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.

@heartsonacake

He’s your child. Educate him yourself.

What a stupid argument. Shall we do that across all professions then? "Its your cancer, treat it yourself"? "Its your car, service and test it yourself"?

Polpotnoodle yes I see red, when I read the educate your own child comment. Ok fine, would somebody completely unskilled in my profession like to have a go at that whilst I'm scrambling my way through teaching, as unreasonable as it seems my employer would quite like me to do some work for my salary, work that I'm trained and proficient in or that's the theory anyway.

To me what this has thrown very clear, is that in teaching -like any other profession- there are some who are absolutely brilliant and making sure pupils are engaged and doing the best job they can, whereas others are churning out the bare minimum, shrugging their shoulders and going "covid doncha know". Same as in my work.

Why we're not allowed to point this out is unknown to me.

What a stupid argument. Shall we do that across all professions then? "Its your cancer, treat it yourself"? "Its your car, service and test it yourself"?
Maybe not cancer treatment - although that appears to have stopped altogether, which is far more worrying than the fact that a parent doesn't like the Twinkl worksheets they've been sent.
Care garages also stopped business and people haven't been screaming on MN about the unfairness of those workers getting furloughed/paid still. It can't be helped because, you know, Covid. Anyone with any sense, or who cared about keeping their car in good nick, would ensure that they kept on with things like checking the tyres and oil were in order and so forth. I'm cleaning my teeth much more carefully than usual, so I may be less likely to need my dentist.

So, as I've mentioned before either on this thread or one of the gazillion similar ones, it's YOUR child, so in order to support them, I would make sure I could do whatever I could in order to keep things ticking over. If you're working full-time, then make it a priority to do early evening, or catch up at weekends. Otherwise, the only ones who are going to lose out long-term are you and your kids. Harsh though it may seem, the school won't suffer.

There's an awful lot of teachers getting very defensive on these posts. How do you all ever find the time to go on mumsnet since you're so busy?

There's an awful lot of teachers getting very defensive on these posts. How do you all ever find the time to go on mumsnet since you're so busy?

Lunch? Recess? Day off?

Do try to think. It's so important.

Part-time, Heko, that OK with you?

@Heko Jesus I’m not allowed on here now am I? I have read it all now!!!!!!!!!!!’n

Why we're not allowed to point this out is unknown to me

Yet here you are. Who let you out?

But if parents call out on teachers in a general fashion they will get flamed. If they call out that their child's teacher they'll get asked what they've done to remedy it. (Usually fuck all, I've found)

Are you in England? Are there year groups back in your school? All teaching staff will be physically teaching classes. How are they supposed to do both?

echt I've put my energy into contacting school management as I feel my time is better served trying to improve the teaching rather than taking over myself- not helped by discovering only yesterday that hotmail must go into spam.

DS is in fee paying secondary and as far as I can see the problem appears to be a lack of coordination of activities and variation in what has been provided. For the first few weeks we were just grateful for anything as we know this is a new situation, but just as my work has now adapted to our new circumstances, I would also have expected the school management team to be doing the same. Maybe they are - but from response I've received, I doubt it.

I’m also part time. It does surprise me how many parents who claim to work full time, in terribly important jobs, who can’t possibly be expected to spend half an hour a day helping their own child to access the home learning set, manage to spend so much time moaning on mn though.

heartsonacake

'He’s your child. Educate him yourse'

Great idea here, we could save a fortune. Don't bother educating teachers, close all schools, parents should just teach their own children. What can a school provide that a parent can't?!

Charities too, why fund education in developing nations? Spend that money on something else!

I think you're onto something.

It is so hard for Primary Schools right now. Most teachers will now be teaching in the bubbles so obviously less time to set and mark work.

I can't comment on Primary provision as I teach Secondary, but I do know that a lot of Year 6 focus at this time of year would be on transition, so I'd probably focus on that in the hours the work doesn't fill.

