Home schooling - bit of a disaster

[Foncusion]

Child is last year primary. Provision for remote learning is patchy at best. They seem to just get set a ton of work and have to work out themselves what needs to be done. There are two chaotic calls a day which are short and the same loud kids get their voices heard and the quiet ones get no chance. Teacher is often busy so can’t clarify after the call. It feels as though we are sitting doing homework all day with no live lessons. Also work isn’t marked and there’s no feedback. Is anyone else in primary getting live lessons? My older kids are and it works much much better. My primary child gets really stressed at having work set in bulk like this with hardly any interaction. It’s so hard too when both parents are working to suddenly have to stop to help him build an Egyptian pyramid or create a functional volcano out of plastic bottles, with no prior warning. There’s no interaction, it’s so lonely for him and frankly it’s just not good enough. Should I raise this and ask if live lessons could be introduced? Before anyone thinks I’m teacher bashing I’m not. Teacher is normally good, but I feel this is so disappointing even under the circumstances of a pandemic. It’s a fee paying school so feel very conscious that our money is going down the plug hole

I'm a Y6 teacher and we been live lessoning from 9am until 2.30pm Mon - Fri since Lockdown. I'm with the children (apart from lunch) teaching them on Zoom. The parents don't need to do anything as we send the worksheets to them via a link. It means parents can get on with other things. I say this so you know schools are up and running with this. We are in a deprived area and laptops were bought for those that only had a phone and it's working.
Obviously it's not as great as having them with me in class but your school should be past sending worksheets for parents to sort out and teach to their children. Do speak to the school about their plans.

Sorry meant to say I'm also a parent and totally understand your frustration trying to WFH and teach your child/make a volcano etc.

We are in primary and are getting a mix of live lessons and “pre recorded video plus task”

Live lessons every morning in English and Maths and also a few other short ones like story time for y1 and verbal reasoning/psche for y3. These generally have a worksheet as follow up but the teacher has explained how to do the worksheet in the live lesson, with chance to ask questions, and the worksheets are pretty clearly labelled so we know which goes with which lesson.

For the younger ones they have split the class in two for live lessons so it’s not too many kids at once.

Other subjects are pre recorded and we can do them whenever we have a chance - this includes art, DT, science and anything else that might require building something!

It’s working pretty well so far (touches all the wood) I am not working though and can see it would be a challenge if I was as there’s a lot of set deadlines with live lessons and not much flexibility.

Our children’s primary school are similar. Work is set online and loads is posted in no order. DS is 10 and many children his can probably figure out what to do but DS has sen and cannot. The amount is also overwhelming. No live lessons but random video calls with the class once or twice a week.

Ah I see your child is y6. In that case I think live lessons would be much much easier (contrary to my previous suggestion) as your child would be pretty much self sufficient and wouldn’t need you to keep starting the lessons for them - unlike my two... (esp the y1)

For a fee paying school to not have live lessons by now is pretty poor tbh.

My reception child has live lessons at 9am, 10am, 11am, 1:30pm and 2:30pm.

State school, so I’d say definitely not good enough if your paying fees.

Too many kids are in school- means no time / resources or headspace left for proper online provision.

I'm in FE. teaching full time online and I'm vroken with it. I cant comprehend how school teachers are doing online and face to face and prepping work to be done at home.

My sons in Y7 and I have to sit with him through all work as he struggles so much.
There are no live lessons just homework with a recorded video attached to the homework system.
I prefer it as we can do the tasks whatever time through out the day, it helps as I have college lessons so will do his work afterwards.
I do sometimes wish he could grasp the work a little more but it's just the way he is and I do need to help him.
I work weekends so I get to spend the week helping him and doing my own college work ... it's becoming a strain

That does sound like a nightmare. On the home schooling groups there are a lot of tutors offering individual and group lessons at reasonable prices. I understand you have already paid for your child's education so it's not fair but a couple of one to ones through the week to work on class work has made a huge difference for us.

Should I raise this and ask if live lessons could be introduced?

Should I raise this with the school? Yes, always please raise it with the school because strangers in Mumsnet can't help you but your school can.

You can ask for live lessons but don't focus on this exclusively.

Explain what the issues are for your family:
Too many tasks at once is overwhelming, being asked to build volcanoes requires more adult time and attention than you have available. Then ask them to work with you on a solution.

Schools aren't obliged to do live lessons but they are obliged to meet the needs of all of their learners. They can't do this unless you communicate those needs.

Our primary has a whole class check in once per week and aside from that it’s all worksheets on an app. Not ideal when you’re working full time from home yourself. I’ve now taken the plunge and forked out for a maths tutor as I am categorically not one.

No live lessons, calls or interaction like that. Work is set on googleclassroom each day and we have to work through it.

