To feel I can't cope with schools only going back part time in August?

[jbonsor]

Just that. I was coping OK with lockdown, and trying to keep positive about juggling kids and working from home til June, then take a few weeks holiday over the summer just to do things with the kids even if still restricted. This week I have received a letter from my son's nursery to say he has a space for the 2020-2021 school year but that due to covid 19 they can't confirm pattern of attendance, as in, they can't confirm if he will have the 30 hours he was having since August. I also have read a lot that primary school might be 2 days only a week or a very day but only morning or afternoon session.. This has really tipped me over the edge as I am dreading having to keep juggling all this for over a year. This really puts a strain in family life and finances because now we have to basically decide on one income only, and not onky that but I don't feel I am that good at home schooling and feel like my kids are going to fall behind. Sometimes I can't believe how everything fell apart so spectacularly and how is the Scottish government deciding this is the best course of action without any regard for the mountain of problems this will bring to a huge amount of families.

@Howaboutanewname you are right of course. I was labelling people and lumping groups of disadvantaged people together which was lazy of me. My general point still stands. I work with adults who have had a poor education or upbringing for one reason or another and it affects all aspects of a person's life and can be carried onto the next generations. Not in all cases of course. I just see regular attendance at school to be so crucial for bridging the gaps for some young people.

PoppinPopcorn - I think maybe the poster concerned failed to realise that they were actually making the point that the generation of wartime children whose educations were undeniably severely disrupted by war and whose mental health would undeniably have been affected by it at the time, nevertheless survived and now largely masquerade as normal members of society?

So OP what's your suggestion? Are we supposed to pretend there isn't a pandemic? Have we to ignore the research from Germany that says children shed the virus the same as adults and have the same viral load? Have we to ignore the research from France that found over 50% of adult staff in a school were infected? Have we to pretend people in Denmark aren't posting about teachers dying and children being infected? Should we pretend that we can live through a pandemic and it not impact family life, health, the economy and our DCs' education?
If we ignore all of that, and send everyone back to school and nursery full-time will that make you feel better? Because regardless of how it makes you feel, it won't change the reality of all of the above.

Seemingly every council in Scotland is to lead on how this will work. Which is ridiculous in itself. They had better not do half days as I work from home which is fine but if I have to split my days doing drop offs and pick ups it would be a nightmare. At least two full days would give me time and space to focus fully on work. Wondering how out of school clubs will work - currently they are furloughed but they used the school facilities. My work is flexible thank god, but I’m a single mum with no family and no dad able to help. It’s stressing me out.

Iv been coping ok for the god knows how many weeks but Iv been constantly crying for the past 2 hours,I just can’t do it anymore,I’m mentally bloody exhausted,my5 year old seems depressed,I didn’t even know that could happen?!

While it's far from ideal, and I would have been horrified by the prospect a few months ago, I think the Scottish government are making the best of the hand they have been dealt.

It is better to have all children in part time, rather than just selected years. It is better to start planning now how to do it well in August, rather than waiting until a few weeks beforehand.

If everything fizzles out by then, we can all say thank fuck for that, and normal life can resume. But if not, then there will be a plan.

Obviously, it is going to be massively difficult for some people. But remember

• By the stage schools open, friends/family/childminders will be allowed to provide childcare
• the advice will still be to WFH where possible
• there will be an expectation on employers to be as flexible as possible

I realise that is going to be zero use to a lot of people.

I hope they come up with something firm to force employers to be flexible (and encourage both parents to spread the load - rather than employers of women taking the full hit. Like an additional parental leave allowance). I hope schools consult with parents about the best opening patterns. I hope out of school clubs can provide wrap around support in some form. I'm not sure what else they can do really.

@thelash my suggestion is that government should have tried to collect more data to make informed decisions. The did not have accurate tests, they did not meet the amount of tests they said they were going to do, they do not have data or at least had not released data about how many of us have had the virus (fairly easily done with a randomized study and extrapolating to general population from the sample), if failed to do this they have had months to sort out some sort of distance learning, video or live lessons. That's just from the top of my head but then again I am not in education, I guess that's what people in education and policy makers should have been working on.

@audweb.. Really every council doing their own thing.?.??

That gives me even more fear.. Our council couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery

NRFT but OP I could've written your post myself. I am just about managing here but work is becoming more fraught and I feel guilty all the time. Not working effectively, not home schooling effectively.

I don't know how on earth we are going to manage when schools go back for day or two half days or whatever is planned what with my work and DH working full time. I can't imagine work will say OK then just WFH all the time and do what you can. I will either need to reduce my hours, take unpaid leave (if they'll let me) - I don't have family to help and there is a shortage of childminders / childcare places.

And yes women will be affected most - because there is still a gender pay gap, and because women are more likely to work part time and because childcare is still seen predominantly as a female responsibility.

IMHO schools are either safe to open fully or they should just stay shut

@onone I am Sorry about your child, could you try and get an appointment with your GP and or talk to their teachers for some ideas on how to help her. It's really hard when you can't make it better for your child.

@jbonsor our local school say they are not allowed to do live on line lessons
Child protection apparently.. Bullshit!!

