To think school should offer more?

[supermanisdead]

My DD is yr8 at a large comp. she is set roughly 2-3 hours of work a day online which she does.

For the first 5 weeks there was zero feedback given until I messaged the head who said they were implementing it that day. Since then feedback has been very sporadic.

There have been no Zoom or google classroom lessons. I'm concerned about the lack of face to face teaching and formative feedback. She's had one phone call from her tutor.

I'm interested to know what other schools are providing to see if it's comparable.

A bit of background - I'm an FE lecturer and have to call my learners once a week and provide Almost all lessons in a Zoom format. I can't understand why secondary schools aren't offering the same?!

Actually, people are whinging about it hugely.

Trying to homeschool and do any full time job is really bloody hard.

Maybe we just need to acknowledge ALL people cannot do 100% of their normal job whilst also homeschooling, or caring or all the other things we have to do right now. That includes teachers.

I’m not sure why you feel you need feedback if I’m being totally honest. I upload my DC’s work once a week just to prove they’re doing something but I don’t expect the teachers to really respond. They always say fantastic work, well done etc and that’s enough for me really. Why do you need it formally marking, especially with primary school kids?

@Maybelatte

Formative feedback is massively important for learning.

It's ok saying lots of people work from home.. I don't see lots of other professions being slammed on here for not doing enough..

Other professions don't have thousands of people who have no idea about the industry they're in telling them how they can do better..

I haven't said other professions don't work from home, of course they do but I'd never judge them on their performance and openly criticise them daily!

Education is not the most important thing right now, children feeling safe, secure and building life skills and resilience is.

And I actually work in an independent school.. and we have an amazing home school provision. But that's provided to less than 100 kids, by well paid, highly skilled staff who have a passion for their jobs. It can't be compared to a financially struggling mainstream school, with underpaid and undervalued staff who have 1000s of kids on roll.

So, once we’ve achieved children “feeling safe, secure, and building life skills and resilience”....... any chance of the kids getting an education then??

Even if ‘education is not the most important thing right now” 🤷‍♀️

You said:

I can’t understand why, if you feel MN is “teacher bashing” at the moment, you would open a thread about schools and then complain you don’t like what you read. Self-preservation is a valuable tool!

and then claimed:

It was a generic musing, rather than directed at only you.

Yet you were clearly referring to me in your first comment above @MarieQueenofScots

and @supermanisdead thank you.

Probably not.. maybe take it up with the government.. they're the ones saying education isn't priority 🤷‍♀️
Go read the guidance.. it's there for you to access..

My sons ‘outstanding’ primary has sent us copy and pasted union generated letters and a series of links each week. Hearing the last few posts it’s amazing how some schools have stepped up and some schools have decided to do the absolute minimum. We’re in a very affluent area and it wouldn’t surprise me if lots of the kids have been moved to fee paying schools come September. I’ve heard on the grapevine that many of the middle class parents are fuming.

@0MrsT it’s great your school are doing well in distance learning provision. But it’s not fair to comment on other experiences and label it teacher bashing when you’re not able to see other parents / student provision from outside your school / experience.

I’m not knocking teachers. I’m just annoyed that the government direction on how to deliver distance learning isn’t succinct, standard or taking account of work at home parents. My experience is too much work, little guidance. Others here on this thread are saying different - little work set / little guidance. It’s a discussion, sharing our experiences not an attack in my view. Teachers are awesome! I have no idea how you do it!

I have seen lots of other sides, I'm a parent with kids, one form a school that's done nothing. And two from a school that are pushing them way above their requirements. I also have friends in mainstreams, special needs, primary, secondary. All doing different things because they have different budgets and capacity etc.

The government have given clear guidance in that education is not a priority, Vulnerable category's are. It is clear, but it doesn't please everyone. And schools that are open are no open for education, they are open for childcare and safeguarding.

Lots of people have based teachers on here, it's standard to blame teachers. Parents could do more to provide their kids with education..

YABU 8 weeks is actually not a great amount of time to come up with a strategy on how to move school from a physical setting to an online one. It is not just safeguarding, delivering education online has to be compliant with data protection legislation. Many of these companies such as Zoom have adapted their products over the last two weeks in response to the criticisms they have received about their shoddy privacy standards. If schools, including private schools were using Zoom to deliver lessons before these updates, do they carry out data privacy risk assessments prior to their use? Private schools are motivated by profits and need to provide a service for those fees or their customers (parents) will stop paying. State schools on the other hand, are public bodies that have to justify their actions in a very different way, the two are not comparable. The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) the public body that acts as a data protection watchdog has equally only offered relevant guidance over the last few weeks and schools do have to refer to these regulatory guidelines when making decisions about how to be compliant.

