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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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

301 replies

SpiderPlantSally · 28/05/2020 14:32

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?

OP posts:
FrippEnos · 28/05/2020 23:55

HipTightOnions

Hakefish is just goading people.

I won't bother with her anymore.

HipTightOnions · 28/05/2020 23:57

Good advice FrippEnos, thank you.

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 00:07

I don't know where to start with Hake, so I won't.

Tunnock, good luck.

I'm returning to a previous poster's point: a mass loan of tablets, system wide, would have gone a long way to alleviate the inequality.

In some schools, teaching time will not be limited by the need for social distancing because they will teach half a class in school one day, live-streaming to the other half, and alternate.

Obviously, you can only do that if the children at home have access.

You then don't have to limit teaching time - you still have enough specialist teachers to teach in secondary, and enough teachers full stop in primary.

And you have enough space.

Of course, it helps if you have smaller class sizes to start with.

Realistically, even when schools are fully open, in secondary in particular, children are going to have fewer teaching hours in most, not all, secondary schools.

But they will be sitting the same exams.

This could have been planned for and remedied.

This is a choice, made by the government, for our children.

It's not fair.

It is far less fair than anything we have yet experienced in education.

It is also more far-reaching.

As I keep saying, we've had inequality, and schools have been quite adept at mitigating the worst of it - but this is going to be inequality across most of the state sector and at a very high level.

Any child sitting public exams next year is either going to benefit (a few) or lose out because of it.

It's a whole different level of unfair.

NailsNeedDoing · 29/05/2020 00:11

While it’s has been a huge issue for state schools that can’t provide online learning without actively disadvantaging their students that don’t have access to the right technology, it’s not the biggest barrier to children learning throughout lockdown. All this blame seems to be going on schools, but the biggest problem is the support that parents are able to provide. The vast majority of schools have provided the tools for at home learning to be done, even if it is only links to websites, but they can’t be there to make children engage. By far the biggest differences between advantages and disadvantages in children educationally are created by parents.

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 00:18

🙄

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 00:23

Damn.

Who knew failing to get a degree in Maths, Biology, Physics, whatever - along with my degree in English - would make me an unfit parent years down the line?

I know the bar to being acceptable to the rabid parent-blamers is an ever-rising thing - but setting it at being a C21 Goethe is pretty high, surely?

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 00:24

You're just being a pound-shop Alison Pearson now.

If you truly want a contrarian frothed column in some right-wing rah, you're going to have to try harder.

The competition is fierce these days.

maxonebitch · 29/05/2020 00:30

My two teens are following their normal timetable with live lessons from their state school.

grannynap · 29/05/2020 00:35

DD is in year 10 in an academy state school. Every day she's checked for work along with her friends and they've been set either a quiz or nothing at all.
We have then tried finding work for their age and they've found it far too easy. (There's no contact with teachers to ask for help)
2 maths teachers quit just as lockdown started so there's no maths whatsoever for them.
She's desperate to go back, she wants to learn and she's so worried that she's going to fail her GCSEs and won't get her college place but that doesn't look like it's happening but my other DD in year 1 will get to go and play with her friends next week, it all seems a big mess!

grannynap · 29/05/2020 00:36

I will also add that my DD in year 7 can't catch a break with the work she is being set Hmm

DippyAvocado · 29/05/2020 00:50

ONS says 95% of adults own a phone.

And of course all of them are willing to lend it to their kids for the day to do lessons on. No matter if there are multiple siblings in the house, they can just pick their favourite kid.

Posters on here who talk about schools providing the technology for pupils clearly have zero idea about what has happened to school budgets in the last decade. Investment in technology is laughable when we can't even afford glue sticks.

DH and I are both teachers. We have just about enough personal devices in our house for he and I to theoretically be Zooming lessons to our students and for our two DC to be receiving zoom lessons from their teachers. WiFi stability and space in the house for all 4 of us to be doing this is another matter of course. However, we are far more privileged than the families where I teach, the majority of whom certainly wouldn't have either the technology or the space for more than one DC to be recieving online lessons.

I can't even get some of the parents in my class to read my emails, let alone facilitate accessing an online lesson. 90% of them haven't even logged on to the site we have set them up for with reading books for the kids. Some posters on MN live in fantasy land.

And Zoom is not free. The free version kicks you out after 40 minutes.

From June 1st this is all a moot point, with primary schools anyway. All of us will be back taking bubbles of the year groups that are returning or bubbles of key worker/vulnerable children. I don't think the magic exists to split myself in two to be doing live lessons to the children at home simultaneously.

