Aibu to ask if your school have phoned you during lockdown?

[Ineedaweeinpeace]

Ours haven’t - I’m not bothered at all by it but another parent (friend) is absolutely stark raving mad about it! Have you been called? Did you give a toss?

Yes - yr4 and yr6

Calls home every week by each teacher. Chat with parent and with child. Also calls home by head. Messages every day via both school supplied iPad and messenger system to my phone (dojo).

3-4 hours of work set by the teacher on Showbie (not bitesize or whatever this is narrated by the class teacher) and then additional work like online times tables and spelling, reading, apps downloaded to play with (like stop start animation and so on) and projects to work on.

Class chat on iPads for a set hour per PM to encourage peer discussions, monitored by teacher and interacted with. Any other home fun stuff or additional work encouraged and sent in via messaging system be that something as simple as a drawing or other achievements such as cubs/paying it forward/birthdays/creative work.

I’ve been amazed. It’s been brilliant.

I get a message via the school app. If I don’t respond I get a call to check all is ok.

Primary- 3 phone calls and a weekly email with a ideas for projects or a maths website to work through. No active teaching, marking or feedback beyond a "That's lovely!" email when I sent a snap of a painting. I met the Deputy Head by chance in the street and it was clear they were concentrating on (and super worried about) the vulnerable kids.

Secondary- stuff uploaded to Show My Homework once a week (returns usually not marked according to DD). Quite sweet weekly email newsletters from Year head about resilience, Black Lives Matter, staying healthy etc. A couple of letters from the Head mostly about how useless the Government advice is (!) and asking for £ for the hardship fund. One phone call from form tutor.

So kind of in the middle based on this thread.

Primary - no calls but all teachers contactable by email. Head sends weekly updates. It’s fine and the work and marking is the important thing.
If we needed or asked for support I’m sure they’d call.

1 call per child, 3 primary and 1 secondary. But secondary teachers respond on Teams v promptly and also reply to emails.
Primary, teachers provide feedback on work via the online platform a couple of times a week. V regular newsletters and email updates.

I think they are striking the right balance between keeping in touch, feedback on work and not being overwhelming. They are working so hard with guidance and guidelines shifting so frequently.

Nomorewinever - the provision from your school sounds brilliant. Has it changed now the teachers are back in school teaching hubs this term?

Like a previous poster I wasn't concerned in the short term & understood the school had more pressing concerns especially regarding vulnerable pupils but 3 months on & I do feel like the non-returners have been dropped now (particularly by the Government)

Nope, no calls at all. Y8 DS (with SEN) and Y10 DD. No online lessons either so very little contact with teachers unless the kids email them directly. Started using MS Teams today (just for messaging/uploading work) but DS posted a message this morning and the teacher hasn't replied yet so not sure how much use it is going to be for interaction. The school have put lots of work up but it's been bloody difficult to keep the kids engaged and to be frank I'm completely mentally exhausted by it all.

Primary has rung twice. No contact from secondary at all!

For secondary we are only phoning parents if kids are not handing work in online and engaging with their tutors for pastoral stuff. It may be that support has gone to the kids directly.

No phone calls or emails (secondary school) but I've heard that the school are contacting parents whose children aren't taking part in online lessons and submitting work. So I think they are taking the view that so long as the kids are in contact via lessons that everything is okay.

Year 3 - school website has class pages which are updated daily. We then email work in or pictures and always get a reply within 24 hours with some comments / feedback. The pictures then go on the class pages to encourage them to carry on. No phone calls though which I was surprised about but after reading this thread I am not anymore. Some schools are shocking! We are set English, Maths and then topic Tuesday or Well-being Wednesday or Fun Friday as well as 30 mins. Reading , 20 mins spelling , 20 mins times table plus there’s other things we can go on to find work for them and they just send us home summer activity sheets. They also encourage an hours exercise.

@KingOfDogShite

Once by ds’s primary school and I think they’ve been absolutely shocking bad in their provision for providing work for the kids. Ds is In year 6 so this is an important time for him yet the school have done nothing to prepare him for the transition to senior school. I’d quite like to know what they’ve been doing for the last 3 months tbh - hint: fuck all.

Dds Senior School have been better but but still fairly shit.

There should have been a national education service rolled out on TV/YouTube within a couple of weeks. Teachers should have been made to teach.

