How to get my kids' school to do online lessons?

[MrsGreene]

I have two children in the local secondary school, one in Year 9 and the other in Year 10. Their year groups were told to home learn last week, owing to problems with cleaning the school. Previously, the pupils received no online teaching whatsoever from end of March until end of August, with the headteacher saying teaching unions would not allow it, and maintaining that position last week.The end result is about 30 sets of worksheets and power points piled up on the home/ school work app, with both refusing to engage with a lot of it, or saying they find it too difficult. Half term is becoming a battleground over the refusal of my youngest to do much, and even when she does, some of the passwords for the various platforms don't work.
I am a teacher in a neighbouring school: we delivered live lessons online, right the way through the last lockdown, so I am naturally a bit cynical about my children's school's flat refusal to deliver any live lessons. I have contacted my children's school to ask why, but to no avail. Now I see that the links to teacher's emails have been removed from their school website, so there is literally no way for parents to get in touch with class teachers, no contact from teachers when home learning or isolating, other than death by worksheets, and very little forthcoming from the school.
So, to sum up, I am very worried about my kids' mental health and lack of engagement and education. Wondering if the next step would be to e-mail my concerns to the local MP or even Ofsted, but don't want to create a witchunt against the actual class teachers themselves since they don't make these kind of policy decisions, and also because if my children's GCSEs do eventually base themselves on teacher assessment, they are going to need goodwill, not a reputation for being the offspring of an awkward parent. How to get the school to change its home learning policies? Has anyone else experienced similar problems with secondary schools and remote learning?

Now the 22nd October has passed, they are legally required to have a remote learning plan which doesn’t disadvantage children who aren’t in school. Ask them to see it and that should tell you the plan

Remote learning of equivalent length of time as if in school. Not necessarily online though that is heavily encouraged.

Remember not all children can access live streamed lessons due to lack of sufficient devices in a household, lack of bandwidth. PowerPoints can be accessed as convenient for home situation. Maybe the school feels this is more appropriate for their pupils.

It could also be that this form of provision has been settled on as it can be put on learning platform by anyone vaguely competent or even a poorly teacher whereas staff illness/absence due to self isolation could scupper live streaming plans. And maybe those teachers feel they cannot effectively deliver good lessons in class and online at same time.

I would talk to the school to see what their plans for engagement and feedback are eg individual timeslots to Google Meet or even chat live via Google Classroom. This is the key here, rather than just demanding live streamed lessons.

In the meantime, carrot and stick with the set learning and reminders that it's not optional this time, teachers WILL want to see it and there will be consequences (good or bad) to their chosen actions.