..to think that state educated kids are going to find themselves at a huge disadvantage in public exams?

[SpiderPlantSally]

Every privately-educated Year 10 or Year 12 child I know - this amounts to six different fee-paying schools - is having a like-for-like learning experience at home with live online teaching, following their usual timetable.

Every state-educated child I know of the same ages (also five or six different schools) is being set written work, with very little or no live teaching. At DD's school there one hour of live Maths for the whole Year 10 cohort each week, and a contact session for the other subjects once per week, when the teachers are available for email contact or chat. That's it. Otherwise lone book work.

AIBU unreasonable to think that state school pupils will be at a huge disadvantage when applying for selective 6th forms and universities in the autumn? Surely the private school pupils will absolutely clean up on the top grades in next summer's GCSEs and A-levels?

DD is year 12 at a state college and is having a full timetable of online lessons

It's the same around here OP - all the private schools are doing a full interactive timetable. State schools are doing nothing apart from setting lots of homework (in the case of my dcs' school) through to some of them doing some interactive teaching (none of the state schools in the area that I have heard about are providing very much teaching/feedback).

@HakeFish

Good to see that you took to heart the responses when you posted that on the other thread.

1/ where will the money come from, Could we take it from the 10K given to MPs for office expenses?

2/ who will man these places, and what happens for those areas where they have been closed?

3/ As far as it goes fine but where will you get the saws, hammers lathes etc. for practical lessons?

4/ Why are you making teachers and their unions a special case? surely if you are going to remove the legal protections for teachers you should be doing this for all workers. And again where will you get the money for this as not only will schools, LEAs etc. still be required to pay teachers that they are trying to get rid of but they will also need a huge amount of money for the illegal firing of staff.

Then you need to lobby Whitehall to provide the resources for that hakefish.
DfE have provided some funding for laptops. It turns out that the reality of it is it will give almost 1/10th of those without a device in my school a laptop. We have prioritised Y10 (unsurprisingly) and the remainder of Y10s with no device we have given out our school laptops that we use in lessons god knows if we'll ever see these again!

So what happens for the rest of our pupils with no devices?

YANBU! Just wait till Scotland's 'blended learning' becomes active. 2 days a week in school. 2 fucking days.

My child goes to a grammar school but in a very mixed area. He gets 3 hrs work a day. No homework (which at this stage he would be getting).

It’s the govt fault they told schools to suspend the curriculum and not mark work. They panicked if you ask me and should have reviewed that policy after a couple of weeks and got schools to pick up the curriculum again but not insist on virtual lessons. My child is certainly disadvantaged. But I can’t teach him as I have to work and more importantly I’m not a teacher,

I dont think its disadvantaged my children (14 and 12) to experience distance, self led learning for a term. It's done wonders for their ability to self organize, self motivate and work independently. Will be v useful for them later on.

Two days is better than no days highmarkingsnowbile, surely?

@FrippyEnos

1. MPs were hot given £10,000- it was a fund for their staff to set up work stations at home. These are the staff who thousands of constituents turn to for help on all sorts of matters from health to benefit- it is the last resort for many.

1. They could be staffed by retired teachers, graduates and others looking for work.

1. Clearly woodwork cannot be taught online- but the vast majority of subjects can. As demonstrated by private schools and universities.

1. Because no other unions are simultaneously obstructing any return to work whatsoever and also refusing to co-operate with online lessons. Teaching unions need to be told clearly that their total obstinance will no longer be tolerated.

Hakefish if by some miracle the technology were to be provided by the government to all students and staff without it, at what age do you think children should be required to independently access this provision without at least some engagement from their parents? What happens when pupils don't engage - at what age does this become their responsibility rather than their parents?

How do I nominate the original premise of this thread for a 'no shit Sherlock' award?

Children whose schools cost their parents £18kand upwards per year find their schools more able to adapt to sudden changes than schools that have had budgets cut for a decade.
Who'd have thought it?

If anyone wants to change this then we need to be prepared to pay higher rates of tax to ensure that there are enough qualified staff in school to do the job to the standard they want to (note - qualified staff, not just teachers).

In my state school we don't have enough staff to go round in a normal week - it's your weekly contractual planning time? Sorry, no one to cover, you'll have to go without. Colleague off sick? Have 5 extra kids with worksheets in your classroom for a couple of days, no matter that they're tiny and a bit scared of your Y6s.

We were discussing Zoom lessons for our pupils for this half term, but now the school opening means that most teachers will be in teaching R,Y1 and y6 , even if that's not their year group, so they'll be in school teaching 1 group whilst still setting online work for their own class. There aren't any teachers left at home to Zoom.

