To think this is unfair to my DD14 (school work)

[PurpleThistles84]

I had a call last night from my daughters teacher to ask why my DS has not joined a google classroom for one of her subjects. Long story short, she had been missed off the invitation email to join the classroom and so she wasn’t aware there was even a classroom on it.

Her teacher confirmed she had been missed off the email invitation but followed it up with ‘she could have asked’ and now expects her to complete any missed work and assignments over the summer holidays.

My DD has really struggled with online learning and has problems with depression (pre lockdown), she is awaiting an assessment from the child mental health services team. She is going to be devastated, as she was so relieved to reach the summer holidays.

This teacher is the same teacher for one of her other classes and acknowledged that she had been doing all her work for that class. I don’t understand what took him nearly 6 weeks to phone me and let me know about this.

My DD moved from S2 to S3 whilst in lockdown and they have only just been given their new timetables despite S3 classes starting online 6 weeks ago. This class is one of the new ones from moving into S3.

She is going to have to do the work as I don’t want her to be behind once school resumes but AIBU to think that this should have been picked up way before now and to feel the teacher is passing the blame onto my daughter a bit? He also said that the children can’t get hold of him by email, only by private comment in the classroom for their class, so I’m not sure how he thinks ‘she could have asked?’

@TheStuffedPenguin she has friends. In her old school. She moved to this school in November and hasn’t made new friendships yet. She likes quite out there music and has a bit of a unique dress sense so she hasn’t had an easy time of it in this new school which has played its part in her depression. I’ve offered her to go back to her old school but she feels the education is better in her new one (which it is) so she wants to stick it out.

Yes, it’s very unfair and it’s largely the teachers fault
However, if your DD wants the best GCSE result she can achieve the if she feels able she really does need to do the work. The teacher can’t do it and won’t be the one sitting the exam so it’s up to your DD (with your help) now

[quote PurpleThistles84]@ArgumentativeAardvaark no it shouldn’t be that big a deal, however as stated, my daughter has depression. That makes things that aren’t that big a deal, a very big deal. Am I not allowed to feel upset for her about this? Have I said that she shouldn’t have to do the work? Perhaps when you are sat with your child watching her breaking her heart over how low she is feeling and still trying to summon the motivation to do her school work, you might be a little more understanding of how I am feeling about this.[/quote]
@PurpleThistles84 my DS (15) has missed a load of work by inadvertently doing work set for a different group than his.

Google classrooms has taken a lot of getting used to for him as it isn't just his classes that show up on his profile and he hadn't clocked the group names in small print in the headings.

He is academically behind in lots of ways but with no particular diagnosis and he has really struggled to get to grips with learning this way. He is very techy and he has struggled so I'm not sure why people are struggling to understand that some DCs aren't doing well with online learning.

I feel for your DD - there seem to be other things going on making it harder for her and it isn't easy to support them as much as you would like when you have other DCs as well.

I have had lots of snidey comments about how it shouldn't be that hard as DS is my only child in education and I am wfh. But it has been a real struggle and I wish people could be a bit more understanding,

I hope your DD feels better soon.

@HUCKMUCK I hear you. Many adults can struggle with home learning, it’s no surprise that some children do too. My DS is 10 and still at early stage in learning, he is autistic and it’s been a real battle to get him doing his work. I’m sure you are doing the best you can, let’s hope this virus gets sorted and our children can get their normal schooling back soon.

Plan,

And who will pay for the ‘extra assistance’ that you believe, on very limited evidence, that the OP’s daughter needs next term?

@larrygrylls

Plan,

And who will pay for the ‘extra assistance’ that you believe, on very limited evidence, that the OP’s daughter needs next term?

The U.K. school should accommodate. I had similar issue when living in UK. My son caught glandular fever caused chronic fatigue. He was too unwell for months to do more than an hour of school a day. Because it’s a recognised medical disability, all I had to do was take a doctors letter in to the U.K. school and the SENCO set up accommodations and then, when he came out of the fatigue, she set up catch up sessions with the various teachers in all the subjects.

They do the same for ANY medical reason, and the DD having clinical depression and migraines makes her eligible for such accommodations and assistance. Legally, they cannot refuse to provide them.

@RedskyAtnight

She had no way to “ask” or chase down teacher as he had no email, no phone number, nothing.

She had contact with him via another subject he also taught her.