Find out about his new school, make a research project of it.

Maps, teachers, timings, uniform, year 7 curriculum, houses, behaviour expectations, achievement points, motto, ethos, most of it is probably on their website, but they may also have a Facebook presence you can engage with.

Heko

Lunch break
Breakfast break
Evenings
Some time at weekends

Although I'm working long days right now I'm not actually working 24 hours a day.

I live overseas and I'm organising my own children's learning 100%.
If you aren't happy with what the school is providing it takes very little time or effort to bulk out the work set by the school with your own work (not aimed at OP, just a general feeling).
My child is the equivalent of Year 7
Yesterday he worked from 8.30 am to 3.30 am, this is what he did, I did the planning which took about 30 minutes of my time:-

8.30 am - 9.30 am Conquer Maths (4 tasks of KS3 Maths Curriculum). The programme teaches and marks work.
Silent Reading of his Reading Book for 15 minutes
30 minutes of Exercise
Science - Acids and alkaline. Online tutorial (I bad about £20 for videos and worksheets for the whole KS3 Science Curriculum) plus worksheets
History - Industrial revolution. We discussed textbook, looked at videos of the Spinning Jenny and Josiah Wedgewood and he did some questions.
Dictation and spelling practice
12 noon - 1 Lunchbreak
1 pm - Quizlets - Recap on learning he has done for Geography over the last week and subject-related spellings
1.30 pm Reading and discussion of Lord of the Flies Chapter 5
2 pm - Transactional writing tutorial (I paid £18 for a 6-week course on Zoom by a teacher). This week was Speechwriting.
He planned a speech on persuading parents on the benefits of social media. He also watched some famous speeches online, Churchill and Martin Luther King.
3-4 pm Arabic
4 pm Option to do CodeCombat (free) and free time.

For Science and History, I used the KS3 Collins Revision books as a basis and bulk it out with online resources. The cost is minimal.
I'm only educated to degree level, we manage fine with no input from teachers. Everybody needs to at least try and implement their solutions and not just moan about the school provisions. I also home educated my Year 3 son. I also work from home, albeit 4 hours a day.

I feel sorry for UK teachers, they seem to get attacked constantly and there are too many parents who seem unprepared to spend the time expanding on the work the school gives out. Having said that, massive respect to those parents who are working full time and trying to homeschool their children It is very difficult in this scenario, especially with different ages. For anyone Furloughed and moaning about the school provision, there is plenty that you can be doing yourself. You can moan about it but it isn't solving the situation you are faced with now i.e your child isn't getting an adequate education

At my school at the moment most teaching staff are now working FT at school. All classes are being used with KW and vulnerable children. We don't have space for the other eligible year groups.

Those who are medically vulnerable are working from home doing home learning as well as monitoring their own class work responses and feeding back to children, and monitoring parent emails and messages. The staff who are in school are doing their best to feedback to pupils outside of school hours.

We are providing 5 subjects a day but it wouldn't take a full day to complete as that's not how school works normally, and it's much quicker to complete work 1:1 than in a class of 30.

Primary children can't use tech as well as secondary children. Even if they have it. They are usually really good at playing the game they like, or googling pictures of things they like, but hopeless at typing their name correctly to log in, or typing anything at all. This limits what tech we can use.

There is also the issue of loads of families (irrespective of financial situation) not having devices for every child. If you've got 4 children under 11, why at any other point in time would you have 4 laptops for them to watch instruction lessons on? You might have one that they can use, but probably an old one of yours. Any work set for them by school is going to require parent support. If you can't do that during the week (I couldn't do it during the week either), then weekends become homeschool day.

I'm guessing by the number of views lesson videos have, that most people are about 5 days 'behind' - I'm leaving work up for 3 weeks (any more than that and the school webpage crashes), and have only heard from a few parents about needing stuff for longer.

