To ask how you would feel if the decision was made to adopt blended learning to allow for social distancing in schools

[livevomitlaugh]

just that really?
Yabu- I would be fine with that
Yanbu- I very much wouldn’t be fine with that

As I said I think there should be a level of discretion and yes on the Wednesday

No. In the same way you can't generalise across all ages within school, you can't generalise all children within a year, different kids need different learning support for different reasons and for many homeschooling just didn't work.

We as a family should in theory have been able to manage, both parents with two degrees, flexible jobs WFH, though full time with no furlough, but DS with Sen (no echp) struggles massively to work outside of the school setting. School work got set but actual support from school was minimal, if we went back to some blend we could probably write off half his GCSEs right now (Y10). If I could be convinced that his quality of learning, with our support, could be vaguely the same as at school I might think differently but when it comes down to it, DH and I aren't specialist secondary school teachers!

I suggest you do a bit of quick maths on how long it would take just to record a week's worth of pre-recorded lessons, let alone plan them, then look up how long 'a day' is, and then realise why you're being ridiculous.

@Hardbackwriter

I suggest you do a bit of quick maths on how long it would take just to record a week's worth of pre-recorded lessons, let alone plan them, then look up how long 'a day' is, and then realise why you're being ridiculous.

Yep

In terms of motivation I think many of the kids (secondary) who wouldn’t engage with home learning are the same kids who wouldn’t engage in school

Two points to that:

1. Are you suggesting we just fuck them off then?

And 2. No, you're wrong.

Our school is set up via teams to do distance learning. Kids just log on to the normal school lesson. It could easily be done in a rota.

Well the current government guidance states that Homelearning must involve teaching and be available in 24 hours. On way around this is to do half virtual and half in person lessons and use the same PowerPoints and resources as would have been used in normal lessons this is possible using teams. Teachers could also voice over existing PowerPoints to save time

@crankysaurus

In terms of motivation I think many of the kids (secondary) who wouldn’t engage with home learning are the same kids who wouldn’t engage in school

Two points to that:

1. Are you suggesting we just fuck them off then?

And 2. No, you're wrong.

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink at the end of the day if a child doesn’t want to work then no one can help them regardless of if they are in school or not it is unreasonable to expect schools to get good results from a child who isn’t prepared to work

I would not support this at all. We work full time and it would simply be unmanageable. We have failed our kids so badly. They need to be properly taught in school and parents who work need to be working. Not sitting at home trying desperately to make it all happen.

Sounds like you've got it all worked out OP. Did you have to homeschool primary aged kids in the first lockdown?

I have to say, I find it quite astonishing that some teachers are so pro- home/remote learning and enthusiastically telling us about how our kids can be acceptably educated by pre-recorded powerpoint lessons (basically, Oak Academy, no?). It just smacks to me of an industry who has always felt extremely protected from redundancy/streamlining measures that the rest of us in the corporate world have faced as a reality over the years.

If the nations kids are to be educated in this way, then surely we only need one set of lessons for each subject/year group that everyone studying that subject/doing that year 'tunes' into; and then we dont need anywhere near the number of teachers we have right now for 'live' help?

So I would be really careful what you wish for! Especially given we have a government who absolutely do not give a shit about people and could see this as an easy cost cutting exercise.

And as above how on earth would teachers manage this? They presumably cannot teach face to face and remotely at the same time.

@crankysaurus

In terms of motivation I think many of the kids (secondary) who wouldn’t engage with home learning are the same kids who wouldn’t engage in school

Two points to that:

1. Are you suggesting we just fuck them off then?

And 2. No, you're wrong.

Exactly. The amount of people so keen to remove education from dc is ridiculous atm.

@loulouljh

And as above how on earth would teachers manage this? They presumably cannot teach face to face and remotely at the same time.

Yes it is possible you teach to a class but also keeping the people at home engaged by screen sharing and being sat at your desk in front of a webcam while screen sharing the PowerPoint

You ever thought of going into teaching, OP? You obviously understand all about it?

Mist of high schools round here have given parents choice for kids to stay home and learn if that's what they want to do. Same with few primarys

@Royalgiraffe

Sounds like you've got it all worked out OP. Did you have to homeschool primary aged kids in the first lockdown?

I have to say, I find it quite astonishing that some teachers are so pro- home/remote learning and enthusiastically telling us about how our kids can be acceptably educated by pre-recorded powerpoint lessons (basically, Oak Academy, no?). It just smacks to me of an industry who has always felt extremely protected from redundancy/streamlining measures that the rest of us in the corporate world have faced as a reality over the years.

If the nations kids are to be educated in this way, then surely we only need one set of lessons for each subject/year group that everyone studying that subject/doing that year 'tunes' into; and then we dont need anywhere near the number of teachers we have right now for 'live' help?

