AIBU to think primary schools could do more to support pupils

[EnidMatilda]

A bit of inflammatory heading but I am keen to hear how your primary school is supporting your child's wellbeing and mental health.

I've just returned from maternity leave and I have a whole school responsibility of mental well being. I don't have a class at the moment so I have time on my hands put some things in place. I'm mostly working from home but I'm in school at points.

I'm particularly looking for ideas that increase social interation and 'fun' without adding additional burden on teachers' workload. If your child is particularly vulnerable in terms of anxiety or is very isolated, are the school doing anything additional to support you/them?

Would love to hear your successes so that I can help my own pupils. Feel very sad for some of them who are desperate to come back to school.

Many thanks.

My eldest is doing daily PSHE things such as how can I be helpful at home, how can I be a good friend whilst home schooling, what advice would I give to children who are struggling. It’s been nice to take 5 minutes to do that. They’re having twice weekly video assembly’s too with some learning on things such as values. PE has been varied with mindfulness walks, yoga, basketball lessons by video and PE with Joe but yoga has been well received here for relaxing them.

Mine get a 15 min session as a class (small numbers) with their main teacher first and last thing every day. It's a chance for them to chat about the day etc. Regular pshe, some quizzes etc but most of all a real emphasis on doing what you can and being proud of it. My dd isn't keen on live lessons and prefers to just get on with it. She's not pressured to join.

That's helpful. Thank you. We are moving to a 20min live session every morning from next week but I know that some kids won't be keen. Hope it will support the majority.

I don't think there is much that schools can do at the moment to be honest. Yes regular check in time is good, but the loudest kids just dominate. My eldest daughter can't get a word in and feels deflated afterwards, worse even!
A 1.1 call from the teacher every week worked better in lockdown v1 but it isn't happening now as not enough time due to online stuff.
I will message the teacher next week once I have seen how she is a bit more to request a call if necessary.
She is also missing her friends / playtime. They can call and FaceTime but it's not the same.
I would focus on how to increase the chance for every child to be able to express how they feel or have a way to contact the teacher.
Also there is a real "them and us" divide forming between those in school and those stuck at home. Yes those in are all doing the same learning pack but they still do fun stuff as a group in the afternoons. So when school reopens, those excluded must be able to feel part of the group again.
School says things like "make sure you get out for a walk" etc but when I'm working full time it's hard to fit it all in, I'm already massively behind after setting them up (y3 and y6) and being constantly interrupted.
Basically it's just shit!

Oh and I should add that it's great that you're concerned about teachers workload and totally support that but those parents who are both working but not key workers are really struggling.
So a focus on independent working and having the tasks set in a way that parents can still do some of their work during the day instead of late into the night will help their workload/wellbeing which in turn will help the children's well-being as their parents will be calmer.
I would focus on resilience and having as much independent work as possible.

My DDs school do stormbreak which is fab.

She has lots of individual provisions on her ehcp for anxiety

Yes regular check in time is good, but the loudest kids just dominate. My eldest daughter can't get a word in and feels deflated afterwards, worse even!

We are having this issue too. My DS(6) can't get a word in and ended up crying today because he just gets drowned out. A whole class free for all only favours the confident children.

A Teams call can be set up in a way so that only the teacher can unmute people. It's harder with a large group but if it's a class of 30, maybe the teacher could do groups of six per call for 10 mins each, spaced over two days so they all get 2x a call per week in small controlled groups and the teacher really is vigilant about participation. It's hard but can be done. Just like in class we have to manage it, it's possible here too if you set it up right.

@TheYearOfSmallThings

Yes regular check in time is good, but the loudest kids just dominate. My eldest daughter can't get a word in and feels deflated afterwards, worse even!

We are having this issue too. My DS(6) can't get a word in and ended up crying today because he just gets drowned out. A whole class free for all only favours the confident children.

Same.

Granddaughter puts hand up to speak and is never chosen because of others who turn on the microphone and shout out. She sits politely waiting to be invited to speak whilst others dominate the session.

She's the youngest in her reception/yr1 class and the worksheets offered are definitely yr1 oriented and far above her level. The work is certainly not differentiated.

She missed a lot of school nursery last academic year - I don't think she actually had a full weeks attendance due to repeatedly catching every bug going. Then it was lockdown in March and she didn't go back due to mum being pregnant and scared of being exposed to the virus. (Mum caught the virus end of October and gave birth 7 wks prematurely due to corona because school insisted daughter went back in September.)

She's literally had half a term since September. Then had three weeks off at half term because her bubble was closed. Now this lockdown. I fear she's so far behind that she'll never catch up.

What would you do for children like her?

She's refusing all school work now and has avoided input into this week's virtual class sessions.

It's not going to end well.

Really interesting points. Can totally imagine the situation where the loudest kids dominate lives.

I'm attempting 1-1 weekly calls for some pupils. Are these always well received?

Really feel for working parents. It must be so tough. We've had a flood of complaints. Never had so many. It's very difficult to please everyone. There are no easy solutions. Will definitely take on board the comments about encouraging independence and setting tasks that are able to be completed without parent input (although this ranges from pupil to pupil)

@fairyannie sounds awful!! Poor girl. I would take the pressure right off and focus on the basics. Shared reading, practical maths activities and counting, tricky word spellings, lots of physical play. Have the school put on phonic videos?

We are struggling to engage children that don't want to complete work. V challenging. We have set up some individual platforms for lower ability children who need a different / catch up curriculum.

I'm a youth worker but also have a child in infants at the moment. Some things you could do to help which I am doing in my youth groups but could be adapted

Run zoom calls for calls or year groups. A safe, supervised place where children can interact (even if it's only zoom) will help children connect with others.

