The Dept of Education should be doing a better job for students

[Wishingstarr]

This quote inspired this thread:
"And the differences are marked: one survey has shown that just 3% of state primary and 6% of state secondary schools managed to provide “live” online lessons, compared with 59% of private primary and 72% of private secondary schools. Teachers from most settings agree that this will show in September: privately educated students will be more advanced."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/27/parent-children-private-school-middle-classes

I am in the USA. My kids are in Catholic schools because of the separation between church and state here. My mother was a teacher and Head of a Primary School in the British state system. During the pandemic my children had live lessons every day Mon-Fri. When schools start back after summer they will have two days at school and three days at home all with live teaching. Our local schools districts are a mixed bag but many are giving children live lessons and made a big effort early on to get IT devices and access to all students (equity is still an issue I don't deny it, but they are a minority of students and extra resources could be focused toward those at the most risk of falling behind.)

With the weight of the state and taxpayer funding behind them, surely the Dept of Education in the UK should be able to offer live lessons? Couldn't they literally use a TV station if necessary? The way that the Open University offered classes via BBC2 in the past? It seems the UK has so many resources that with imagination could be utilized. If "it can't be done" how are private schools doing it? Our kids' Catholic schools pay teachers less and spend less per students than state schools. I am very much on the side of teachers, this is not to bash educators but those at the level to be able to organize education.

It might depend on how those stats have been collected/interpreted.
So if they are only counting Zoom lessons the stats will be lower (and Zoom connectivity/uptake does not always equate to best teaching practices) whereas many schools may have used the White Rose Maths videos with a teacher explaining, Study Ladder with teaching videos as well as making their own. My kids are state - the teacher input was pre recorded but they made the kids a video every single day. That might not count as live teaching per se but it was amazing provision in very hard circumstances.

The BBC had bitesize provision iirc. We didn't use it as it was a case of having too much work rather than not enough. On top of that, twinkl and others offered free resources for weeks.
The issue, as with most things, would have been for many: time, motivation, multitasking and resources (internet, computer, printer).

Yes, as I mentioned. not knocking teachers but just that there are advantages of government centralization that don't seem to have been taken advantage of. Just imagine if some of our greatest talents had to use them to convey parts of the curriculum via TV and streaming, it could be educational, entertaining and keep kids busy. I guess to be fair they had no idea how long lockdown would last so it was very hard to plan. But things look like they will be bad for a while... Joe Wicks was doing PE, not rocket science so what about offering Rocket Science?

Because government finances aren't a bottomless money pit? For instance, our catchment has about 80% of children without technology at home.

The USA and UK are so far down the international rankings of results - maybe we should both take advice from the Scandinavian countries. It's not about 'live teaching' it's about quality of content.

I see what you are saying but a one size fits all would not have worked for my neurodiverse child even in the guise of TV. I persuaded him to watch Horrible Histories a few times but he would not have given a toss if Stephen Hawking himself was teaching virtually!
Teachers would have been damned if they did or didn't - especially if their daily plan included Watch Brian Cox at 9.30am.
Home ed is hard - dragging kids from screens is hard - plugging them into a virtual teaching TV station wouldn't have been that more fruitful if the work being produced wasn't managed by an adult.
I hate this government so no skin off my nose how much flak they get quite frankly but as someone who taught/supported 3 kids for 4 months and found it ridiculously challenging (and I have teaching experience) I am not sure that having a body of experts on TV or via tinternet would have done a lot more for me personally. Tbh I probably would have done less/opted out more/told myself Stephen(!) had it covered and used the TV as babysitter. As it was, I had to step up. Did I do an amazing job - I did what I could. Would Dame Judi Dench have got more writing out my kids than his teachers and I did? Nope - but would have been interesting to see.

The gap between state education and private in England is massive, and it’s been a humongous void for many years before Covid.

But that’s what happens when the government cuts school funding and children’s services - those who can afford to get ahead. The most disadvantaged on society become more disadvantaged. They should be doing better, yes, but they won’t. I can’t understand why people are only annoyed about it now? I’ve been watching the kids I teach get the shitty end of the stick for the last 16 years.

Staring passively at a tv screen is one of the worst ways to learn. Yabu.

It isn't really state vs private, the difference is between those children whose parents were in a position to support home learning versus those who were not.

