To think the government should have a more structured approach to solving the childcare gap

[Wnikat]

AIBU to think that the government should be concentrating their efforts into:

• test, track and isolate to help us all feel safer and reduce the R.

• focusing resources on helping schools to get the most vulnerable children back to school as soon as possible, keeping numbers down in classrooms but supporting those who need it most.

• supporting schools to improve their online offering for other pupils including providing devices to those families that can't afford them. Leaving it to individual schools to decide on their own online teaching policy has led to some gaping inequalities in this area.

• designing and publishing guidelines for safer alternative childcare for children e.g. holiday clubs that could be used by working parents when track, trace and isolate system is fully operational (perhaps July onwards) as schools are unlikely to be able to operate at full capacity even come September.

That would seem like a better approach than rushing the opening of schools when the situation with the R rate is still so volatile.

I say this as a parent with two children at home and a full time job, who desperately needs some form of sustainable childcare for the foreseeable future.

• 'supporting schools to improve their online offering for other pupils including providing devices to those families that can't afford them. Leaving it to individual schools to decide on their own online teaching policy has led to some gaping inequalities in this area.'

We have enough devices for our kids to access online learning. Our internet cannot cope with more than 1 person at a time streaming/zooming etc.
It just stops.
Fortunately my kids' schools are not doing zoom lessons- as DH & I also working from home. When they need to watch online content, it has to be when DH or I are not in online meetings. If schools had a standard specified way of online teaching, my kids could not access it.

How can the school solve this? Are they going to pay openreach the tens of thousands of pounds to bring us bette broadband?
My kids are going back to school as soon as they are allowed to.

I don't think the online learning thing has to be live lessons. Could be prerecorded. Just more of a standard offering with some feedback from teachers guaranteed. My kids' school have been amazing with sending out videos, and their teachers feed back on all work within a couple of days. But parents at other schools in the area haven't had any feedback from school at all.

(I'm going to send my kids back, 100%, I really need childcare but it's such a divisive issue I was trying to think of constructive ways forward and alternative provision e.g. holiday clubs as well as schools seemed like a possibility...)