AIBU to expect a bit more from school

[MuminMama]

The work the school is setting my year six child is dire. It's not nearly enough to fill the four school hours we are aiming for. It takes me half an hour to work out what they want us to do. Half the downloads are empty files. So little care has gone into it, and there's so little appreciation that working parents may need something that's fairly easy for them to administer. I feel that I'm supposed to be immensely grateful to these teachers but really they are hardly breaking their butts. This is ten minutes of work for someone to throw together. To an extent I'm just venting, but I'd love to know how much help others are getting.

TheHoneyBadger

The one that I find really funny is the amount of times on an inset day we have been told to avoid 'death by power point' whilst experiencing 'death by power point'

Another is don't read off the board.

@snowballer
My multi-academy trust has made a blanket decision that we are not allowed to record our Teams sessions, and that we are also not supposed to pre-record them to play out, as their value lies in the "live" element. This leaves no room for us to actually assess the situation or adapt properly, but is a Trust-wide directive, so that's that!

Oh that sounds frustrating, and like you're having to do the same work three times in three different ways, how infuriating

Much of teaching is infuriating time wasting snow. Also I find myself thinking am I really sat here cutting up pieces of paper to create a card sort activity for over £20 an hour? With more low cost admin support and less red tape we could use our time in school so much more effectively

We used to have a parent rota to do mindless things like that to free up some of the teachers' time. It fell by the wayside in the end, which is a shame. I think it turned into extra work for them somehow.

I’m secondary mum. Not sure why. Might just be parents thinking sod that or it could be school creating obstacles.

Often think having parents in to observe on rotation might help with student behaviour and encouraging realistic expectations from parents.

@snowballer

*Last week only 7 students out of a class of 21 turned up to the Monday lesson. I delivered the lesson and gave them their homework, which was due in by Thursday, so I could mark it for this week's lesson and send it back to them. I then contacted the other students' parents (phone calls) to offer them an alternative time-slot the next day (Tuesday). Of those who I couldn't reach, I emailed. That took me almost two hours, to make all of the contact

Only 4 turned up to the rescheduled lesson on Tuesday. I delivered the lesson and gave them their homework, still due in for Thursday
I then adapted the lesson again, to make it something I could send by email to those 10 students who hadn't been to either session. This took me about 90 minutes, but I sent it out on Tuesday afternoon to those students who hadn't attended either lesson.*

I replied this to the same post on the other thread but don't know whether you saw it before the thread was deleted. This is a genuine, non goady suggestion I promise!

One of my kids' schools is using Teams and all live lessons are recorded as they take place so those that miss it can watch it back. All work associated with live lessons is pre-published on Teams so no adapting needed for anyone that misses the lesson. All communication is through the specific "team" in Teams so no phoning around to rearrange lessons. What you're describing seems overly labour intensive and could be cut down? You sound like you're working incredibly hard, as I do know thousands of teachers are.

Suggestions like this are reasonable -thank you snowballer but I hope you don’t mind me saying the following: (I appreciate it can be viewed as teachers shooting down every idea).

MS Teams for schools is not free at the point of use like it is for single users at home etc. Schools must subscribe to Office 365 to get it under their license agreement and this subscription can run up to £9k per month ongoing, depending on the size of the school.
Not every school uses Office 365. Plenty of schools use RM for example (a dire platform but cheaper and recommended by LEAs for example) and therefore, it’s a big financial and technical undertaking for many schools, who hadn’t planned for a global pandemic. Especially as most budgets are pre-set before the start of every September. We have had to ‘borrow’ money from next year’s budget to pay for extra cleaners for example.

These issues are just useful for some posters to know because it does often feel like many make assumptions in their judgements. Apologies if you already knew this-it’s just there are so many of the same threads that there is a lot of repetition as a consequence!

@ChloeDecker sorry - it wasn't clear from the bit I quoted, but if you read the whole of that post, the poster said further up she was using Teams already. That's why I suggested it. Totally aware it costs a lot of money and I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise!

I completely get that, just wasn’t sure if you knew. Thank you for being aware about it. Many many posters have not, so I was being a little sensitive about it and was partly hoping others would read it. Sorry if I offended you!

No offence taken at all - like I said, it wasn't clear from the bit I quoted that the poster's school was already on Teams.

Oh my good god that is so much money.

Op complains that noone knows stuff about her but happily starts a post complaining that teachers are doing very little...what do you know about what they are doing? It's not okay that you can tell other people to butt out cos they sont know what you do but its perfectly okay for you to say that about teachers.

So unless you can with certainty say the teacher(s) are being lazy I think you should butt out.

