Schoolwork

[Jourdain11]

Interesting thing that came up the other day. My Primary teacher DH had a kid off school with a non-Covid illness and the mum asked for the lesson links and the home school material - which is obviously available in case of self-isolation. DH provided it but then wondered if he should have. He checked with the Head later and the school policy is not to - the Head said, if they are well enough to do the work at home, they are well enough to come to school, and feels they need to be wary of setting a precedent. In a way though, Covid has already set the precedent!

I think it is a really tricky one. On one hand, it would be super tough on teachers for this to become normal practice - that they have to provide full curriculum for any child who is off school at a moment's notice. But on the other hand, why does a child who is home with a positive Covid test get access to education while a child with a cold or chicken pox or whatever doesn't?

I think the head teacher has the right idea. When the need for self isolating is over, teachers shouldn’t be expected to provide work for children who are off school. If they’re off then they should be too ill to do any work other than a bit of reading, and if a parent really requires it, they can sort it out themselves.

I think schools need to move with the times. It's the 21st century, curriculums don't change that much. Even a few links to bitesize is better than nothing. I don't think we should be providing COVID-level resources indefinitely but I do think a system of sticking a few links up for kids that are off is more proactive than expecting them to catch up later. It's also a massive faff when they come back not knowing what's going on. So I'm all for giving them access to something they can use to keep up if they're well enough.

I think schools could move with the times if they were given funds and resources to do so. Many of these links/ websites have been created due to COVID, they won’t be around for ever . Schools face ever moving goal post , which in some ways is right we should always strive for better but what happens is no money is given and we are just putting more and more work and pressure on an overstretched system. I personally know 5 teachers leaving at Christmas , they just can’t take it anymore.

My kid's school uses an online system and is just putting daily work on there everyday - any child not in school for any reason can access this if they're well enough.

Dd's school (year 12) is letting them join lessons from home when self isolating. They keep their cameras off but can speak up. Having worked with lots of children with illnesses and disabilities who have to miss a lot I think either this or a proper national online school would be a great lasting legacy of this time.

I should say that I don't expect special additional work, but when they are recording lessons it helps her to listen along. She was listening in hospital because her disability frustrates her when she has to miss lessons.

I think in primary it is also difficult. Because each lesson, especially a lesson where a new topic or concept is introduced, will have a lot of verbal explanation and interactive activity. DH says it has been a pain to do! When the mother asked, he kind of didn't think twice, as the materials were already there. But then later, he thought, "hang on, is this supposed to happen?" Which was why he checked with the HT, who basically said, we can't have a situation where parents are expecting this any time their child is off for any reason. Which I get - it is a lot of extra work and not sustainable.

We’ve been told to keep our children at home even with minor cold symptoms, even ‘a sniffly nose’. I would be annoyed to keep them at home when I would normally have sent them (because they’re well enough for school) at the schools request, to then have no work provided.

At my school. we put the week's lessons, in every subject, on the school website. It is extremely time consuming and very few of the children who have been self isolating have actually bothered to do any of it. Complete waste of time.

@AlwaysBehindTheCurve

We’ve been told to keep our children at home even with minor cold symptoms, even ‘a sniffly nose’. I would be annoyed to keep them at home when I would normally have sent them (because they’re well enough for school) at the schools request, to then have no work provided.

Why do you think the HT is requesting your child stays home? It's for everyone's benefit. We had a year group close and the workload was huge for staff - answering emails, making phone calls etc. It's not a case of sending a few sheets of paper. Like the op DH HT, I'd be concerned about it becoming an expectation. It's not sustainable. Staff in schools (and many others jobs) are on their knees. This cannot become an expectation post COVID.

Why do you think the HT is requesting your child stays home? It's for everyone's benefit. We had a year group close and the workload was huge for staff - answering emails, making phone calls etc. It's not a case of sending a few sheets of paper. Like the op DH HT, I'd be concerned about it becoming an expectation. It's not sustainable. Staff in schools (and many others jobs) are on their knees. This cannot become an expectation post COVID

I know why they’ve asked us to keep them at home with a ‘sniffly nose’, because they told us. It’s because they’re trying to reduce the chance of the teachers having to self isolate over Christmas. They said that explicitly.
Which is fine, if mine get a sniffly nose I’ll keep them at home as requested.
Thankfully they’ve also said they will provide work to anyone who is off for any reason before Christmas. I said if they didn’t, I would be annoyed.

And actually, as they government advice is to continue to go to school if they don’t have the three major symptoms, as long as they are well enough, then I do think if they want us to go above and beyond that then work needs to be provided. And it is being, so all is well.

School staff are probably more likely to succumb to Covid as a result of extra work-induced exhaustion than because of a child's sniffly nose!

@Jourdain11

School staff are probably more likely to succumb to Covid as a result of extra work-induced exhaustion than because of a child's sniffly nose!

You’re probably right!

