are doing a lot of live teaching and the school has spent tens of thousands of pounds (I don’t know the exact figure but I’d imagine it’s well north of £20,000 based on the number we’ve bought) on laptops and internet dongles that we are delivering to students who either don’t have computer access or have limited access due to competing demands of parents wfh and siblings needing to study. It is a real concern. God only knows what this has done to our budget deficit.

Many single parents who will have to take the kids out for shopping often as there is no car, no wifi, one smart phone in the house with several kids so we can't provide any work that needs to be printed

I am sorry but I need to pick you up on this (also a teacher, also a single parent). Many single parents have cars, are professionals, have wifi. Being a single parent isn't something that automatically means you are living in difficult circumstances although it generally does mean you are living in circumstances that are reduced compared with what you might have been had your parents been together.

It concerns me enormously that professionally, people automatically equate 'single parent' to 'living in poverty'. My own children have been pupil premium, for example, for the last 6 years due to a house move following my divorce and a short period of unemployment. We're not poor, not by anyone's standards and we have a working printer, internet access and we all have a laptop or chromebook to work on! Be careful, we do the children we work with a dis-service if we assume we know their lives.

Private schools aren’t all teaching virtual lessons, it’s about half of them

Source? There are three close to me. We are all working full time largely because dis-satisfied parents shift their kids around the 3 schools. One school started online lessons so the other two were forced to follow!

It's not a gap between state and private in my opinion. It's a gap between advantaged and disadvantaged.

I also think that a number of posters on Mumsnet claiming to care about disadvantaged children don't seem to have a clue what that looks like because they seem to think that their child with a safe home, quiet study space, access to their own devices, reliable WiFi, supportive parents who are available to assist educationally are the ones being disadvantaged.

Lost Teacher Tapp data surveying teachers about how they are setting work for their classes.

But my state secondary school kids are getting a full timetable on Teams.

What isn’t being talked about is how many kids are actually engaging with the work. In some schools it seems to be a tiny minority and not necessarily an advantaged/disadvantaged split.

Engagement with online work may be the real differentiator, not how that online work is delivered.

She may have meant half the lessons? We're doing some live in a private but not all as some colleagues have toddlers, live in shared flats or have dodgy WiFi.

She may have meant half the lessons?

Don’t think so. There are a lot of private primary schools and online lessons wouldn’t necessarily be appropriate.

The data from before Easter suggested that 34% of private secondary schools were doing virtual lessons, I expect that this has increased after Easter - I can’t remember seeing updated data though.