To be shocked at yet another last minute gov announcement.

[wantmorenow]

New guidance for schools just announced on a Friday night before schools return. Breathtaking incompetence.

The tiers, with the introduction of part-time in school, are COMPLETELY new - they may not be written into the main school guidance document, but they have a significant effect on guidance and on what schools have to prepare for (so for example, and primary school preparing for a part time in-and-out scenario has all that planning wasted; any secondary without such planning now has to make it; anyone planning for part weeks - which I understand some schools are already doing - has to change their plans).

Music, drama and PE teachers also have new plans to make - for Music and Drama, confusingly, this was previously in the out of school guidance, but they may not have known to look there.

And, as i have said before, anyone responsible for whole school planning and response has to read EVERY document issued or amended on Friday night - 14 I think, some already amended again - and try to find all the small changes that affect anyone, anywhere within the establishment, which is probably fine for a school of a couple of hundred, significantly more difficult for an establishment on multiple site with multiple thousands of people involved.

No @GetOffYourHighHorse you have misinterpreted what I said, and probably on purpose.

Schools didn't know what the guidance said when it is was published late on Friday night. And in fact the first draft did change quite dramatically what all the school risk assessments said, so if that had stood would you be more sympathetic to schools. In fact, as there was no notification that some idiot in DfE had got it wrong, some very diligent SLT might have already been on the case changing assessments.

But the thing is, nothing had dramatically changed in the country last week, so why couldn't they send out the guidance at a normal time earlier on in the week. Why Friday night?

Why not send it out before some schools had actually gone back? Can you answer that?

'Our teachers taught live lessons on Teams until the last day of term and we were planning for blended learning back in May'

I really hope once the whole crisis settles down that this is investigated. The disparity between what schools provided is the shocking thing.

In our local area during the limited return in June we had one school that had year 10s in for 3 half days, another that offered one ten minute session per pupil once a week! Both large secondary schools. Dont get me started on the online services and set work. Some had Google classrooms, some didnt. Set work for the day completed within 30mins
Luckily our DC also did self directed study so hopefully have kept up but I dread to think how those that struggle academically coped. Well, they probably didnt do anything, that'll be the Government's fault of course.

The disparity between what schools provided is the shocking thing.

Guess whose fault that was?

Hint: Gav

@GetOffYourHighHorse the inconsistency between schools was definitely an issue. We’d already closed and switched to online learning when the government announced the national closure of schools. We were pretty shocked by the government announcement about schools having a new purpose of providing childcare for key workers and that the bbc would sort out the education side. It was as if they’d forgotten that secondary schools, where children don’t generally need childcare and a bbc bite size video won’t cut it for A Level physics, existed at all.

The fact that there was no standard set for remote education was shocking. My cousin, who is at a big Sixth Form college had two weeks of online lessons and one in-school meeting for the whole of the closure, but kids at my school had full lessons online from day 1. In fact, we’d already piloted remote lessons before that where Sixth Form students in school had online classes with teachers who had to isolate at home.
Unfortunately, the only people who can be responsible for a lack of consistency are the government, who failed to give any clear guidance on what should be in place educationally. It was obvious that all of their focus was on childcare, which is totally irrelevant to my Sixth Formers and GCSE students.

Various government departments need investigating for how they have handled things, it's disgraceful.

At one point BJ stood in front of the cameras on a Sunday evening, made an announcement about people going back to work. He implied it had to start on the Monday, but apparently meant Wednesday.

I'm not saying it's right, a lot of it hasn't been from day 0.

Education has always had a rough deal. It's not the first time that new things have been handed down at the last minute.

THe tutor scheme is that the sham one? Have to use their recommended companies, often at a premium and the school still needs to find additional funding?

Dont get me started on the online services and set work. Some had Google classrooms, some didnt.
This is down to schools and where they spend their money though. We'd been using teams for homework setting since the start of the year, so were able to switch quickly. We also provide IT support to some of our feeders, so were able to help them do the same. But schools without that infrastructure were forced by the sudden closure of schools to make a jump from face to face to something else almost overnight.
In June and July we got year 10 in a day a week for full days and year 12 the same. A tiny school up the road with fewer students in the whole y10 than 25% of ours were still only allowed them in 25% at a time. Gav's rules.

A lot of schools struggled to provide remote education to pupils when they were off. We've known about this for years that kids with health issues miss huge chunks of their education.

This is down to government not investing. Now they are scrambling around try to put things in place. Why didn't whatever department already addressed this? It's not like the internet has just been invented.

It's down to the lack of experience in those leadership positions. When the school debate comes up, it's always evident who are clueless and their ideas simply won't work in education. And it's these people who are making ridiculous policies.

Yes the gap does need to be investigated further. Didn't the curriculum pause when the role of teachers was changed?