@frasersmummy same here!

Wonder how all the children evacuated during the war coped. They did by the way

I was brought up by a mother who had been evacuated at the age of 9. She was a neurotic mess until she died aged 86 5 years ago. Her over-protectiveness was a nightmare for me as a teenager. She also had a weird, disassociated relationship with her parents (my grandparents).

@frasersmummy and yet all private schools are doing this? I can understand zoom is a ko no, but surely they are alternatives even if not live lessons, but some video lessons. To start I am. Sorry but glow is a bloody mess, we get stuff in different tabs, and kids on Y3 expected to be able to work in word and excel FFS

@thenightsky so many issues with kids from war and people say they survived... No clue really... Sorry about what you went through

Inevitably. it will mainly be women who face this one. because women often earn less so the damage to earnings is lessened. But don't think you cant home school. You can. All the school will expect from reception is an alphabet ( we all know that, in upper and lower case) start by teaching to write their name. Numeracy starts with knowing how many is five. and moves into times tables, which segues into PT... give me five jumps now. Stories, endlessly... please learn to read aloud, sit side by side and move your finger across the words. Read their favourite stories over and over again so the type images start to decode as words. Talk about everything, talk a lot. Every word a child hears spoken to them directly adds to the language they will command and use as an adult. Language is the best gift a parent can give a child. It's the key to adult success. Sorry for the lecture.

@jbonsor The government haven't said it will be for the full year though.

"Class sizes will be significantly reduced as a result of the new way of working, with most pupils spending around half their time in class and half learning at home. Time in school will increase further as soon as it is safe to do so."

"We don’t know how long schools will have to work this way, just as we don’t know how long Coronavirus will be a threat. As long as that is the case, school life will feel quite different to before COVID-19."

They are vague about how long the part time in school will continue but hopefully it won't be until next June. I am possibly being naively optimistic though as I start my first year of teaching in August and really want my full class in the same room as me as soon as safely possible.

@jbonsor our local school say they are not allowed to do live on line lessons
Child protection apparently.. Bullshit!!
Thank God you're not in charge of child protection, then.

@xing not at all a lecture, thanks for these pointers, I have learned that every interaction is a learning opportunity for my children. I guess it's a time and patience thing more than skills, as I know I don't need to be highly skilled to teach them something at their level, but if I have to be doing 8 hour work then it's quite challenging.

@Mistressiggi you got the wrong person I didn't say it was bullshit. I recognise the challenges with live lessons but other alternatives as teacher videos should have been implemented by now.

modgepodge Children go backwards over the 6 week summer holiday

For a minority of children perhaps. Any teacher I have ever spoken to has always said children come on in leaps and bounds after a school holiday. This is very apparent in young children when their speech, sentence construction and confidence soars after spending an extended period of time with adults.

I mean every assessment I’ve ever done with children in September says otherwise. It’s an ongoing joke in schools that teachers always look at data from the end of the previous year and say ‘there’s no way they were at that level - have you seen their most recent assessment?! The previous teacher must have made it up!’ While knowing full well that actually, the child has gone backwards after not doing school work for 6 weeks.

I will accept that young children’s speech may improve, but maths, reading ability, writing ability etc generally dip Over the summer. It’s likely all children practise speaking at least a little in 6 weeks off, the other skills not so much in many cases. And of course, it varies massively depending on a child’s situation, with children from deprived backgrounds generally dipping more.

If most children make so much more progress over the holidays, it’s a wonder we bother with school at all.

jbonsor - if your school isn’t doing live videos of its own teachers teaching (tbh, without interactivity, I’m not convinced this adds huge amounts of value!), have you tried Oak National Academy? No reason why you shouldn’t access it from Scotland. I think they have videos of teachers on them.

As for those doubting the safeguarding “excuse” with respect to use of live video streaming for primary schools, since the Department for Education in England is offering Google Classroom or Office 365 to be installed for free for schools, and training given on how to use them to aid online learning, but has specified that the video conferencing tools within them be turned off for primary schools when it is installed, I think you can safely say the DfE thinks there is a safeguarding issue with live tuition from and into people’s private homes, not to mention increased technological issues when trying to teach this way (lack of adequate technology or sufficiently robust internet connections).

I don't think it's possible to teach actively for 8 hours a day, even to 18 year olds. Experienced teachers reuse lessons for years and practise skills frequently. How to do x better is an important part of any programme. It's one of the reasons why (eg) Kumon Maths works, because it's little and often and it ramps up very gently, building confidence with every solved equation. But please, don't ask me anything scientific after 1980...

All anyone needs to know to homeschool passably, is how to move your child on to asking the next important question whatever the subject.

Exactly this. No one expects to die from their work.

No one expects to die from their work.

Really? My father was in the military for 30 plus years, pretty sure the possibility of it killing him crossed his mind. I used to work with vulnerable families, I knew of at least one person doing a similar job who was killed by a service user and yet I carried on doing lone visits (and intend retraining as a social worker). When I was at school we had bomb drills and threats regularly, still went to school though. We spend a massive proportion of our lives at work, surely dying there crosses people's minds.