New school set up.

[stayingaliveisawayoflife]

I know this may be the wrong place but it gets a lot of traffic so maybe is the best place!

So your child is in reception or year one in a two form entry primary school. They are due to go back on June 1st. The class sizes can not be bigger than 15 so where you had two classes you now have 4, same in year 1. Year 1 classes are split into year 1 and 2 classes. Reception classes are split into where? Ok year 3. It's in a different building as many key stage 2 classrooms are but needs must. Need to move a load of resources and the tables and chairs are too high but ok.

Teachers next. Year two teachers have the other halves of the year one classes. They will be having them next year so ok. Reception teachers? Well we need two more teachers but early years is a specialised area and none of the year 3 teachers or year 2 teachers have any experience, no time to train, TAs are not all able to work so not enough for one each class even if we had that many anyway.

So basically your reception child could go back to a different classroom in a different building with a different teacher who is following someone else's lesson plans. Believe me they will be doing their best but it won't be easy. Oh and we can't alternate teachers as Dfe guidance says it has to be the same teacher every day.

You can of course demand that your child needs their teacher and insist on them being in their class, well that's the same for all of that class and no-one should have preferential treatment.

Honestly would you like to be a head having to deal with this? Yes we may not have all the children in but we have to follow Dfe guidelines and prepare.

I want my class back and my happy teaching life but I do feel we need to be aware of the whole situation so these young children can be prepared. It will not be any where near normal schooling for them.

No, I would not fancy being a head trying to sort this out. My dc are in reception and year 1 with a 3 class intake for reception and 2.5 (one mixed yr1/2 class)for year 1. The reception is kind of three classrooms but very much joined, double doors that can all be opened to make it one larger space. I'm guessing they'll have one class (25 kids) a day so my dd will be in one day in three? Or 1.5 classes(37 /38 kids) mornings and the rest afternoons? The school is spacious which will help I suppose.

As a parent I understand that coronavirus has changed the world we all know and everything will be different now, for everyone, children included and we would be daft to think school will ever go back to the way it was. I think it's a tough job but the education sector will find a way through somehow and parents will need to accept that education will change now. I'm just glad that some small steps are being made to let children start to understand and experience that and begin to get a little bit used to it before September.

My ds school is a double intake school thats small and has 30 to a class. Theres not the room for the small groups as more go back. The reception classes are actually connected they ahve a thin pullback concertina door thing that they can close to seperate the classrooms.
I am thinking i won't be send ds back hes a reception child. Its scary enough as it is but i can see alot of children suffering mental health wise as they will haven to keep telling them they can't do things. The current plan isn't doable or realistic and i refuse to send my ds back till its a more realistic and doable plan.

I can't get my head round the maths of all children being back in primary school for a month before they break up. Are they still meant to be in classes of less than 15? No indication in the dfe document that they can go back part days. Where is the space in school?

@StripyHorse this was one of my first thoughts too.

OK, so you sort provision from 1st June for Reception, Y1 & Y6. Oh, and keyworker children. You have to draft in everyone who is healthy, not shielding or vulnerable. Or staff with childcare issues. Might have to draft in some supply & SLT but you get by.

It's weird and upsetting for the children as they haven't got 'their teacher' and everyone's on the edge but you get by.

Then the rest of the children come back. For a month.

No mention of part time classes or morning/ afternoon sessions.

Everyone. Back. For a month.

Sounds like the recipe for an ocean-going, fur-lined fuck-up of epic proportions to me.

Oh and you still need to provide online learning for the children still at home.

I hope that people criticising teachers understand now why they raises concerns about this nonsense when it was sketched out yesterday.

I think there're way too many people expecting a perfect solution wrapped and delivered to what is really complicated challenge.

My year one child is in a mixed class with year two pupils.

The other half of year one are in a mixed class with reception pupils.

The other half of reception are in a mixed class with nursery pupils.

This is because the school does not have enough classrooms for single year groups.

So the first three classes are:

Room one - nursery/reception (30 pupils)
Room two - reception/year one (30 pupils)
Room three - year one/year two (28 pupils)

When the other years begin to return there is a year two/year three mixed class, a year three class, a year three/four mixed class, and a year four class. And that is every single classroom occupied.

To complicate it further, rooms one and two and rooms three and four are open plan so two classes occupying one large classroom with a seven foot tall open ended divider down the centre.

Every classroom shares a coat room and two toilet cubicles with the classroom next door, they also share an entrance/exit.

There is no way the school can accommodate 2m distancing and no more than 15 per class.

Issues like this are the reason people were saying yesterday that the changes weren’t clear, but they were shouted down by all the Boris fan club saying they were stupid and it was crystal. They clearly have as much of a grasp of detail as their darling Boris.

I’m not a teacher. For the parents out there here is the guidance that schools are grappling with

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings

The government guidance says that they recognise that social distancing will be too difficult to implement with younger children so to concentrate instead on hand washing and increasing hygiene measures.

