To think kids should repeat the school year

[Everythingnotsaved]

I am starting to think that if there is any more lockdown, kids will need to repeat the last academic year or really be disadvantaged down the line?

I am pissed off enough that private schools mostly got full online teaching which already shits on social mobility but any more will really be a disaster.

Aibu?

This concept of 'catching up'needs to go.
What are the 'catching up' with? An artificial list of things a person should know by a certain age.
If, in that last term, a year 3 child missed for example, a Roman's topic, I'm sure they will have time larer in thier lives to find out about Romans at another point, if they are interested.
It's not the end of the world.
Same as GCSE, it's a list of pre designated stuff that a child 'should' know.
If they dont quite get to the end of the list of topics by the time they leave school, does it matter?
As long as exam boards accommodate what has happened, I think we need to forget this whole concept of 'catching up'and just continue with 'learning. '

"@spongedog have I said a single thing about SEN kids?" What are you talking about?

I think it was because of your comments about kids in private schools. Some children with sen are placed in independent schools usually specialist, because their needs cannot be met in a state school or state special schools are full and the child doesn't have a school place and may have been without a place for a long time. Often parents have a massive battle to get these places because the LA doesn't want to fund them and so would rather leave the child with no or inadequate provision.

The independent schools have (from surveys of parents) on average provided better provision during lockdown than state schools have to children with sen.

Although I had assumed you were not referring to these children and probably didn't know about them.

This concept of 'catching up' needs to go.

I agree.

Repeating isn’t an answer really. It affects too many other systems. My 4yo is very ready to start reception, has her uniform, has done activities for the school. You couldn’t take that away from her now without that causing big problems for her and lots of her peers. Aside from that, I’d be mightily pissed off having a massive nursery bill to pay for another year. Add to that, the nursery sector has been in trouble. Our nursery is only opening in September because it wasn’t financially viable for them to open over the summer.

At that other end, you’d mess up all of the transitions out of school.

If, in that last term, a year 3 child missed for example, a Roman's topic, I'm sure they will have time larer in thier lives to find out about Romans

Schools use topics to frame writing. The topic itself is irrelevant.

White a story about a roman invasion. Write a letter a a Roman solider home to your mum. Etc etc

Repeating the year just isn't possible. I do think schools are going to have to put some extra hours in though, for some children. It wouldn't work for the really young ones but there's no reason year 5 upwards couldn't have an extra half hour of school a day for some maths and English if their teachers decide they need it.

One of my family members was bombed out of numerous schools, they still finished school on time. My dc have had to sit at home and follow online learning resources. Yes they are bored but repeating a year won't help with that. I think any child below yr9 will be able to catch up maybe with the support of tutors where possible.

I think what would help is funding available for schools to use premium online revision platforms such as Seneca, Tassomai etc. Use that to supplement teaching and identify gaps. Put funding in to tutors. Expand sixth form provision to make resitting GCSEs and A levels easier for a few years.

I think that this experience will have decreased social mobility so these children need to be supported particularly. I do though think that for some students and parents this has shown how much some students are able to self motivate themselves which will really help them at University and some students (including one of mine) really does not do self motivation which is something we need to work on if they are to succeed in life and education. I think that as long as there are opportunities for resits without penalty for those going into yr9/10 and above that this could be a real learning opportunity.

But of course every other parent will have an excuse as to why they couldn’t possibly have properly homeschooled their child(ren)
There was a hilarious irony the other day (entirely lost on the Poster) where a teacher who was whining rndlessly about a travel company not responding to her bonkers extreme number of emails and calls (despite instructions on their website that they would deal with cases in a logical order) clearly missing the point that if parents are having to educate their children at home, they cannot provide the same level of service to the petulant, People cannot do a full time job effectively and keep the porky piggies happy and also school their children. If it were that easy, teaching would be a part time job, and not the 'hardest job in the world' as some on here make out.

schools are going to have to put some extra hours in though, for some children.
My school is already planning this. We were teaching online through with pastoral, assembles, even orchestra recital by Zoom -that was a impressive moment! But despite pretty much full engagement it was clear that some children were struggling with being isolated physically from their classmates and the low level support they get from peers. So we have identified this who will have additional support with extra tuition in targeted areas. The need for peer support in classroom is another reason to avoid SD and masks etc in class but I doubt the Gvt or unions would have a clue about that.

lifeafter50

No teacher on here ever claims that teaching is the 'hardest job in the world'.

I cannot see repeating happening. More resits of some exams yes, but there is not the school space or teachers to have repeating, even if thought desirable.

Obviously any proposal needs the resources behind it to implement it so I know this is easier said than done...

For primary children:

• teachers carry on differentiating just as they do now. The more able will catch up anyway, the less able: intervention programme, small group session just as done now, just possibly on a wider scale

For KS3:

• most new Y7 take all subjects, as normal
• those struggling drop some subjects entirely for maths and English intervention. This happens in my school already - those with

My year 9 DD worked really hard but shes very motivated and organised. She was disappointed that 1 teacher kept setting enormous amounts of work (20 pages) but seemingly unavailable on email and never marked anything! Most of the teachers were v responsive though. DS was much harder to motivate despite my best efforts and unless I'm in the room with him would do very very little.

