Private school & MC kids are going to be away ahead at the end of this pandemic

[Norfolker]

Just that.... I know from my neighbours that the local private has a brilliant set up online. They had sent revision work to be completed over Christmas, most of the kids I know at the private have a sahp... The local outstanding primary near us was also the same with the same type of mc parents as in the private.
Aibvu to suggest kids who don't have that support are the ones who will fall behind or underachieve in the years to come.
My neighbour in the local outstanding comp has said she spent a fortune buying workbooks on amazon to supplement the online provision! I ordered some yesterday but the thought hadn't crossed my mind before talking to my neighbour...

You can buy all workbooks in the world, but making these kids actually do the work is another matter. Lots of kids are already behind and don’t care about learning, why would they suddenly want to do workbooks at home?

Yet the teachers unions who profess to care about the underprivileged want the schools to shut.
Or is it less about caring for the kids and more about getting back at the government?

@HibernatingTill2030

It's a shame that there isn't some kind of campaign to buy workbooks etc for children whose parents can't afford them. I would gladly buy a couple from a school Amazon Wishlist for them to distribute to kids who would benefit.

It is a disgrace the government don't support low income households properly so that educational resources are provided.

@Fairyliz

Yet the teachers unions who profess to care about the underprivileged want the schools to shut. Or is it less about caring for the kids and more about getting back at the government?

Some people understand nothing.

How does spreading covid through schools help anyone?

@Pumpkinlatte201

I have a question for people blaming conservatives- what would a labour government do to improve this situation? Teachers unions are as left wing as they come, and they are pressuring this government to close schools. So what would happen if we had a Labour government in charge?

A Labour government and the unions would have got together in about April 2020 and made a decent plan.

@fairyliz unions are there to protect workers rights for christ sake and good because we seem to be in this endless race to the bottom on work conditions

They are doing this because they feel its not safe for their workers to go back

There may be a small element of political point scoring but its predominantly about protecting workers rights which includes working in a safe environment

This has always been the case. It’s simply being exaggerated now. Educated parents who spend time on their children and buy books and provide trips to museums etc have always raised children who do better at school.
There have always also been parents of a lower educational or financial backgrounds who give their children the same great start by making sure they spend time reading with their children and encouraging a value of education.
It’s an attitude of Chios img to raise your kids valuing their education and working hard. My parents had very little but we didn’t drop behind. I’m a teacher now and I see this played out time and again.

[quote Maldives2006]@Seriouslymole

Do you really think that kid who did no work from March to September is going to become a brain surgeon.

There are a subsection of parents who don’t care and don’t value education and it wouldn’t have made a jot of difference where they had been in school or not. I’ve had parents who’ve told me their child at the 11 isn’t academic and they can’t see the point of working with their child.

The hysteria around children’s life chances needs to end. The majority of parents managed to home school quite successfully last time and will manage again for the relatively short period required.[/quote]
Sadly people don’t want to believe that parental engagement is one of the biggest indicators of success.
One of the state schools I taught at, I got a mouthful of abuse for letting a parent know their child hadn’t submitted any homework that term. Private school, I emailed a parent to say a piece of coursework wasn’t submitted and it was on my desk half an hour later.

Read with your children encourage them to have interests outside of computer games and drive them to explore them. It doesn’t need to be expensive. A friends DS (8 year old) has found he loves mythology, so they sit and read together.

What kind of plan? Why unions are concentrating on sticking up two fingers to Boris instead of rolling out that “plan”? Hint - throwing money at children that are not motivated to learn won’t change anything.

YABU mine go to a bog standard poor school and I've made sure they have studied and completed every piece of work schools given to them. Some parents just can't be bothered. As a key worker one of mine went to 'corona school' as we call it for a few weeks last lockdown. He did basically no work there so I'd rather he be home doing it.

I assume that the NEU has taken the effect of school closures on children and the attainment gap into account before issuing this sort of advice to its members

That’s not their job. Their job is to say ‘the scientific advice is that schools aren’t safe therefore we are advising our members not to teach full classes until measures are taken to make them safe, under health and safety legislation, section 44.’

The people that are letting children down here are the government. If they had put any funding at all into making schools safer, followed the science, the WHO safer schools guidance, then section 44 wouldn’t apply and teachers would be in school teaching.

If you want teachers teaching in school, you need to lobby the government to make schools safer. That’s where we’re at.

This has always been the case.
There are so many resources out there for kids for free, schools could provide all the resources in the world, have the best teachers and insist on daily attendance and that still won’t make as much of an impact as engaged parents encouraging their dcs to learn.

And there are various charities that support low income families with educational costs like books, uniforms, laptops etc. Local CAB can apply for you.

@Pumpkinlatte201

What kind of plan? Why unions are concentrating on sticking up two fingers to Boris instead of rolling out that “plan”? Hint - throwing money at children that are not motivated to learn won’t change anything.

Look if you're anti-union there's really no point trying to discuss.

What you're saying is a load of old poppycock as my granny would have said .

It is a disgrace the government don't support low income households properly so that educational resources are provided

Yes, lots of things the government do are a disgrace.