Mindfulness challenges/ worksheets etc. This is not touched on at all through all of primary. Getting kids to find things that help them relax. Guided meditation or yoga. There are tons of worksheets on places like twinkl that I use to start to get kids of all ages thinking about what helps them.

Worksheets focusing on me, feelings, family etc you could make a video going through the worksheet for example when talking about anxiety- explaining what some people think and feel when they feel anxious then the children could complete the worksheet about what they think/feel. Etc. Maybe a daily mood colouring sheet (each day colour the colour associated with how they are feeling)

I hope that's ok and not too much work. But you could do all the work and get teachers to post it.

@lpchill thank you, that's helpful. Yes that is my intention. I am quite keen to put together a bank of resources to share with teachers. Might tackle that tomorrow. If anyone else has any recommendations of sheets/ tasks / websites that support mindfulness/relaxation/dealing with anxiety, that would be very helpful. Thanks.

Would parents prefer lessons that we would normally put on in class e.g. quite a lot of work that is age appropriate and challenging. Or would they prefer shorter lessons that have less work involved (age appropriate but maybe more achievable revision topics)?

Fairyannie: our teacher can only see nine children at a time on the screen so it could be that the teacher can’t see your granddaughter with her hand up. Ours puts everyone on mute, names children with hands up and asks us to unmute our child and interrupt if our child with a hand up hasn’t been asked to speak once the other children have had their say - because it means they aren’t one of the nine that she can see.

I’d say this is really a parental responsibility. If you really want to help, don’t give so many children keyworker places when their parents don’t really need them, so that those of us at home aren’t left with kids who feel they’re in the minority and excluded because they’re not in school. That’s been the worst thing mental health-wise for mine, seeing their friends having a great time at school and I’ve done the right thing by working from home as a keyworker and my children feel punished/left out.

My dd suffered from anxiety all the way through her education and she got fuck all in the way of support from her schools.

So yes, there is a lot more that schools could do to support pupils with anxiety or low self-esteem. But perhaps it might be rather difficult to implement additional procedures at the present time.

Our school don’t do the live lessons which I’m pleased about as they wouldn’t be able to join a lot of the time due to meetings for work. They’re doing pre-recorded videos that the children can add a voice response on if they wish or write a comment.

@silverstarfish

Fairyannie: our teacher can only see nine children at a time on the screen so it could be that the teacher can’t see your granddaughter with her hand up. Ours puts everyone on mute, names children with hands up and asks us to unmute our child and interrupt if our child with a hand up hasn’t been asked to speak once the other children have had their say - because it means they aren’t one of the nine that she can see.

My daughter contacted the teacher by email (parents told not to ring school) and explained what was happening.

There are only eight children in the class not attending. These virtual sessions with the teacher are less than 10 min. The worksheets emailed are far beyond her understanding. My granddaughter is in reception year although she's in a reception/y1 class. She's a late summer baby and the youngest in class. She was told to rewrite sentences and add capital letters and punctuation. She can't produce a simple sentence yet, let alone read a grammatically incorrect sentence and rewrite it with capitals and full stops.

Her teacher's response?

She's cleverer than she's letting on.

Alrighty - you come and stop her crying when she's having the work explained to her and she knows she can't complete it independently.

Getting a child to copy what a parent has written on to the appropriate place on a worksheet with tiny print just isn't teaching or learning.

My Y4 would love some contact from her teacher - something just like 20 mins of a story being read once a week? An assembley or circle time type thing? My Reception child doesn’t care. My Y8 is having a tutor time once a week where they play Bingo & do quizzes.

@weaselish @WinstonmissesXmas , interested to see your remark about children feeling excluded. This is definitely the case for mine this time round - there was an element of it last time but there are far higher numbers in this time. DC4 (aged 5) was really upset to see both his best friends in school helping to explain the class challenges this morning.

I would like to see schools reduce the way they pathologise students and give them a label and see them as needing fixing.

I'd quite like that understanding that responses to abnormal situations are normal.

@weaselish

Oh and I should add that it's great that you're concerned about teachers workload and totally support that but those parents who are both working but not key workers are really struggling. So a focus on independent working and having the tasks set in a way that parents can still do some of their work during the day instead of late into the night will help their workload/wellbeing which in turn will help the children's well-being as their parents will be calmer. I would focus on resilience and having as much independent work as possible.

This.

I'm particularly looking for ideas that increase social interation and 'fun' without adding additional burden on teachers' workload.

I'm another one who thinks the main problem for some children is the parent's workload. (I fully appreciate the teachers have their work cut out too, with many of them parents and in exactly the same boat).

Mine are doing nothing. At all. I'm a single parent with a full time job that requires concentration. They have more than enough fun / social interaction via facetime with friends.

What they don't have is set work that they can actually get on with themselves.

I had a look at my youngest's sheet before commenting just to show you what we're getting...

Literacy - Can you read the words from the list of sh and ch words and sort them into groups?

Well... considering she is still learning phonics and has so far only mastered SATP... no she can't. At least not without my full time attention, which I can't give her until 6pm... at which point we're all exhausted and stressed and it's time for dinner and baths and chilling.

Add to that the current mental health crisis going on and I'd give my left arm for the chance of my girls just repeating the school year instead of all this pressure. I'm at breaking point.

@TheYearOfSmallThings

Yes regular check in time is good, but the loudest kids just dominate. My eldest daughter can't get a word in and feels deflated afterwards, worse even!

We are having this issue too. My DS(6) can't get a word in and ended up crying today because he just gets drowned out. A whole class free for all only favours the confident children.

Can teacher not just mute them all and let them talk individually, thats what our teacher does?