Unbelievable headache and so much uncertainty. I worry for staff mental health and of course for the kids. No, education might not ever be the same again for many. Well it certainly won't be for us. We are sticking with home education for now and for the long term, likely permanently.

The everyone back for a month thing is very interesting.

All the smaller classes etc - that’s very tricky but schools will find (imperfect) solutions. And the guidance does at least recognise that 2m distancing is impossible.

But it’s only a 7 week term. Presumably will take 2 weeks minimum to see impact on r rate. If it were me I’d probably want to build in a bit of leeway to that as well, so say 3 weeks to check impact of some children back to school.

And now everyone else quick, straight back because we said we wanted you all to go back for a month and there’s only 4 weeks of term left.

It’s also interesting there is no mention at all of part time / rota etc in primary (whereas it’s very clear this is the expectation for secondary).

Poor head teachers right now.

The government site basically says oh don't worry because kids don't get it that badly. But what about the staff that have it passed to them?

Once the politicians go back to Westminster, then they can start telling people to send their kids to school. They should lead by example.

No thought given to areas that have an infant and junior system either. So the infants will be 2/3 full - 180 children on a small site, but the juniors will have 60 children (school expansion to 3fe hasnt reached year 6 yet) on a much bigger site? Mad.

I’m also wondering what we are going to do with our reception kids. They don’t sit at desks all day, but by the time we’ve taken out all the soft furnishings, all the soft toys and all the toys with bits that cannot be easily washed, there isn’t going to be much left for them to do other than sit at desks.

Or areas with a three tier system where it's actually year 4 and year 8 who are transitioning into new schools next term, not year 6 who have already been in their new school for almost two years now.

Hand washing? Does anyone in government have a clue about how few basins/sinks there are in schools?

Really surprised they picked Reception and Year 1 - they will find it very difficult to keep a distance and the early years curriculum for reception is play based which requires a lot of interaction between children and staff. I also think some children may find it quite unsettling. But if they have just given up on social distancing with young children.....

I thought Y5 would be more sensible- able to understand distancing more and more desk based. Y6 for some transition activities but not the whole time,

We have already received a letter from school saying that any return is not business as usual but likely to be on a rota basis plus the teaching unions are still working with the government to understand the reasoning behind the years chosen to return in June and how it will work in practice. The letter also noted the needs of children in school would need to be balanced with those learning at home (and impact on teaching workload) Can guess the Heads view on this.

I think the most likely solution is that all primary kids will get 2.5 days- especially as they are aiming for all primary kids to get a month of school before the summer holidays.
Boris didn't say school would be full-time and the countries who have opened schools have primary kids going in as little as 2 half days a week (France) Siblings having different slots will quickly become a problem. Nicola Sturgeon said not to expect schooling to be how it was- I assume she meant not full time and socially distanced.

I think government needs a consultant task force to help Head teachers understand what might be safe and what range of options is open to them. There are so many questions, I really don't know where you would start wifh it, and schools are so varied! It's a complete nightmare honestly and I am SO keen, in theory, for my DD to go back to school but I definitely sympathy with the schools on this, it is a very difficult planning exercise.

If they opt for a "week on, week off" approach, then it won't really help many people get back to work., will it? However I do think that now teachers are in the swing of homeschooling there isnt less to worry about with workload - the teachers at my DD's school just send out a timetable with links to the Oak National website, some spelling reading and tables websites, and Joe Wicks, it is the same every week, padded with some fluff like a link to an art or dance video on youtube. They aren't collecting work in to mark. If they just keep that rolling on, I don't see any reason for that to severely impact their time, leaving them free to teach the kids in the school.

But there are a lot of issues to deal with, I appreciate it is an enormous headache for the school.

I wonder what will happen about lunchtime supervision - are they expecting teachers to stay in classrooms with the kids to deaf? Who is supposed to do playground supervision?

Thought needs to be given to fire drills so that small groups could exit a school without social distancing being compromised too badly. I haven't heard ANY mention of extra fire drills to train people not to mill about. It needs to be extremely disciplined.

Personally, instead of going back to school now, I would be happy for a 30 minute slot between me, DD and my DD's teacher on a zoom call, once a week. If they work a 9 til 5 day with an hour for lunch, the teachers could get through 32 kids easily inside the week, they would just need to manage the rota for the 9 kids who were turning up to Key Workers school (9 out of 360 kids). Just having some contact with the teacher, being able to ask a question and talk about progress would really motivate my DD. We could book the slots on the Parent app the school uses to book in parent's evening meetings.

My DD is in a three form reception year. Out of 90, 30 have identified SEN, two need one-to-one. One of three teachers is shielding.

I wouldn't want to be a head teacher right now.

How are small village schools meant to do it? The one near me only has three classes in a very old building with little space.

Have the government outlined the extra funding they will have to provide to each school to achieve this? it's likely most schools will need supply teachers and an upgrade to infrastructure, especially as lots of schools could not afford enough soap for kids before lockdown, never mind now.