Teachers have to toe the line and are bound by the relevant protocol and procedures in place, they cannot make individual decisions on what videoconferencing software they will use for example.

A PP referred to Google Meet, it is one of the safest video conferencing tools by all accounts but until very recently (days) it had to be paid for. If the school is using Microsoft 365 they would likely stick to using the conferencing tools available due to cost as state schools don't have lots of spare cash available to them!

our primary are 'doing' a 'sway' a day accessed via twitter
seems to be working quite well

Excuses though, isn’t Goldenbear?

When so many educational organisations have been able to find ways around all these hurdles in order to continue delivering the curriculum?

There is no reason as far as l can see why more schools cannot offer a relatively full teaching timetable live or posting work.
My DD 14 and DS 12 have had a full timetable of online lessons, some live lessons, some emailled and then marked and discussed live...etc.
Their schools are private.
They log on at 8.55am and have the usual teaching day with normal breaks and finish at 4.30pm.
It has been a godsend as DH and l have been working around the clock since lockdown from home, and have had almost no time to spend with them.

I understand the argument that some families have not got laptops for them but many could cobble together something to work from...DD is working on an old laptop of DHs, and we dusted off and ancient pc from the garage for Ds, and bought a cheap monitor from ebay.
Gumtree is full of very cheap old pcs, perfectly good enough for a child.
I have been very impressed by the committment of the teachers, those with young children often post perfectly good lessons to be done independently, and sent back for marking, with live lessons perhaps once or twice a week, (often with small dcs playing or colouring in the background)
Two very different schools one very small with lots of supported families and one bigger more academic, but the approach was similar.
Lots of info on how to log in/set up systems, someone to call for desperate parents (!) and within a couple of weeks lessons were up and running with some teething problems.
Teachers everywhere do a great job, but the difference between schools is the can do attitude...or not as the case may be...state or private.

Absolutely, dragongirl.

For those of us whose schools are doing nothing, these fantastic accounts are soul destroying to hear.

I agree @Dragongirl10

DS is yr 10 at a private school; 3 hours per day Google Classroom lessons, with at least the same in set independent work, which is marked and fed back.

DD yr 7 at a state school. Max 2 hours work per day, often less. So far has had ONE piece of work marked and fed back. The rest of it she has been told to "keep in a folder" for when she returns to school . Really poor effort in my opinion, even taking away the online classes, core work should at least be marked and reported back on. Does nothing to help keep students motivated.

Should be clear there are no online lessons at DD's school. The work is all set pieces.

Carrying out the due diligence and risk assessments are a legislative requirement for personal data being used in this way. Some educational institutions may have gone ahead without doing these things but I don't see how they came to the conclusion to use certain software and that it was safe, when the software companies themselves have referred to their products being lacking on this front and have only very recently changed this!

goldenbear
My dcs schools updated us on details of platforms chosen and pros and cons, risks etc in 2 letters 2 weeks BEFORE lockdown.
Discussions on possible online learning were happening then, we all knew it was very likely . Both HT were working on these possibilities for at least a month before schools closed... why weren’t all Heads doing this?
In the same way that l had to prepare to rearrange my business for any likely scenario, Heads should have been working flat out on this and setting up provision. Training teachers for the possibility of online lessons....
It doesn’t have to take 8 weeks to sort safeguarding, our schools did it in a week.
As l said before it’s the Can do as opposed to the Can not.
If all our schools were doing were supporting our children’s well-being l would be mightily pissed off.
We need to teach our children to adapt fast, stay calm and still stay on track with their learning and goals, in less than ideal circumstances ... after all life is rarely that easy or smooth...or we will be raising a generation of snowflakes!

Absolutely!

All we’ve taught kids here is that when things get tough, we give up.

Or make up excuses like goldenbear.

How much are your private school fees?
What is the staff to pupil ratio?
What is the total size of the cohort?
What is the cohort like (eg is it acdemically selective, how many pupils didnt have internet access, dont have a device, dont have their own room or a table even)
How many key worker children are still on site at the school?
How many children with social workers are on site at the school?
Whats the range of SEN - do they have blind and deaf children to cater for or children with global development delay and children with chromosonal disorders such as Downs syndrome.

Its just all those thing impact on what can be delivered and the timescales to deliver it in.

I am not a teacher, I work in data protection and compliance so I don't know why I'd be making excuses.

I am a parent and certainly would not let my child be taught via video conferencing.

Out of interest How old are your children @Goldenbear ?

One primary school age and one is secondary school age.

There are these things called books that I have encouraged them to use!

To me sadly it proves why capitalism works. The private schools innovate and forge ahead they have to or they won’t survive. The state schools it’s all too hard “safeguarding” Etc