A national education service rolled out in a few weeks?? The government have barely managed to get track and trace system in place after 12 weeks so think you were definitely always going to be disappointed on this front.

'Teachers should have been made to teach'- I don't even know where to begin:

1. Teachers have been teaching but obviously not always in the traditional way. Teachers have had to make do like most others working from home, not all teachers have latest laptops or reliable internet etc.
2. It is incredibly unreasonable to expect teachers to be teaching as normal when they are also going without childcare. If teachers were giving lessons with young kids screaming and crying in the background I'm sure you would whinge about that too.
3. Would you rather teachers were planning, preparing and setting work for the kids or making endless phone calls to everyone rather than just to our vulnerable students or students whom we know will be having a tricky time?

If you have any concerns the schools are and have been open for you to contact- I don't see what the issue is. They're your kids- if you're worried take some responsibility and pick up the phone yourself!

@Bluepolkadots42 yup I 100% agree

Primary no but regular contact from teacher via ClassDojo, with quick personal responses to anything I send.

Secondary yes, but my daughter is on SchoolAction+ and has a physical disability so contact has been made by ALNCO.

Can I just clarify to everyone who is responding - this includes the teachers talking to their class on zoom? Or this is extra 1:1 calls? I don’t have kids so don’t fully appreciate what the norm is, but I get the impression a lot of schools/teachers out there have just fully disconnected...

Are there seriously schools out there where they’re not teaching in person on zoom AND they’re not bothering to call for 1:1 check ins? I can see if you had a zoom class a few times a week you wouldn’t feel the need to call everyone individually, but if you’re not a school doing online call classes then WTAF are the teachers doing all day?

No calls at all (primary), one class Zoom meeting. All communication has been through email, Facebook, and in the last couple of months, an app. Staff are very responsive to work submitted through the app.

Like a previous poster I wasn't concerned in the short term & understood the school had more pressing concerns especially regarding vulnerable pupils but 3 months on & I do feel like the non-returners have been dropped now (particularly by the Government)

Same here. I started off thinking how it was an absolute nightmare for the schools to be thrown into such turmoil, but that things would improve once they got the logistics sorted out. But 12 weeks in and pretty much zero interaction is not good enough

Secondary, no not at all. No lessons just work sent home . Just started a few zoom sessions but still no contact from supposed form teacher at all. I know it’s‘unprecedented’ but I’m questioning the supposed pastoral care.

My DC's SN school have been awesome.
They have sent us online resources, called at least once a week and sent us countless texts with offers of food delivery and school playground use.

Secondary one call eventually after I had sent several emails.

Yr 5 - every two weeks.

Yr 3 - only when I whinged at the Head that I hadn’t heard anything. Apparently they were supposed to be calling every two weeks.

Primary. No calls. No contact at all between teachers and individual students or parents.

@BigBadVoodooHat

Like a previous poster I wasn't concerned in the short term & understood the school had more pressing concerns especially regarding vulnerable pupils but 3 months on & I do feel like the non-returners have been dropped now (particularly by the Government)

Same here. I started off thinking how it was an absolute nightmare for the schools to be thrown into such turmoil, but that things would improve once they got the logistics sorted out. But 12 weeks in and pretty much zero interaction is not good enough

Right. And knowing other schools ARE managing it. Some schools are providing regular work , some of them even marking it, and phoning a couple of times a week...others provide a list of links every few weeks and no other contact, not even a single call in 12 weeks. I get that schools have different challenges but the disparities are vast.

It took school a couple of weeks after Easter to send any thing like structured work home which is primarily online links with a couple of worksheets which are impossible to guide on while OH and I both wfh full time.

Ds9 has had 2 teacher calls, 1 TA and then last week one of the school secretaries rang. Ds8 has had one every 2-3 weeks but he's the one that has additional needs, of which we've had a couple of emails about.

School's general comms have been woeful and I, like many others, think the school have abandoned the children at home and I will be glad when they leave, I had little faith in the SLT before this, less so now.

No 1:1 calls. One zoom meeting with half the class so 3mins max on each child. Lots of worksheets and PowerPoint presentations sent out but no marking or feedback. A couple of video messages for the whole class, although my son just heard the bit 'if you find it hard you don't need to do this'.
I think I can email the teacher, but I haven't really felt the need. Even though my Y1 child has not been doing very much work.
Maybe I should email.
Preschool. No contact except when they decided to only accept keyworker kids. So they've washed their hands of us now i guess.