I wouldn't be surprised if govt had already considered point 4 - don't like the massive workload? No prob, out you go to be replaced. But replaced why whom? Overseas teachers aren't easy to come by, and many find our workload hard to manage do don't stay long. So let's just replace teachers with unqualified staff...
That's where we're heading, you won't like it when we get there.

In Scotland the schools are closely controlled by the local councils. So I don't see why all the schools in the council area don't just pool resources, to produce fantastic online resources for everyone.

Love to know where these replacement staff would come from- there has been a recruitment and retention problem for years in schools. People are not exactly queuing up to teach. can't imagine why
The other thread going at the moment is a parent moaning that her daughter who is going into the key worker/vulnerable childcare provision (despite not qualifying, school did her a favour) wont be with a teacher but with a TA.
Try enacting item 4 on your list, and see how long it is before the sharp-elbowed MC are out in force demanding qualified teachers only for their children.

And before you raise "oh but private schools use non-qualified staff"... the good ones don't. The only teaching staff at DS's school without QTS are the sports/games staff, many of whom have proved their abilities to teach sports at national level. Even the TAs are mostly former teachers, or other former professionals looking for term-time only roles (dentist, solicitor, accountant).

@HakeFish

1/ so who will fund the money.

2/ What incentives are you going to use to entice these people to do the work?

3/ So only lessons that are academic so pupils will still be disadvantaged.

4/ So again you would remove legal rights from teachers.
Also the no live lessons was also by LAs and schools.

@FrippEnos

To be frank, I think there will not be a recruitment and retention crisis in education for much longer as there will simply be no jobs for teachers to move into elsewhere.

I'd go as far as to set a deadline for the unions to either 1. Facilitate a gradual return to school, with a view to having all DC back full time by October 1st OR 2. Co-operate with a full programme of live online lessons.

The alternative I'd give them would be a redundancy programme for current teachers to enable the recruitment of thousands of graduates, private tutors, industry experts and overseas teachers to deliver online teaching.

Providing socially distanced, staffed public spaces for learning with computers makes sense - much more sense than giving out laptops you may not see again when you don't know if the child has access to internet.

Hilarious though, the idea that people are queuing up to teach in the UK.

The alternative I'd give them would be a redundancy programme for current teachers to enable the recruitment of thousands of graduates, private tutors, industry experts and overseas teachers to deliver online teaching.
Because anyone can teach online, there's nothing to it.

My DD2 (Yr12, state 6th form) has been getting a combination of set work, live online lessons and group tutorials on Teams. It boils down to about the same number of hours she would have been physically in a classroom in any case - the rest of her time has always been 'frees', which are for completing homework and independent study.

I don't think it's as simple as state vs private, I think there is good and bad in both.

I'm awaiting hakefish's next message with bated breath. Industry experts? Who are these then? Teachers you mean?

Lots of industry experts losing their jobs at the moment.

@HakeFish

To be frank, I think there will not be a recruitment and retention crisis in education for much longer as there will simply be no jobs for teachers to move into elsewhere.

this may be the case but there is already a crisis in that there is not enough teachers

I'd go as far as to set a deadline for the unions to either 1. Facilitate a gradual return to school, with a view to having all DC back full time by October 1st OR 2. Co-operate with a full programme of live online lessons.

1/ Unions want the same protections for staff and pupils as other sectors have received.

2/ who is going to provide the equipment and resources for teachers and pupils to be able to do this. Same funding problems as before.

The alternative I'd give them would be a redundancy programme for current teachers

Several issues with this, redundancy requires a transparent program and policies have to be followed. Otherwise lots of people take companies to court.

And if you make someone redundant that position cannot legally be filled for 6 months. So with the time taken to complete the process + interviews, DBS, start date + preliminary training you are looking at possibly January next year more likely closer to March/April.

to enable the recruitment of thousands of graduates, private tutors, industry experts and overseas teachers to deliver online teaching.

They are just banging on the doors of schools to become teachers.

Whatever about anything else, the recruitment crisis for teachers will be well and truly solved in the near future.

LaurieMarlow
Whatever about anything else, the recruitment crisis for teachers will be well and truly solved in the near future.

I doubt it. We have had many industry people come through on many different schemes.
Most of them leave as they
Think that its easy.
Can't take the workload.
Can't take the scrutiny.
Think that they know everything and get pissy when they have to jump through the hoops to be able to teach.
Can't take the abuse form the kids or the parents.
Can't take criticism from mentors.
Won't take the pay drop.

I think they’ll get over themselves as unemployment levels sky rocket.

We will have to see.

But it will just fuel the 'those that can do' wankers