She didn't. The OP was mistaken and corrected this reading the email again, he is the head of science and has her for another science subject but isn’t actually her teacher for the missed one, as I initially thought

It is no way the child's fault if she was missed off the list if she didn't know there was one. I have been having a problem with my sons s3 teacher him saying my son is copying other students work when he is at home and he submits the same time with me watching him so don't know how he can copy...

From Childlaw website
childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/mental-health-in-schools/

“This page provides information on how schools can support children and young adults experiencing mental health difficulties and when a mental health difficulty can be considered a disability or Special Educational Need.”

“Only medical professionals can make a formal diagnosis of a mental health condition. However, children or their carers can inform the school of a suspected mental health difficulty.”

“If a school believes that a child or young adult would benefit from a more clinical approach and treatment for mental health difficulties, they can refer the child to CAMHS. CAMHS are specialist NHS children and young people’s mental health services and can offer a variety of trained mental health professionals” OP said this referral had already happened

“Some children suffering with mental health problems can be considered disabled under the Equality Act 2010. All schools are under an obligation not to discriminate against pupils on the grounds of disability. See our page on Disability discrimination in education for further details.

Under the Act, disability includes a mental impairment. The mental impairment must have a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

‘Long term’ means that the symptoms have lasted or are expected to last for 12 months but this need not be consecutive. Transient symptoms may not fall within the Act.

The following are examples of mental health symptoms that can be regarded as a mental impairment under the Act:

anxiety;
low mood
panic attacks;
phobias;
eating disorders;
bipolar affective disorders;
obsessive compulsive disorders;
personality disorders;
post-traumatic stress disorder;
some self-harming behaviour;
depression
schizophrenia;
autistic spectrum disorders;
dyslexia and dyspraxia;
learning disabilities.”

If a child or young person falls within the definition of disability above, the school has particular obligations. Schools are under a duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to put disabled students on a more equal footing with pupils without disabilities. If an adjustment is reasonable, it should be made – there can be no justification for why it is not made. An adjustment may be considered unreasonable if it is very expensive, and this may be a reason for a school refusing to offer school-based counselling.

The duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ is also anticipatory. This means that schools should give thought, in advance, to what disabled children and young people might require and what adjustments might be needed to prevent disabled students from being disadvantaged.

If you feel that a school has not complied with its duties under the Equality Act 2010, the child’s parents can bring a claim within 6 months of the incident in the First Tier Tribunal (Special Educational Needs and Disability). See our page on Disability discrimination in education for further details.

Plan without details of the OP's child, that's she's probably best not going into on a public forum, you have no way of deciding what the school has to legally do.

We've had countless students with medical needs but teaching staff can't be directed beyond their directed time hours to teach.

I've seen loads of very successful arrangements for students with medical needs, for example, sometimes the child has been prioritised for small group intervention with tutors we hire in, other times they've dropped some subjects and had additional maths/English when the department has intervention capacity built in, other times there's been part time timetables with alternative provision. None involved the classroom teachers being directed to do catch-up beyond their contracts. Each situation has been specifically tailored to the student and isn't as simple as telling the school they have to do X Y Z because someone on a forum told you.

We had similar with my son, going into S6, his final year. I thought it odd he had so little work so I emailed the school. I had suggested he email the school but he was happy for me to.

Turns out he wasn't on the register for any of his subjects. I didn't get an apology or explanation just 'well there's about 4 weeks of work to catch up on'.

Wonder if it's the same school @purplethistle84

Are you in FK15 postcode?

Lola, I never directed that the school has to do catch up session. I stated “eg” as in “for example” in my initial mention of it and that is what I continued to discuss it as, as an example of what the school could do. All I have said is that legally the school has to accommodate and assist her DD as it is likely her DDs depression and migraines do meet the disability threshold.

The OPs details were enough. Her DD has been referred to CAMHS, they don’t do a referral for a teenager that’s a bit blue. They do it when it’s a serious mental health difficulty. In addition, OP mentioned picking up a prescription for the migraines- GPs don’t give out prescriptions for migraine pain medication for a mild headache!

OP, I am a teacher in Scotland and your DD should not be being asked to make up work over the summer. She could have had a raft of reasons for not completing work and S2 into S3 is not a huge deal. Some schools won't even have picked their options yet. Theoretically picking in S2 for S3 should only be referred to as personalisation and choice not Senior Phase options. She will catch up and we know there's going to be a vast range across our classes of where pupils are at. Many (in some of my classes 1/3 to 1/2) didn't engage in remote learning. I know your DD would have if she'd been in the GC but lots who were just weren't able to.