In my school, if a child is self isolating they can access some of the online apps which we have set up with their own login details, and that would cover the first day. If they test positive, the whole class plus associated staff have to isolate and in that instance the teacher will continue with the home learning we set up through the first lockdown.
A child who is off with a different illness would be able to access the remote learning but the teacher would not be able to do the online teaching as she / he would be in school teaching those children present.

Sending work home isn’t straightforward. It may be that in maths a new concept is going to be taught, just sending worksheets home isn’t great here.

@ScrapThatThen

Dd's school (year 12) is letting them join lessons from home when self isolating. They keep their cameras off but can speak up. Having worked with lots of children with illnesses and disabilities who have to miss a lot I think either this or a proper national online school would be a great lasting legacy of this time.

Proper national online school would be a better solution, as it could then have a separate dedicated staff who would have the specific responsibility for running it and providing the learning materials and online classes. It's too much to expect from classroom teachers as a general rule, unless staffing were to be expanded and the relevant teachers given more PPA time. Agreed that each school having a kind of online repository with learning materials would be a good thing - but even to do this in a meaningful way would require quite a chunk of teachers' time, unless there was a leadership position dedicated to collecting and collating materials from each year group and/or subject's teacher(s).

It took me about 8 hours to plan and prepare two weeks of home learning last month
It is linked to all topics we are currently doing so would be pointless to send it next term - we will have to plan an entire term’s between us for self isolating children again. That’s on top of all my normal planning and marking because they are different lessons to in school - we have to type up excerpts from our class novel etc. It has to be ready to go for children whatever point they go off self isolating.

There is absolutely no way this could be kept up beyond covid and obviously it’s specifically for children who are self isolating. You can’t just set a precedent that work will be sent home for other illnesses, it’s totally unsustainable. Happy to send a few worksheets or scan in some textbook pages but beyond that, no, unless it’s long term sick.

Parents who take kids away on holiday for 2 weeks and demand work to be set for them. Really bloody gets my goat. It is a lot of work - you have to set work they can do that is nit teacher led and spend time and dept money on photocopying. Nine times out of ten you never see it again - it's all for show to cover for themselves taking term time out.

@ScrapThatThen

Dd's school (year 12) is letting them join lessons from home when self isolating. They keep their cameras off but can speak up. Having worked with lots of children with illnesses and disabilities who have to miss a lot I think either this or a proper national online school would be a great lasting legacy of this time.

I’ve been doing this (and happy to do so) but please don’t assume it is the easy option. It is very stressful, takes a lot of time and the technology is very glitchy. I haven’t been able to get through an entire lesson as I would normally do it (because it takes so much time at the start and end and re-adding pupils mid way with WiFi issues for example). The children in the lesson have been very patient so far but it does impact them and their learning. I would struggle to do this long term.

@winechateauxjoy

Parents who take kids away on holiday for 2 weeks and demand work to be set for them. Really bloody gets my goat. It is a lot of work - you have to set work they can do that is nit teacher led and spend time and dept money on photocopying. Nine times out of ten you never see it again - it's all for show to cover for themselves taking term time out.

Do you set them work? We refuse to give any work for people going on holiday. Don't feel an ounce of guilt either - as you say, they rarely do it and if they're that worried about kids missing school, they could just not choose to take them out of school.

I am no longer in work - but yes we were instructed by management to set work. In one case it was a parent governor! If the parents say jump the HT asks how high!

Ditto those parents who contact management to complain that not enough homework is being set. Ton of bricks falls, set more work, never ever see the work returned. Such requests usually followed a behaviour incident in lessons - they are clearly bored and are not being stretched enough (!) so rather than accept that their child is not the angel they claim to be the parents counter with a demand for more 'stretch and challenge'.

Not once did management come back to me to check if the extension work was ever completed.Such a waste of my time.

If the work is already available to be sent home then I can't see why it shouldn't be, depending on why the child is off of course. 48 hours following D&V and my DC were usually fine and could easily have done school work, they just weren't allowed to be there. In bed with flu and sleeping a lot, they need rest.

I'm a maths teacher in FE. Some of my students are Week on / week off due to limited space. I've had to re-jig all of my lessons - powerpoints now need way more explanation on plus worked examples and answers.

One student is still shielding (not sure how necessary, only met him once and I teach 2 other students with the same medical condition he has listed on the system and they're coming in)

His Mum wants me to mark his answers (not work sheets, more like a screen of questions following each set of explanation slides) even though the answers are on the slides. I made and sent an accompanying Teams quiz which told me what he'd understood/ not.

She thinks I should remove the answers before sending him the ppt. I tried this for 1 week - he handed in 3 lessons worth of work. It took me an hour and 20 minutes to pick through his answers and I simply can't do it every week. She's livid!

For me, there is a big difference the difference if a whole class is self isolating because the teacher presumably is and can then be producing the material. Where a few are off, it must be a complete pain and I suspect the only time to produce the content would be of an evening. I don’t think that is a fair expectation to have permanently.