Yes, parental engagement has the biggest influence on a child's outcome. So we need to worry about the children who are being let down by their parents! Not say "nah it doesn't affect me, my kids will be ok".

So this is your answer? I am genuinely interested, what could be possibly done? What kind of plan would work? My granny would say you are talking bollocks, but that’s grannies for you..

@Chicchicchicchiclana

Yes, parental engagement has the biggest influence on a child's outcome. So we need to worry about the children who are being let down by their parents! Not say "nah it doesn't affect me, my kids will be ok".

What can we do about this? It’s so difficult to counteract parental influence and impact.

@Seriouslymole

How do you know how much I value education?

My children go to their local bog standard state schools, I have volunteered at the schools and we listen to my kids read every night, make sure they do their homework, respect their teachers and have aspirations.

I’m also aware of the wide ranging social care cuts, benefit cuts, poor technical skills education, the lack of decent social housing, library closures and how expensive extra curricular activities are out of reach for a lot of families.

A teacher talking about algebra when a child hasn’t eaten or slept properly because of the cold and poverty isn’t going to improve their life chances.

Parental influence if the biggest factor in academic success, but the very children whose parents abdicate responsibility are the ones who have always had worse outcomes and that won't get any better.

Children below public exam age don't learn much from worksheets and workbooks, so no reason parents shouldn't be at home working with their children if they are furloughed. Plenty of low paid jobs are furloughed, from retail and hospitality. Those parents can have more involvement than when their children are at school. Its not as simple as class. Its about not waiting for schools to provide but for parents to take responsibility if they want their children to learn.
Far more likely to learn about Roman history through making shields, dressing up, walking along a Roman road and cooking Roman foods than any worksheet.
Far more likely to improve their maths by doing weekly food shop within a budget or by making models that require measuring.

I think people need to move away from the idea that worksheets are learning.

@MangoFeverDream

If you’re trying to compare 4 months of expecting parents to home Ed to anything WW2 or American segregation you need to look at a history book. It’s deeply insulting to those people that lived through that time.

I have one dc at state schools and one at private school. I am not a stay at home mum.
I was in the same situation and many others apart from DC2 never went back to school this entire time.

Both kids were set work / and had an online platform for work to be uploaded and etc
Both had some zoom sessions.

@EmmanuelleMakro

I agree which is why I as a secondary teacher want schools to stay open as the risk to children from Covid is too small to be measurable and the risk to teachers is also vanishingly small and massively outweighed by the risk to children of inequality in education. At the very least we need to ensure that schools provide detailed data on provision for the data thru are closed and that this is transparent and visible to parents/Ofsted/researchers. ( Ihave started a thread on this in the CB section and am going to be lobbying for this with my MP etc.

Goodness me the majority of teachers on here would be outraged at your post!

Children in schools in middle class areas and independent schools have always in general terms done better.

Aspiration in such families if generally higher (note I say generally) and such families both support schools but also provide broader educational opportunities too. It is nothing new.

Schools have never created a level playing field and every year, children sit GCSEs and A Levels having had very different opportunities in preparing them. Some have had stable teaching in small classes, from highly qualified teachers for the full course. They have had lots of text books and resources and very well targeted teaching. They have had a home situation where they have a desk and IT equipment and a quiet working environment and parents who can help if they get stuck or access help from somewhere else.
Others sit their GCSEs having had 4 or 5 different teachers across the course and at least 3 of them weren’t qualified in the subject they were covering. The class was large and rowdy and the recourse seemed available weee limited. At home, there might not have been a quiet place to study or much encouragement to do so from home.

Covid does highlight a number of these issues and makes some of them worse, but they were there in a very real way before. The idea that differences in exam results are down to Covid or the imapact of Covid is to not recognise the reality of the situation which has always been there. The idea that the algorithm last year was what resulted in lots of children not achieving their predicted grades in less advanataged areas is just daft....less than 20% of students ever achieve their ucas predicted grades anyway and the vast majority underachieve in relation to them.

Absolutely, children from less affluent backgrounds are more likely to struggle by not being in school and to access the remote learning that is provided, in the same way they struggle to access equal educational opportunities when schools are open. Some parents lack the ability or the motivation to help them or direct them towards home learning....and the role of parents does become bigger.

That said, less affluent areas are more likely to suffer Covid and its impacts too. It is often the less affluent area schools which have had to keep sending children home and who have seen the higher infection and death rates. If being in school boosts transmission, it will be these areas where it is boosted. Essentially, poverty means people are hit in every area of life. It is terrible. And keeping schools open for a further week or two or four really won’t make much difference. Sounds defeatist, but it’s true and especially when the educational gains are weighed a gain at the downsides of diseases spreading even more, it really seems to have very little positive.

Goodness me the majority of teachers on here would be outraged at your post!

Not really. It just shows teachers are not one big homogeneous mass. We all have different opinions and experiences because we are all different and schools are all different.
Just like it’s okay for you to change your mind about if schools are not safe, teachers shouldn’t go in.