Disgraceful thread.

You choose not to send your child back and now complain about the standard of teaching materials your getting, admitting you find teaching yourself difficult so if his education is that important then send him in. If you want to put safety first accept your not going to get everything.

Crazy amounts. All schools would love good portals etc but budgets are so stretched already.

I get dirty looks from my head of department if I’m photocopying resources because it’s even budgeted how much photocopying each department is allowed to do.

We need massive investment where instead there’s just been cuts, cuts and more cuts in the last decade.

I wasn't complaining that people don't know stuff about me, cyclingmad. And I get that you think IABU about the school, as do many, but I've listened and learned and feel like we had quite a useful conversation in the end and I'll be leaving it there.

I note people don't like my idea of suspending some training.

I take the point that in the current circumstances, health and safety is important, however as even the OP herself acknowledges, 6 hours was too much and a lot of it was anyway unnecessary.

However, we are pretty well in an emergency situation. Teachers keep telling us they are completely snowed under. In terms of my DCs teachers, I can completely believe it.

I've seen lots of teachers cite training as one of the issues. Would it not in fact be supportive of the unions to fight for some of this training to be temporarily suspended to give teachers time to concentrate on teaching children and the myriad of other tasks that seem to have been thrust upon them rather than having to go through hours of training to to what they already do?

It would obviously help if the government stopped messing about with the curriculum and issued some clear rules about schools returning while they're at it.

"Many teachers are balanced on the edge of a kitchen table in a little house with small children and a crappy laptop that may not be able to connect to the school network where their resources are trying to set work."

OMG, you just described my life!

Can I just say as well...although there have been a few goady/bashing comments and angry responses to those, actually I think this is one of the most reasonable threads I have read for a while, mostly due to OP listening and understanding what people are trying to say. So thank you everyone who has NOT gone off on a rant!

I'm still trying to get my head around Johnson's attempted Jedi mind trick at PMQs today that the utter shambles around school re-opening is in fact the oppositions fault and not the responsibility of the Government. Really??

listsandbudgets an hour or two unnecessary time in training isn't even a drop in the ocean though. It would be a ridiculous thing for unions to be campaigning about in the current circumstances.

What would make a difference would be sustained financial investment in schools, so that teachers can actually teach and the admin/routine tasks can be done by someone else and that they have enough and adequate resources to do their jobs properly (maybe even to the standard that some MNers seem to require). This obviously includes technological resources, which are hugely expensive.

I don't really understand why parents aren't lobbying the government for this, in addition to some sort of plan about schools returning, the curriculum being adjusted to take account of the last few months amongst other things.

The under-funding of schools is a key factor in the inequalities of provision that posters are describing day after day, and none of the decision making power is in the hands of teachers.

Had the same experience with my sons school. Teachers haven't replied to any messages on the homework site either.

My experience is largely the same. I have complained many times to the head and am told they are doing their best. Given my teacher friends tell me they have lesson plans already in place putting a few worksheets online with no explanation and that don't print off right doesn't really feel like any effort has been put in (someone will jump on me and tell me otherwise). We are all
having to work harder and different and for teachers this should mean effectively communicating lessons, however that may be. It's been going on for weeks now, it isn't a new situation any more. I also blame the government for not regulating this. I am not a fan of Gove at all but can't help but think his ego would have ensured more effectiveness if he was still in charge of education. It's disgraceful all round.

I’m going to go now as I think the thread reached a constructive conclusion between those commuted to it. Now there’s new posters who haven’t rtft and won’t bother to and I cba to start again.

Thanks for listening OP and know you can ask teachers on here for help and tips with resources etc. Good luck with the home learning and wish me luck with my unmotivated 13 yo boy who only works if I sit and do it with him.

I agree OP, my yr 6 child had 2 maybe 3 Oak Academy and BBC Bitesize set a day. And when the 'work' has been done with in seconds of the work being submitted all you get is 'Good work X' And that really isn't good enough. And yes I have contacted the school, who haven't even acknowledge they have received the E mail let alone give any advice. All the contact we have had from the Primary is and Email to say they were closing, after 6 week they sent out one for parents to collect paper copies work, if they didn't internet access and one about school return.

In fact we have had more contact from the High School my son's going to about them and the school as they can not have a transition day.

I don't understand why when parents complain about the lack of even basic teaching from school do we 'oh here we go again more teacher bashing' . Why are so many parent ready to accept such a low level of education.

The government and schools really need to be able to give much higher quality of teaching especially if these lockdowns become more often. Or are we really ready to throw away millions of children.

Other countries around the world have been able to provide a much higher, if not a normal level of teaching during this time.