There will be so many illiterate kids after Covid.

[Elephant4]

If we lockdown again - and even if we don't.

So many kids are getting little to no education. It's been almost a year now and looks like it could last another one.

I'm not talking about my kids. I look after them and educate them after school and during lockdowns etc as best I can.

But there's so many kids round here who have little to no parental support. We live in a deprived area with high Covid rates. Barely any of the kids had any education during lockdown. In the last term bubbles, year groups, classes have been sent home constantly. Schools have been shut due to teacher shortages. When the kids are at school they're not being taught due to supply teachers - behaviour being awful - much worse than before.

The kids at Secondary level here were already underachieving. This pandemic's school closures etc will leave thousands all over the country illiterate - or otherwise very close to it - I reckon.

SilverBirchWithout Sadly I think it's a consequence of turning education into a business. With a populist government it's all about inaction and reaction. what we have is a big, confusing mess.

I'd rather have a generation of kids who need educational interventions than another 50 odd thousand dead over 60's.

As an aside, I'm a secondary teacher and there are already tons of kids with dreadfully low reading ages - maybe now the government will actually fund primaries properly so the problem can be effectively managed rather than brushed under the carpet.

[quote UndertheCedartree]@SilverBirchWithout - lots of schools round here struggle to fit in the DC they have let alone an additional reception year. The schools are 5 form entry so each school having to build 5 extra classrooms and recruit 5 extra teachers plus TAs - I'm really not sure how it would work.[/quote]
I do appreciate there would be huge issues. However the post-war baby boom caused huge issues right across the education system necessitating extra teachers, schools, and classrooms. I grew up during this time and can remember being taught in temporary classrooms and retired staff being paid additional salaries to come back into education.
We are talking about 1 year only, the additional reception intake could be phased over a longer period.
I’m not saying I have all the answers here - but I would like to see more radical solutions beImg considered and investigated. We cannot just let a whole generation of children pay the consequences, particularly those that will have been most disadvantaged.

My son is ASD and significantly dyslexics, wierdly all those hours of gaming (with some forced school work in there) massively improved his reading, all of that on screen reading without it being like "reading"

Will there? I could read before I started reception... literacy is not the issue.

[quote UndertheCedartree]@TheCrowsHaveEyes - it was your suggestion that all vulnerable DC were fine as there was all this support for them as if it was universal. It most certainly is not. I'm also not sure having relatives working in schools counts as experience tbh. I can't say my DC's school engaged with me accordingly. There wasn't all that much engagement. My DC were under Child in need. As I said my teen DC is still waiting for his laptop. The school said it was best for my DD to stay at home due to Covid - nothing to do with having 'engaged parents'.[/quote]
Vulnerable DCs aren't fine. What an odd statement to make! They're vulnerable for many different reasons and that's why there are multi-agency approaches to support them. Agencies which have been underfunded by the conservative policies that OP supports. But those agencies have been working bloody hard all through the pandemic and for all the years prior to the pandemic when the OP wasn't even thinking about literacy levels.

@SilverBirchWithout - I do agree with you about radical solutions. I think there's been large increases in DC in this area for a long time. I was at school in the 90s and it was common to get taught in portacabins. Many schools in the area have built so many new classrooms over the last 20 years they literally have a tiny outdoor space now! As I say not meaning to just put down your idea - just wondering how it could work round here.

@TheCrowsHaveEyes - not an odd statement atall - it was how you made me feel. I think your responses have been really invalidating of a vulnerable family's experience. You assuring me school had it all uner control...I find your attitude very patronising. Of course agencies work hard but they are underfunded which is why vulnerable families often don't get the support they need. I feel you are giving a very skewed view of the real situation. I'm assuming you aren't a vulnerable family yourself?

I think a lot of kids would understandbly not want to repeat a year. Lots of kids did well in lockdown , some excelled, unfortunately some didn't. We need to identify and target support where it is needed.
However, whilst people are demanding schools stay open for learning, mental health, etc. I don't hear the same people demand financial l support for schools, for these kids failing in our outdated education system. Schools, as a whole, are so underfunded but people don't care. We can blame governments but really, when we see the impact us for them has had, we now know parents have the power.
The reality though is we live in an I'm all right jack world. So as soon as the pandemic is over most will stop caring even though that 20% who leave functunally illiterate will still be doing the same thing. If you really do care, stand up, make a difference but don't say tgat 1 year disrupted education will ruin a child's life unless you will help make the change for the children society fails daily pandemic or not!

[quote UndertheCedartree]@TheCrowsHaveEyes - not an odd statement atall - it was how you made me feel. I think your responses have been really invalidating of a vulnerable family's experience. You assuring me school had it all uner control...I find your attitude very patronising. Of course agencies work hard but they are underfunded which is why vulnerable families often don't get the support they need. I feel you are giving a very skewed view of the real situation. I'm assuming you aren't a vulnerable family yourself?[/quote]
I'm sorry if you felt invalidated by experiences that differ from your own and I'm sorry that you feel your academy has failed you so spectacularly. Hopefully you'll be able to take some positives from the other posts detailing the support provided by schools. I won't reply to you again since you feel my responses aren't helpful to you but I will continue to argue with posters like the OP who think they can weaponise vulnerable families to push their anti-lockdown agenda.