My yr6 is "in school" for normal school hours except lunch and break, all live lessons and even reading the class story. Just a big standard school. They are self sufficient and parents dont see their kids unless on break where by all accounts they are raiding the fridge

O would definitely raise it with the school.

DS in state primary year 6 - sounds very similar to your set up OP. No live lessons but started doing a couple of 20 mins live ‘check ins’ last week. Whole weeks work set on Sunday evening - either twinkl worksheets ( which cannot be edited) or suggestions such as ‘write a poem’ or ‘ research the history of....). No feedback. My 2 elders DD’s in secondary have live lessons all day fortunately and appear to be making progress.

I'm in FE. teaching full time online and I'm vroken with it. I cant comprehend how school teachers are doing online and face to face and prepping work to be done at home.

In our school they’re not. The teachers are working from home - the form teachers give live lessons in the morning. In the afternoons we do pre recorded specialist lessons (music art drama PE, teachers also working at home) so the form teachers presumably have that time to prepare further live lessons.

The KW/vulnerable kids are being supervised in school by TAs and support staff - they’re getting the same “live” (via teams) or pre recorded lessons as the kids at home. Nobody’s getting their actual teacher in front of them.

Appreciate this set up depends on staffing levels however.

My primary daughter has no lives, no phone calls in fact no interaction with school at all since term started, just some worksheets and links to YouTube to explain it. Pisses me off as I know kids in school are getting a lot more work and going up levels (several parents have said it’s better now as they get a lot more attention and are coming along great!) meanwhile my daughter is done within an hour, they don’t reply to emails and the office never pick up. They said they can’t do live as there is a safeguarding issue, yet do do it with the y6 classes.
I thought the school was really good but it’s failing the kids at home really badly!

Primary: no live lessons. No pre recorded lessons by teaching staff - they are using Oak, which counts as pre recorded tho.
No phone call, one generic email to the whole class once a week.
All work is being looked at, but DS completed his science while I was at work, got really positive feedback, and it is completly wrong, so not convinced how valuable the feedback actually is! Fairly happy, but definitely benifits from having a parent alongside, which is only possibly for us half the week.

DS1s secondary: 100% live teams 8.45-3. DS can do it all without parental input. No idea what's happening. I'm assuming since I havnt heard from school, there isnt an issue.

My secondary: mixture of live lessons and worksheets. Outcry from the parents because insufficient devices and broadband to support fixed teams lesson times.

Live, scheduled lessons is not the gold standard - its been proven it's not necessarily the best. Will go look for the link once I've posted this. It also widens the difference between haves and have nots, and plays heavily to the benifit of households who can keep to schedule, have a broadband connection, and have a device with a decent screen (not phone sized) per worker/student in the house.

What's working well in Remote Education Point 6 near the bottom talks about live lessons.

We have live and pre recorded videos.
Tbh I wish they'd just give us some worksheets to print, the kids and I are fed up with being stuck sitting in front of a tablet all day, I'd love some tasks on laper where we can just do it without watching yet another bloody video.

My kids are primary btw, but small enough that they can't do any of it independently.

It also does not help that the live sessions are different times every day and with 4-5 per day between 2 kids it's chaotic constantly switching between children, devices , videos.

State school, 3 live sessions a day to introduce the task (which is then completed offline and submitted).

I find the variation on these threads fascinating but I'm also surprised at the private provision you've been offered OP. In the town where I live the local private schools were advertising themselves with huge banners last summer based on the fact that they "Did live online lessons" .

My kids live lessons have been great. 3 a day - reading, writing and maths. They go on the live, teacher goes through the learning with examples etc. e.g in maths they’re doing division (year 2) so she will go through a few problems while giving them time to do it. 20mins or so then kids go offline and do a couple more. It works out as a 3 hour block. It’s working really well. I have to sit nearby my son and prod him along but he’s enjoying seeing the teacher and some of his classmates.

Btw from my previous post I mean it became something of a local joke as they were all trying to use it as a unique selling point. No idea whether it was to the kids' benefit or not.

I prefer our schools approach. We have 20min videos to introduce each task and the children have a task to do. Much better than live lessons as it can be watcged when they're ready and can be balanced around work. Also can alternate children if necessary.

We have optional start and end of the day zooms which are nice to keep in touch but Id hate structured live clases throughout the day.

Speak to your school. If the class teacher is not making themselves available, then ask to speak to the year group lead. If they are also the year group lead, then speak to the deputy head.

BUT whatever you do, do not assume that live lessons are some sort of magic bullet. It sounds like you need more evenly spread out work. eg our school has;-

English, maths and one other subject set daily on the school website.
Three pieces of work submitted to class teacher by email weekly.
One piece of work marked and returned weekly.
Live tutoring groups of 4 or 5 who need additional input for a variety of reasons.
Live reading with the class teacher on a rota.
We've also had one full class GoogleMeet for fun. It was a delight.

It does sound like your school could work with you better, but don't get hung up on the answer being live lessons.