Poetryinaction · 29/05/2020 01:34

Teenagers are paying a massive price.

Kokeshi123 · 29/05/2020 02:10

I think so, yes. Not bashing the state schools. I know most of them are doing what they can. But private school kids are getting a lot more, in general.

managedmis · 29/05/2020 02:13

My brother works in a (poor) state school and he has admitted that he's doing very little as the kids are either not interested or don't have a laptop /WiFi

The kids have no chance

managedmis · 29/05/2020 02:15

Loaning laptops? You'd ever get them back

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 02:43

The thing is, DippyAvocado, where are you going to put all your bubbles when all the children come back in September?

And who is going to teach all the bubbles?

Most bubbles are 15 students - so that's double the number of children.

Where do all those extra teachers come from?

We may - may - experience a miracle of the virus disappearing in September. I doubt it, though.

So that leaves the option of reducing teaching time for children.

That is why independent schools are planning to live-stream to half their class in September.

There is no way to manage social distancing in the state sector at present without either

  • reducing teaching hours for students or
  • a massive input from government to address this.

It's been a headache to arrange the re-introduction of young children, year 6 and the two secondary year groups.

There has been precious little input or thought from the government.

Now imagine how re-introducing all year groups will go, with the same level of government support.

Honestly, I can't believe they are getting away with it. 🤷‍♀️

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 02:44

The planning - if any planning were to be in the horizon - should be going on now.

And, yes, the educational sector should be involved.

There is no planning.

And children are going to beat the cost of this lack.

thecatfromjapan · 29/05/2020 02:45

Drat - should say 'bubbles are 15 children, so that's double the number of teachers.'

Onceuponatimethen · 29/05/2020 07:39

@DippyAvocado I don’t think there’s any evidence that the majority wouldn’t. Recorded lessons can be accessed by children at any time the parent is willing to share. Unfortunately children in households where adults aren’t willing to share a mobile probably aren’t being encouraged to do the worksheets either.

I think government just chose not to attempt this, but in my view it could and should have been attempted. My job has continued as usual online. Schools should have moved online with work submitted as usual.

BeltaneBride · 29/05/2020 07:48

The starkest thing about this is how it has highlighted the disparity between state schools -that's where an independent enquiry should focus and local leadership competence scrutinised.

Onceuponatimethen · 29/05/2020 07:50

@BeltaneBride that’s so true.

DippyAvocado · 29/05/2020 07:52

Yes, it would have been great if the government had provided it but it would have been a vast expense to procure in one go. Plus they would all need to be set up for use - you can't rely on all parents having the ability or will to do it. It would be great if we had one device per pupil already in schools, but this would take sustained, long-term investment.

thecat I strongly suspect the government will dispense with the idea of bubbles in September, regardless of what is happening with the virus. Provided there are few outbreaks related to schools in June or July, the use of bubbles for a few groups now when the levels of infection are fairly low will be used as evidence that the virus isn't spread in schools and it will be back to normal classes, maybe with staggered drop-offs.

BeltaneBride · 29/05/2020 07:59

In September they have to dispense with the social distancing and bubble nonsense.

DippyAvocado · 29/05/2020 08:05

And it is equally frustrating from the other side as a teacher. I have spent hours recording videos (at night when my own DC are in bed so they won't disturb me) for my class. They're done as unlisted YouTube videos, so I can see how many times they are watched. I upload them to the school website and email the links to parents - each video gets an average of 5 views. Quite a few get one view. I'm not going to feel too guilty that I won't have time to keep doing them when I'm back in school.

I think lack of engagement is as much as or an even bigger barrier than technology. The kids in my school often have technology in the home but it's more likely to be a games console than anything you can access online learning on, because the purpose of buying the technology is to keep the kids (or quite often the Dads) occupied.

GrammarTeacher · 29/05/2020 08:16

I get the frustration of parents with the variety on offer. We had some teething problems but improved communication helped a lot with this. I've managed to arrange live lessons for years 10 and 12 and work for my other classes where I'm available in lesson time (via Teams). I can't do more live lessons at the moment due to childcare issues. My children are back at nursery for Monday, I'll be able to do more then.
The disparity between what schools offer is shocking. Personally, I don't know any teachers who aren't working exceptionally hard. Although I have heard tales of some that aren't.
Announcing the suspension of the curriculum was crazy. Announcing what's going to happen next in the briefings without letting schools know in advance/discussing with them is shameful.
There are several teaching unions, not just the NEU. I'm planning on switching union due to their disastrous PR. Not all teaching unions are the same.
@HakeFish doesn't mean redundancy she means sacking. They are different things. There are many reasons this won't happen.