It is a bit unfair for the teacher to turn it round to DD but did it not surprise her or you that she wasn't hearing anything from one of her chosen subjects?

Plan,

Rather than taking legal action (which you seem to have highlighted), the OP's daughter could just catch up. She has 5-6 weeks in which to do about 10 hours of work. The OP could help her.

Even if she got this additional support, the reality is that it would be time out of her normal day during term time, which would be both stressful and add to the work burden.

Just to stick my oar in, if this is Google Classroom it's a blimming nightmare at teacher end as we have to manually invite each child ( often without a proper list if it's a new option subject) and it's easy to miss one or two off!

The teacher then wouldn't notice the work not coming in because the child isn't on the classroom.

I am a bit surprised your DD didnt wonder what was going in, but she's 14 so 14 year old minds are not adult ones.

The could have asked comment was , probably not intentionally, snarky.

I agree that the work needs a bit of negotiating now .

@larrygrylls

Plan,

Rather than taking legal action (which you seem to have highlighted), the OP's daughter could just catch up. She has 5-6 weeks in which to do about 10 hours of work. The OP could help her.

Even if she got this additional support, the reality is that it would be time out of her normal day during term time, which would be both stressful and add to the work burden.

Legal action? No. I never said to do that.

My point is that the DD is currently too unwell to do school work over the summer and that OP should not force her to catch up and risk worsening her already bad health. And there the “10 hours work” is just a number someone pulled out of the air. We have no idea actually how much work she missed OR how long it would take her to struggle through it while sick with depression and migraines.

My second point is that if she is really behind, her health conditions likely meet disability threshold and the school is required by law to accommodate and assist her DD to catch up when she is well again.

That's awful - especially when they know how much she has struggled.

They're trying to absolve blame onto a fourteen-year-old when it's been missed not just by her teacher but also by the head of year. How has this not been picked up?

Of course, the work needs completing, but that's not the point. They need to accept responsibility on this, they're trying to cast the blame completely onto her. They're the teachers... I highly doubt your daughter is the only one!

Definitely esclate this - not in a confrontational way. More in a 'how did this happen? What measures are you putting into place to ensure this doesn't happen again?'

The question is, what do you want to achieve out of this and what is the best way to achieve it?

Education during COVID, we all know has meant everyone has lost out. All students have missed out on a normal school experience. School offerings have varied and lots haven’t been brilliant and there have been lots of ‘slipping through cracks’ as Op describes of students not doing work for various reasons and not being followed up or follow up being slow. All of the students have lost out.

So what now? If there were no depression issues, what is the key goal in all this? To make clear to the school that the provision in this case hasn’t been good enough, to escalate the issue as some say - is that with the aim of this teacher being in trouble? Will that achieve much to help this student and her GCSE progress? I agree that what’s happened is poor, but also in circumstances, it’s very easy to see how this happened ....any escalation isn’t really going to have any significant impact as school return to normal teaching, although it will be added to ‘lessons for us to learn as a school’ pile of similar cases no doubt.

If the DD didn’t have mental health issues, the priority I feel would be getting the work done. Starting up to date in the new term would be the best outcome....getting beyond feeling outraged that she needs to work in hols just needs to happen - shit happens —-kids need to learn that too and find the best way forward. Saying she’s won’t do the work because she shouldn’t have to as it’s their fault’ really won’t help given the students have all already lost out.

In terms of blame, COVID really means there’s not lots of benefit to attributing blame but looking forward. The school should have picked up on it earlier, the girl should also have questioned earlier why there was no work. COVID led to the cracks and neither school nor girl and family were proactive in a way needed to close gaps in this situation. But as I say, looking to blame doesn’t really solve the problem.

Given the mental health issues it seems that parents need to work with school - not about blame - but about what is best and appropriate in this situation. We don’t know the situation DD is in. If there are reL mental health issues and doing this work will worsen it, then obviously it shouldn’t be done and school needs to be in on that discussion. If it is possible to do some work, then not doing it because of a feeling of outrage about it being holidays won’t help her GCSEs and prob cause more stress in Sept.

