School allocation of resources

[VidaLocal]

I’m curious about what is happening generally in other schools. There are 4 teachers, 4 TAs & 2 SENs in DC’s year. (I’m using full time equivalents.)

When school closed last March, the children who went to school were given work to do but there was no teaching face to face.

This year, about 50% of DC’s year is at school during lockdown - keyworkers’ and vulnerable children.

I class as keyworker (new criteria) but usually WFH anyway in a very flexible job. I’m happy to have DC home, good kid (generally).

School sent me a timetable - 9 to 2 with loads of prerecorded videos, not ideal but not much we can do. Contact live time with a teacher between 2.30 and 3. I have access to a lot of educational resources so I don’t use school’s timetable. I also have flexibility to sit down and teach DC.

This time round, teaching is going ahead at school. All the staff (bar one) has been distributed across 2 rooms. The children actually have a higher staff ratio.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed. The teachers could have delivered live classes and are putting all their energy towards children attending school.

It doesn't matter what schools do, they are going to get an avalanche of complaints from many different parents with opposing points of view.

Other parents in your school are disappointed in exactly the opposite direction, I guarantee it

More staff are needed in school due to bubbles.
My year group has under 50% in, but due to adults not being allowed to go between bubbles we have to cover the day between 2 or 3 people. All lunch breaks, play times etc. Normally those times are covered by lsa's etc, but they can't be at the moment. Staff are having to have staggered and split lunches, there just aren't enough bodies in schools.
As for live streaming, depending on the demographic of the school, that can be fruitless. Many of our families are sharing 1 device between multiple children, have slow Internet connection. We have to provide to as many as we can. That means pre recorded is a better solution.
Most schools are trying their very best.

And please remember, many of the children in school are vulnerable and many schools are trying to get children in who are on the send register, or who require a higher level of support.

I know one school said no to live teaching because it was too much pressure on their families. People are working from home and can’t be expected to drop their meetings/work to facilitate their child doing a live lesson. Not all families have two or more laptops/iPad etc and some don’t have the bandwidth to have multiple people accessing live/zoom/etc
In the year group I know, children have a staff member in class who would usually do PPA cover, (it would look like those kids are having taught lessons but it’s the same work as those at home except more time needs to be filled so they are doing some cooking, or computer time etc but it isn’t “taught” like it would be usually - it’s gap filling), one class teacher is available for parents and children to contact 9-3, and the other class teacher is prepping and uploading, or printing out for those who need it. Driving around delivering packs of work.
Schools are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Trust your school to be doing what is bests for as many families as they can. They aren’t perfect, they can’t be.

DDs year has 3 (well technically 4 but two are a job share) teachers. A general HLTA. 4 TAs but they are all designated for set kids.

At the moment the 4 TAs are still dedicated to their set kids. Two teachers are doing the online / remote provision. The other teacher and HLTA are with the kids in school. The kids in and out receive the same provision. The only exception is the 4 ehcp kids with their TAs. My DD is still largely receiving her provision and differentiated curriculum etc but I would hope no parent resents that seeing as she is at least 2 years behind her peers and has complex sen. Without it the gap will just widen, she isn't gaining an advantage just receiving her standard support to try and make her progress. She also doesn't do the same learning as the other kids at the best of times anyway.

Live teaching is not better than pre recorded. Pre recorded gives children a chance to watch it as many times as needed and can be more flexible for those with parents working at hone.

I think though this is where bigger schools have a huge advantage. 3 form entry is vastly advantaged over 1 form at the moment. They have more staff to share the load.

Live teaching has safeguarding issues and many schools dont want the risk.

@Mumofsend My daughter is in a tiny prep school (Year 6) and they have live lessons over Teams from 8:35-16:00 following their usual school curriculum. It's the only time where I think the ridiculous fees I pay for the school actually paid off.

@MutantNinjaCovid Live teaching has safeguarding issues and many schools dont want the risk.

What are those risks? Genuine question

we did live streaming last time around, but to be honest, its an ineffective and inefficient use of resources. Setting work is better

We don’t want to end up as tik tok videos (has happened)
This has been done to death but live lessons only work if all children have access, some are sharing tech so that’s not always possible.
I’m teaching a mixture but have already had emails saying I’m not doing enough lives and also that I’m doing too many. We can’t win.

[quote XelaM]**@MutantNinjaCovid* Live teaching has safeguarding issues and many schools dont want the risk.*

What are those risks? Genuine question[/quote]
Inappropriate behaviour from a pupil or a parent if cameras are on during a session.
Drugs, porn, violent films visible in homes
Children and parents who are not appropriately dressed.
Parents videoing sessions including other pupils.

If recording/broadcasting from school then no pupils should be visible- that is quite hard to do if you are all teaching all the critical worker pupils and also have to manage the video as there is no-one else.

Teachers shouldn't record/broadcast from their own homes.

Pupils photographing or videoing teachers and posting online with different voice overs.

People in the background of pupils exposing themselves to the whole class.

The list goes on...

@MutantNinjaCovid

Live teaching has safeguarding issues and many schools dont want the risk.

our "unhackable" platform was hacked, and porn was streamed into a live lesson.

That is the worst

but apart from that, father wandering around naked when son accidently turned the camera on,

family member impersonating a child to get details of other children

bullying ( of students and staff)

illegal videoing and recording, editing to be misleading, taking words out of context, etc.

Class hearing domestic violence and animal cruelty

That's for starters.

Live lessons are basically involving every participant in a public broadcast, with no control over who sees it, who is participating, and how they behave

The children in school need to be spaced out, or there was no point in shutting to the rest. Most schools have reverted back to their June/July timetables which included social distancing. The children will need more adults to supervise as they're more spread out.

The teachers aren't giving all their attention to the children in school, which is demonstrated by the fact they're doing daily live sessions and sending out links to teaching videos and work associated with it. I can't vouch for how much time they're taking doing this, but to do it well involves watching said videos and considering what else the individuals they teach need to be able to move their learning on. In our school, we have to have a TA with the teacher as otherwise the teacher would have no break all day (covid affected lunch schedules) and would have to supervise those in school while on video lessons.

As said, I can't explain the decision making of this particular school, just giving some thoughts from a teacher's point of view. Every school has made different decisions in all of this. If you need to ask because it's negatively affecting your child and her learning, you'd have to ask her teacher or headteacher.

Maybe my daughter goes to an unusual school, but there has literally not been ANY issues with live lessons at her school. What kind of parents watch porn during the day in the same room as their kids? Or expose themselves? Also, I have never heard of any tiktok videos of teachers, but kids at my daughter's school a very well-behaved generally. Plus it's a primary school, so they are all still nice.

As for access, the school gave everyone from years 3-6 a school laptop to use at home.

Ours hasn't been as extreme as that but in day 1 of primary homeschool we had a parent screaming F words at her older son in the background of the call for the whole class to hear. Teacher did not appear able to/ know how to mute them. I muted my own DCs audio so he couldn't hear but that's because I was supervising him on my end. If I'd left him to it (as many people apparently do) he would have carried on ear wigging.

It was incredibly uncomfortable.
Not just the language but that window into that child's life that I did not have any right to see and did not want to see. It changes my perception of that family now. Imagine the gossiping and the embarrassment for that poor child.

Not worthwhile that experience for what we could have easily had on a video. Most DC were not answering qs only a very select few confident ones and plenty had dodgy connections that kept dropping out and those were the ones who could access it at all.

Not worthwhile for primary IMHO.