So I would be really careful what you wish for! Especially given we have a government who absolutely do not give a shit about people and could see this as an easy cost cutting exercise.

Yes this was my thought too - if face to face teaching is apparently so dispensable, might this not trigger some unfortunate ideas in the ranks of this abysmal, cost cutting at all costs government?

Also OP are you a teacher? I am not, though do have several teachers in my family. Even I can see how much work blended learning would be for teachers.

I don't think that the children get much of an education if they did that. It would be better if there was more testing of schoolchildren, regardless of symptoms. If they tried that and it still didn't work then they should perhaps consider the blended learning but I think it should be the last resort.

Looking at the bigger picture blended learning sounds great in theory.

Then work out how teachers manage their own kids.
Teacher is in school full-time
Kids in school part-time.

Where are the kids the other half of their part-time? A keyworker hub being babysat maybe with a bunch of other random kids from other schools.

Where do you get the babysitters from?
Last time they used teachers. Who are now busy in class, as well as prepping online stuff.

The babysitters will not be able to provide 1:2:1 help for each child, so how do those kids learn?

How do you manage SD with those groups of kids?

The more you look at it the more you realise that actually you need a teacher to make it work. So actually the kids are better off in school.

Even for High School 11 is young to leave kids home alone all day. Someone one here was slated for leaving a 9yo for 15mins. Yet others think 11 is fine to be home for hours.

As a teacher in a deprived, inner city primary, no. We have class bubbles, it's hard work and stressful and so much more than my normal job, but the children I teach are already behind and I don't want them to fall any further back. We've been fortunate to only miss 8 days as a class and the majority of my children haven't had to isolate aside from that. And when the class were at home, and myself and my colleague were providing online learning via teams, we had a third of the class accessing it. We called parents and they either didn't pick up, didn't speak English or didn't have the devices or Internet access for online learning. My class need to be in school and therefore I will be too.

Some opening windows and families who follow guidance would be nice though.

But the non motivated students would be the ones you would prioritise, like key workers and AEN. They could attend school, whilst more motivated wfh.

Yes it is possible you teach to a class but also keeping the people at home engaged by screen sharing and being sat at your desk in front of a webcam while screen sharing the PowerPoint

The university I work for spend over £1m equipping rooms for 'dual delivery' and it was still so shit for students that it was mostly dropped as quickly as possible.

You also appear to think that school teaching is done by the teacher just sitting at the front talking for an hour?

Meanwhile our school has had zero cases of covid all term, despite being massive, and having a huge proportion of parents who are key workers and therefore exposed. So the policies they have in place are clearly effective.

Same here. Four DC across four schools and none of the four have had a single bubble closure, its been a combination of luck and good policies. One of the schools has had a positive case but it was over half term so no one from school had been in contact with that child.

I can’t get my head around this, and was surprised the teaching unions were pushing for it.

Let’s put aside the workload issue for teachers (it’s NOT as simple as just screensharing a PowerPoint and turning on your webcam, as lessons are not lectures - I found planning and resourcing and marking home learning took MORE time than regular teaching, which presumably I’d have to do too). I don’t understand how we would staff it. Presumably the idea of doing it would be to spread one class out across 2 classrooms. So you need twice the members of staff. We don’t have that at my school - we don’t have a TA per class. So who supervises the half of the class who are in a different room?

That’s before you get in to kids/teachers not having good internet access (not necessarily just due to finances - one of our teachers lives in a village and her live lessons from home have been a nightmare as her connection isn’t very good) or that some children won’t engage, or all the childcare issues.

OP, you seem to be suggesting kids are in school for 40% of the week. My class currently have had over 30% of the school year in school already, we don’t need to do many more weeks after Christmas and they’ll have been in for more days already than your part time plan would allow for over the whole year. We are primary though, and I accept that secondary schools are being hit harder by cases and isolations.

@livevomitlaugh

Possibly they could provide key worker provision full time

I would be fine with blended learning (even if both DH and I work) as long as it is for everybody.

The keyworker thing though I disagree with, it made sense during lockdown, but now we are all supposed to go to work keyworker or not so it doesn't make sense to have some people loose out of a day salary / have to handle homeschooling while working and for others to be able to send them children to school. Childcare is open, that wasn't the case during lockdown either.

Also, if KW children can be there all time it means less time at school for the other children, again not fair.

They will still have the same numbers in the classrooms though and won’t make any difference. If they split the classes it will require more staff for that lesson as the other half of the year group wouldn’t be doing the same lessons at that time anyway.

Even when there were only 3 pupils left in my sons class they forced them to stick to their seating plan and not spread out.