Do you think that you will be able to get to grips with keeping tidy and cleaning, whilst living with another person, as this would have to be done in someone else's place, It's no use thinking it will just be a place to chill out and have some space. But you definitely need to be apart from your Mother now.

@TheCrowsHaveEyes - I didn't feel invalidated by experiences that weren't mine but by your seeming insistence that you knew more about my and other vulnerable families experiences that we do ourselves! I don't feel the academy has failed us spectacularly at all. The government are who has failed us. I have no problem with you debating about vulnerable families but please remember for you it is academic but for us it is real lived experience.

It isn't academic for me. But I resent having to wear a badge explaining who in my family is vulnerable and why before you will consider my opinion valid. Regardless of my personal experience, the information from HTs etc is factual even if it wasn't your experience. And I find it frustrating that you're trying to undermine those facts and hence furthering the agenda of an OP who doesn't give a stuff about vulnerable families or DCs or teachers; and doesn't have any experience in this field at all.

@TheCrowsHaveEyes - I may have missed it but your experience seems to be having some family members in teaching and knowing some vulnerable families. Nevertheless I had no problem with you sharing your experience - my issue was with the attitude that you knew better than I did about my own experience. I was a SW turned community nurse so I'm well aware of services available and of how underfunded our services and schools are but I would never assume to know more than a service user or patient about their lived experience.

I'm glad you agree the government has failed us. It's also the conservatives who are pushing the 'don't lockdown because of the impact on literacy' in the OP. The same conservatives who have underfunded dyslexia support, CAMHS, specialist settings and SENCOs. Now, they want to pretend they care about literacy levels for vulnerable children. I don't believe they do.
And the families who we talk to in support groups and HTs and teachers in specialist settings that we know - aren't fooled that the conservatives care about literacy levels in vulnerable children.
I'm grateful for the time and effort those families, teachers, social workers, HTs, educational psychologists, etc, are putting in to make the world better for vulnerable DCs and I'm grateful for the lobbying work they do.

@FatGirlShrinking

We had no work marked AT ALL! Approx 10 random worksheets put up on the public school website each week, no feedback, no answer sheets and a total of 1 phone call from the teacher throughout the whole lockdown period.

In fairness, during the first lockdown all staff in my secondary school were relocated to primary schools to support with the key worker childcare provision. I had to be at the primary school for 8am and left after 5pm, so my working day was actually longer. I had no access to a computer, as we were focused on the children.
At the end of the week, we also had to compile worksheets for the online learning needed for the next week.
We couldn’t be asked to monitor the online learning, phone home, or mark, as we were fully engaged with our reallocated roles. There wasn’t time.

This time we have been told that in the event of a lockdown only TA’s and support staff will look after key workers children and vulnerable learners. Teachers will be required to monitor their teams or Google classrooms throughout each lesson from home or school depending on the LA. We will be expected to mark every piece of work digitally and in a timely fashion and call home at least once a week. We can not be made to, but are encouraged to live teach our lessons, which I have opted to do, but must prerecord lessons as a bare minimum.

So hopefully children’s experiences in lockdown (if there is another lockdown), will be far more positive and teachers will be far more contactable and present next time around.

Where we differ is what experience we value most. I understand you think your lived experience is the most important perspective.

But I think the strength comes in joining the dots whether that's with other families or experts working in the field who can have an overview of the patterns and support structures that exist. That doesn't make me wrong. It's doesn't mean I'm invalidating you. It just means I have a different view on the most effective approach.

Come off it, if your children are of an age that the ability to read is what you are worried about then there is plenty of time. To be honest the biggest factor in literacy is practice, which is easy to do from home.

The biggest problem in their future is the lack of jobs, and the lack of jobs that are paid well. When DBML says TAs will be expected to takeover support of kids in schools, think about what that means for jobs: TAs are low paid and thought of as low skilled, yet they are taking over the roles of teachers. It's the same story in every sector of employment.

@TitsOot4Xmas

Given the state of SPAG on sites like this, I’m not sure that wasn’t inevitable. School can’t buck the tide of the home environment, and if parents genuinely think any of the below are correct they’re already swimming uphill through treacle (all seen on here today). And that’s before you get to a C grade GCSE apparently “not being a guarantee of literacy or numeracy”.

Thier
Could of
Should of
My kid’s love toy’s
Activitys
Chester draws
Wallah (voila)

You're not wrong. I work in a shop and one of the team, he's about 21, lovely lad left me a note. Most of it spelt completely wrong. I didn't tell him because i'm not a twat but this lad is training to be a teacher. I don't think it's being pedantic to expect an educator to be able to spell. Our children really are at a disadvantage now.

I would have replaced 'so many' by 'many more' if i had started this thread, and others have explained why.

I’m a teacher. There’s a real lack of faith in our ability to catch the children up when we’ve all been working hard for the last four months to do just that.

Some children struggled to settle into routine and concentrate again in September but I’ve caught them all up on what they missed now. Their levels are no different to what I would expect in a normal year.

No laptops or any sign of the catchup fund from the government yet. They don’t care. They’ve left us to get on with it.

A good friend of mine currently works with a little boy who has no mother tongue

MispyM I know an adult man that happened to. From what I gather his parents moved country with him as a small child and didn't have a great deal of time to spend talking to him.
He can talk broken English to me and broken Urdu to my colleague and together we can piece together what he needs from us.
He doesn't seem to have any learning difficulties but the lack of fluency in any single language is a real disability for him.