As ever, constructive communication is key. The lack of earlier communication from all sides has led to this happening. Clear communication which looks for solutions and not blame is the thing that’s needed now. Op will probably need to drive this and not rely on school or DD. Being polite, persistent in looking for solutions with timescales and following-up might well be needed. Usually a 14 year old can be expected to communicate with teachers etc, but given the extras ordinary circumstances Of COVID and if DD isn’t in a good place at the moment, it really will be down to Op to drive it.

Get over feeling cross and looking to blame....focus on the way forward for your DDs mental health first and gcse outcomes next, and leave blame issues aside.

All parents at this point need to be more willing to intervene if needed. We aren’t in normal times and what you might expect normally from schools (for right or wrong) doesn’t really apply - so we all need to take more interest and look out for our children and communicate with school if needed. If we don’t do it, the kids will lose out even more....and years down the line, it will be the kids, not the teachers or government who suffer - whoever was responsible.....if anyone actually was at all.

Just to stick my oar in, if this is Google Classroom it's a blimming nightmare at teacher end as we have to manually invite each child ( often without a proper list if it's a new option subject) and it's easy to miss one or two off!

Er, hasn’t this always been done with registers? How is it different to making sure all the kids are in the physical classroom?

Speaking as a teacher myself... This sounds a lot like arse-covering.

Like the teacher has realised your DD has missed a piece of coursework or something, that they won't have time to come back to in class... Maybe they had senior management down their neck asking why this kid hadn't handed her work in... And teacher hadn't even realised it was missing.

At first the teacher thought "lazy little toad!" Then realised the kid never got invited to the classroom and didn't even know... Now they've got senior management gunning for them, and a kid that is behind, because of their error.

I'd just raise it with head of year or something. Let them sort it out.

But yes, your DD will probably have to do the work at some point.

It's a learning curve for everyone
She shouldn't have been missed off the list
School should have noticed earlier
She should have noticed she'd not been assigned physics work
Teacher at fault but she does need to take at least some responsibility.

It ahs aardvark but , at least in my school, we were never really given n absolute confirmed list of students we should have in new classes. Options changes etc were made.

It's not an excuse; it's a reason, though.

It was me , for example, that noticed a student had left my school! Mainly because I had enthusiastically signed her up.

But, honestly , GC is like herding cats (we have some groups of 80) so unless someone is very on the ball (and Is suspect this teacher wasn't...) it isn't the same when you can't eyeball them in a room. They can sign in to a lesson, for example and wander off and you wouldn't be any the wiser.

I suspect what had happened is the HOD has just got on to some attendance issues!

@PlanDeRaccordement

I’m shocked at the number of posters not making any allowance for the fact OPs DD is seriously unwell. With clinical depression plus days long migraines, those are recognised disabilities which, if she were an adult either one by itself would have her signed off work. As she is a child, her ‘work’ is as a student so she is not fit for any school work. Mentally it would be far too taxing and difficult for her to try and self teach a subject that is supposed to be instructor led! OP should absolutely raise the issue with the school and tell them it was their mistake to miss her out and that unfortunately, she is currently too unwell to teach herself the material over the summer and then will need to put in place catch up assistance later in the year when she’s well enough to study.

How much more difficult will it be though for her to do the catch up classes you are suggesting, whilst back at school full time and with homework to do?

Yes, if the DD was at work she would be signed off sick but sadly school doesn't work in the same way. If a child is off sick their classmates continue learning and when the child returns they will be behind. It's not comparable to being at work.

This is a very unfortunate situation and clearly a mistake was made by school but the DD and op.also made a mistake by not realising an entire subject was missing. There's not much point allocating blame though really. The situation remains - DD has missed some.work. Surely, it will be less stressful for her to catch up over the summer when she has no other work to complete? Maybe email school.and ask them to pare the work down to only what is essential?

Oh, and also when you are in a physical school someone actually produces your classlists for you on SIMs or similar to mark a proper register... it's very easy to fly under the radar.

I know the email isn’t really that bad

I think it is actually. He should have just apologised, without then trying to deflect responsibility onto her. It was his mistake and he should be adult enough to own it.

A good apology would have shown understanding of the impact of this on your daughter, especially given her known mental health difficulties.

I am sure if his employer had given all the other teachers work they needed to do, but forgotten to tell him, and when they realised their mistake said, ' Gee, we're sorry, but you could have asked us about this - never mind, you have your holidays to catch up.' He would have been less than pleased, especially if he was known to be suffering with poor mental health. It's just not a decent way to speak to someone when you have kinda ballsed things up for them.

Your daughter deserved a proper apology.