I bought the CGP books for my child's year group - one for English and one for maths (and one for handwriting, because it's really bad) - cost me a tenner. She did a page a day, she watched some Bitesize phonics to go with the page she was doing. And that was that. Keeps them ticking over.

What would have been really cool is a list of life skills that I think are home tasks anyway. Telling the time, using and understanding money, understanding things about measurement etc. Learning times tables facts. Then a website dedicated to that. If all primary school kids, of any age, come back to school knowing their times tables facts, knowing how to tell the time etc, then we can catch them up on the other stuff really easily.

I’m not going to wade through the thread and depress myself with all the teacher bashing.

I’m a TA, and my kids go to the school I work in, so maybe I’m biased but the provision has been amazing. (Small, village state primary).

Work packs, emailed out by Friday evening the week before so you can read through and plan.
Work packs include some maths, English and suggestions for PE, music, science, history and geography.
Lots of emphasis on the idea that the tasks are suggestions, dip in and out, don’t feel under pressure to do everything.
Feedback on work sent in.
Weekly newsletters showing the photographs of the work, comments on what the kids have been doing, shout outs for birthdays etc.
Stories read online by each teacher. Phonics sessions online by reception teacher.
For those that don’t have printers at home, the teachers were printing them out on a Monday morning and driving round delivering them to homes.
Plus online sessions for children who needed them (those that would have been receiving intervention at school).

Look into these packs for English: www.talk4writing.com/home-school-units/
My school has given out a couple of these for each age group.
They are brilliant. My two have both enjoyed the topics and the packs walk them through it in a really easy set of steps. We’re in the middle of one with our Year 6s to do with spies, but the focus is on persuasive writing and it’s fun for them but really well thought through. And it’s several sessions of work in one pack.
DD1 (Y6) was working through them online, via FaceTime, with a friend, which worked really well.

Also try this one: radioblogging.net/
A radio show to listen to with activities for writing hidden in it!

In fact I might do that. A series of lessons on how to tell the time - and that's the homework for the whole year for every year group, do it over and over until you can tell the bloody time.

Same with times tables. Bloody learn them!! We can't teach them to remember them, they just need to rote learn.

I think what’s coming across is some people accept it’s a pandemic we as parents will have to get stuck in and find a way to support home learning during these unusual and temporary circumstances.

Others are expecting schools to somehow be able to provide resources that even small children can access independently and complete and be babysat by for four hours plus a day without any parental effort or input.

It’s not possible. They’re children.

No this doesn’t mean we might as well sack all teachers if parents can short term facilitate their children’s learning during a pandemic. This is temporary.

We’re basically in a state of emergency and in that state yes parents are being required to contribute to their own children’s learning temporarily.

Anyone would think you’d been asked to fight on the frontline in a war zone. It’s just helping your own children to access learning.

To those who are saying to the OP: "But your child could be at school; you chose not to send him, so the issue is yours now." How do you know this? Our school can currently provide 9 spaces for Year 1, which has 15 children in the class. So 6 children have had to to stay at home because there is simply no place for them to go back to at the moment. Yet all we have received for our Year 1 child since the end of halfterm is the same timetable with the same links to Reading Owl and National Oak Academy. His teacher doesn't even bother putting up worksheets anymore, let alone mark them. And it's simply not true that it's just a small number of teacher bashers who keep coming on here and start threads to slag off teachers but an experience shared by many parents as this article shows: www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/15/2m-children-in-uk-have-done-almost-no-school-work-in-lockdown.

Ha, yes @TheHoneyBadger

Also, anecdotally, it's teacher's children who have done the least. I have one of my colleague's children in my class. Last time I was in school, she and I were chatting about what they've been up to - she hadn't even looked on the class webpage. Not once. There have been video lessons up there since first day after the Easter holidays. She's missed loads of stuff that she'd have enjoyed.

TooGood2BeTrue

The article that you (haven't) linked to doesn't say how many children are just not doing the work.