Live lessons were absolutely not the way for many families. They needed flexility and variation to enable learning to take place in and around other family commitments. I already have a number of children in my class who didn’t access work because parents were WFH FT throughout or there were siblings with additional needs or whatever. Live lessons would have reduced those numbers further. I teach Y1 so had most of my class back in school and tbh the best option is having the children with you for the whole day. Really hoping things are as normal as possible come September.

"With the weight of the state and taxpayer funding behind them, surely the Dept of Education in the UK should be able to offer live lessons? Couldn't they literally use a TV station if necessary? The way that the Open University offered classes via BBC2 in the past?"

The government set up Oak National Academy a few months ago to offer online lessons. I'm not sure about secondary but certainly at primary level there were daily maths, English and a variety of other lessons for each year group, led by teachers. I think they also provided daily timetables and assemblies etc, although my kids tended to just pick the lessons that had been set by their school to do.

www.thenational.academy/

The fundamental issue is one of disadvantage.

In our school, the majority of children don’t have devices at all at home, some don’t have their own devices but can access a shared one (around 10%). A few had their own devices. Most of our families have no or poor Wi-fi.

Many of our children have caring responsibilities for younger siblings.

Many parents were not working from home during lockdown due to the nature of their low paid jobs.

We supported countless families with food parcels, clothing, shoes, stationery supplies and reading books. We posted workpacks we had tailored to each year group home for each subject and hand delivered countless packs of work in addition.

Our ability to support pupils with this work and to give them feedback was hugely limited by the digital divide. Some were able to send us work, some were able to access Microsoft Teams where we posted feedback.

So yes, the DfE could’ve done more than provide 18 laptops (for over 800 children), but the crux of the issue is that millions of children in our country live in poverty and their life chances pre-Covid were already limited by this disadvantage.

Shedloads of families have no access to internet or devices. Teachers too.

The government have decided not to give any funding to schools to cope with covid demands so live lessons can never happen anyway.

Also children staring at a screen is the educational equivalent of junk food. They may look very busy but they’re making hardly any progress and none of their errors and misconceptions are being addressed.

surely the Dept of Education in the UK should be able to offer live lessons? Couldn't they literally use a TV station if necessary?

If you are considering that ‘live lessons’ are something that could be delivered via TV (I.e. recorded lessons), then the BBC did this. The DfE also funded Oak Academy which was structured online lessons.

What I find baffling is that this wasn’t then pushed and parents seem to have expected teachers up and down the country to reinvent the wheel and create their own unfunded Oak Academies. Providing links to the funded one was seen as lazy.

We didn't do live lessons at my state infant school. That was an active choice with the whole school community in mind.

For our school community live lessons were not really ever going to be appropriate for a range of reasons. It might have been fine for some pupils but not the majority.

However every day in term time the children were able to access an English, maths and phonics lesson with a pre recorded accompanying video created by school staff . They also had two other curriculum subject lessons per day but which didn't have the videos. At weekends and in the holidays they had other subjects and activities they could choose to do. These lessons were provided online in two different formats. Teachers and LSAs would give feedback online via the platform we used. This was every day a child posted something.

Parents had specific year group email set up and could use a direct messaging feature on the platform app to contact teaching staff too.

Children and parents were offered a telephone call each half term and there was a whole class soon meeting at the end of term.

Our parent feedback has been incredibly positive. Very few wanted live scheduled lessons anyway.

It's only really on MN that live lessons have been deemed to be the best approach to home learning.

And if a proper study can't work out why live lessons may work better at a private school with lower class sizes, where more pupils are likely to have access to their own electronic devices and good working Wi-Fi then I despair tbh.

Also the vast majority of our staff were working ft in school bubbles from the start as we have a high percentage of key workers and/or vulnerable children. By May half term there were only a very small number of staff still not in school full time.

My DSs school did amazingly given the circumstances. Good mixture of lessons e.g. worksheets, online (teachers can see all that was done) and marking all work sent in. There was also regular contact.

Live lessons? Not a chance. In DS1's class alone the range of academic ability is massive with a number of children with SEN. No way the teacher could have realistically pitched a lesson to cover all abilities.

Have I enjoyed doing home learning? Not really but needs must and in my opinion at least the school has been brilliant.

My son was in a state school that offered the hallowed live lesssons in some subjects for the last half term. Around half the class were able to access them.
The non-live lessons were as good and in some cases much better and more flexible and required less IT to support at home.

People need to get over the hangup that live lessons is the gold standard.