How are you disadvantaged by the stuff you have forgotten or didn't learn / didn't get taught at school ?

For primary kids it matter not a jot not even a teeny tiny bit

Only affected are exam classes year 10, 11 12,13 and 11 and 13 have been given grades so only affected years are 12 and 10

Won't happen, too logistically difficult but in theory it would be the perfect situation to change the school age. Scotland from 5 to 6 and England from a frankly ridiculous (IMHO) 4//- 5/6. If I had my way ot would be 7.

4/5- 5/6

The issue with starting school later in Scandinavian countries and Germany etc. is that English is a lot harder to learn to read than those languages.
In France children are in school at 3 (and OK, it's not "full" school, I know) but the same is true in Belgium, Italy, Spain, we have family in one of those and they were taking the children on overnight trips pre-5yo, expecting them to stay for a full day including a 5 Euro lunch, and it seemed pretty serious (and from the learning-to-read POV, it was an easy language to learn so no real need for early reading instruction).

And OP, yes, I do think it's clueless to start a new thread on the exact same topic as many, many threads that already exist on this topic and on which the same reasons (you can't shift the whole of education by a year without encountering a bottleneck, which will be by your suggestion at all of: nursery, University and qualified-professional stage.

All the student doctors, nurses and teachers have now passed their degrees and most seem OK with having missed a term's work (some of them will only have had finals in that time anyway, and some of them sat those, for some previous marks were used like the A levels, many of them didn't miss any lectures, some of them just did their dissertations at home or did a placement as normal).

I am pissed off enough that private schools mostly got full online teaching which already shits on social mobility but any more will really be a disaster.

How will repeating a year change this? Those who have had full online teaching will still be ahead.

I am pissed off enough that private schools mostly got full online teaching which already shits on social mobility but any more will really be a disaster.

Private sector wouldn’t happily pay fur a whole extra year when provision has been fine - you can’t have one age for state and another for private.

The right approach is to get all children back in ft education. Not repeating a year.

@SoupDragon

I am pissed off enough that private schools mostly got full online teaching which already shits on social mobility but any more will really be a disaster.

How will repeating a year change this? Those who have had full online teaching will still be ahead.

I agree private will still be ahead.

Private schools are ahead because of the investment per pupil being higher. Resitting a year won't change that.

What's disgusting is because investment in UK state education is so crap and has been getting worse, the government can't respond properly to the covid situation.

Now we are facing full time school with the largest class size in Europe and no social distancing - so putting the whole community at risk of rising covid cases - because of the long term issues in UK education which mean we have no flexibility in our over crowded underfunded schools.

We need proper part time socially distanced schooling and resources/extra help targeted at those who are struggling most.

@Freddofrogshop I totally agree! Catching up shouldn’t be the point. This is why I’ve kept up with reading, general writing, phonics and arithmetic practise, but not worried too much else. If they haven’t finished a topic in primary school history it’s not going to hold them back!

How about ending the rigid relationship in the UK between a child's age and school year group, which has always been a problem for G&T kids, kids who are struggling and summer-born children anyway. The range of school provision (and uptake) during lockdown has been ridiculously wide. Why not give families the choice of what year group their child goes into when schools reopen?

Why not give families the choice of what year group their child goes into when schools reopen?

Because families for whom getting a child out to work ASAP and not dependent on them would choose a later year (and yet, those families are less well off and may well have had little choice but to go out to work and/or ignore the DCs at home meaning less learning).
And families who have PFBs (and PSBs etc.) would choose a younger year when their DC would almost certainly not need it.
And most families would choose the year their DC was in before so they can see their friends (except for the my-child-missed-out-on-their-Y6-prom-and-they-are-damaged brigade, who would all try and flood Y6 again while the Y5 parents would want their child with their peers, meaning Y6 would be over full).
That's probably the daftest of a load of daft ideas, that I've heard. Not quite sure if it's dafter than making students do a whole year - when they missed no lectures due to CV - again.

@ConquestEmpireHungerPlague

How about ending the rigid relationship in the UK between a child's age and school year group, which has always been a problem for G&T kids, kids who are struggling and summer-born children anyway. The range of school provision (and uptake) during lockdown has been ridiculously wide. Why not give families the choice of what year group their child goes into when schools reopen?

I like this idea for next year, depending on whether the next two terms are as disrupted as much as I expect with significant time out of the school environment.

A lot of replies are focusing on it not being possible to repeat the last school year this year, I'm thinking more that joining this next school year for two years is more of a possibility. Year 11s taking exams 2022 instead of 2021, the new Year 6 moving up in two years time, a move to a starting age of 5 (already the age that full time education becomes a legal requirement) over the next two years.