@MrsHamlet

Dont get me started on the online services and set work. Some had Google classrooms, some didnt. This is down to schools and where they spend their money though. We'd been using teams for homework setting since the start of the year, so were able to switch quickly. We also provide IT support to some of our feeders, so were able to help them do the same. But schools without that infrastructure were forced by the sudden closure of schools to make a jump from face to face to something else almost overnight. In June and July we got year 10 in a day a week for full days and year 12 the same. A tiny school up the road with fewer students in the whole y10 than 25% of ours were still only allowed them in 25% at a time. Gav's rules.

Google Classroom is free.

Free is great. But setting it up from scratch overnight would, I imagine, have not been an easy task for an average sized secondary school. I don't know because I didn't have to do it.

@noblegiraffe

Have schools not prepared for remote learning?

The section below was in the guidance dated 7th August

7th August, Clav. Are you suggesting that teachers should have spent their unpaid time off planning a remote learning offer in just three weeks?

I mean, you are. I’d just like it confirmed that you think that is a reasonable expectation.

What were they doing from March to July?

@MrsHamlet

Free is great. But setting it up from scratch overnight would, I imagine, have not been an easy task for an average sized secondary school. I don't know because I didn't have to do it.

I’ve been using GC for 3 years. It’s pretty easy to set up.

I put the resources for each lesson on there - it’s my normal way of teaching, so not a major change to go remote or blended.

Google classroom is good if your pupils are over the age of 13. Even then parental consent is needed, same with other platforms.

Because of the Youtube link and things are hard to restrict, some parents/schools won't use it. Then of course there's the whole privacy and data sharing thing.

Things like Zoom and Skype a number of schools won't use them because of data, privacy and security breaches.

Due to the situation a lot of the above was overlooked because of what was going on. Don't forget in normal situation, staff wouldn't have been in contact at the level they were with their students.

Because of safeguarding all this will hopefully have been reviewed within individual schools.

@MadameMinimes

Clav- Luckily, we started planning for lessons to be able to be delivered via remote learning for this term back in May (well before term ended and our staff all went off for the holidays). Back then lots of people were insisting that was a hysterical overreaction and we’d all be back to normal in September and there’d be no need. A few of our staff thought it was overkill and that we should wait and see. Luckily we had a bit more forethought than the government, who apparently only realised we’d need this in the middle of the holidays when it was too late to start holding staff meetings.

Same here.

And that's great Crafty
Our computer scientists had been using one note for two years - but the rest of us (nearly 100 teachers and 1400 students) hadn't. I'm not disputing that it's easy for one teacher to set up for their classes. But if you're trying to set it up for every child in every class, I imagine that's harder.
My teams from last year will be archived by Tuesday and the new Teams populated. Thankfully, our IT support department will do that all for us.

What were they doing from March to July?

All manner of different things, from what has been said on here. No standards or guidelines from the government, remember.

The new guidelines say that the school has to provide activities that will last as long as the school day would have which will really be a struggle for primary parents to manage. My DD was doing a couple of hours.

@CraftyGin how useful is Google classroom if your students don't have access to technology at home?

@canigooutyet

Google classroom is good if your pupils are over the age of 13. Even then parental consent is needed, same with other platforms.

Because of the Youtube link and things are hard to restrict, some parents/schools won't use it. Then of course there's the whole privacy and data sharing thing.

Things like Zoom and Skype a number of schools won't use them because of data, privacy and security breaches.

Due to the situation a lot of the above was overlooked because of what was going on. Don't forget in normal situation, staff wouldn't have been in contact at the level they were with their students.

Because of safeguarding all this will hopefully have been reviewed within individual schools.

It’s all part of GSuite for Education. If the are using Mail, Docs, Sheets etc, they are good to go for Classroom.

Opportunities not problems.

I'm confused.

Those saying it's easy set up, they did it themselves. Is this for sharing with students?

Things like CG, MS etc should always be set up by Tech support including all pupils accounts.

Depending on how these things are set up their could be potential problems for individual staff.

Just an aside, but our school won't use anything provided by Google because they insist on storing their data on US servers (unlike MS). Instant GDPR fail.

[quote ineedaholidaynow]@CraftyGin how useful is Google classroom if your students don't have access to technology at home?[/quote]
All of our students have their own school Chromebooks (for the last two academic years). The only home requirement is a WiFi connection, and we have not encountered a problem with that (other that “no WiFi” nudge-nudge wink-wink).

@canigooutyet ours is set up by our tech team. By default students cannot use the chat function and their cameras are turned off. Every team is monitored centrally. Staff can't set up teams either - that's done centrally too.

@noblegiraffe

What were they doing from March to July?

All manner of different things, from what has been said on here. No standards or guidelines from the government, remember.

The new guidelines say that the school has to provide activities that will last as long as the school day would have which will really be a struggle for primary parents to manage. My DD was doing a couple of hours.

Why do you worry (ASSume) so much about what other teachers/schools/families can manage? Just do the very best job you can do.

My DIL is a primary school senior teacher. She was inspired by what my school have been doing and persuaded her headteacher and SBM to implemented much of out model within their local context.