Are your children behind in school after lockdowns?

[CricketCat]

Something bugging me since parents evening.

My son is in year 5 and was already trailing behind in English and Maths in year 3. Then lockdowns happened and he’s lost 2 years of solid study.

On parents evening the teacher told me he’s really behind now and that I need to sit and do homework with him. I told her that I thought year 5 work was independent (I never had help in yr 5) and she said but “he’s really behind, you need to sit and make sure his work is corrected before he submits it. Which felt like she didn’t want to correct his work.

Then when I asked her if she would recommend tutoring, she said yes, so I organised this.

Now I’m feeling really shit; because I couldn’t help him during lockdowns. I had 2 jobs both directly and indirectly involved with covid and things were crazy. Also my dad died during the time which added to stress and it was a horrible.

Is anyone else in this situation? And how much help should I be giving my son, without doing the work for him and making him sit there 1 hour at a time so he can think about his work.

I guess my AIBU is that somehow I’ve been made to feel this is all my fault for not helping him, but we did all school work everyday, with tears and it was a horrible time home schooling. We gave up for weeks and the teachers never contacted us to check how we were and now he’s behind. Is it my fault?

@boomwhacker Did you read the OP’s post about working multiple jobs and her dad dying? It just seems entirely heartless of you to not even acknowledge that, just dive on in and stab that knife in her back.
People had genuine reasons for why life was hard, including Op. I’m astounded you don’t even acknowledge her grieving for her dad might have had an impact.

Op, like others have said. Time to look forward. No, you’re definitely not alone and many children are behind. A tutor sounds like a great idea. Have you heard of time table rockstars? It’s an online time tables practise and can be really fun and useful with zero input from parents needed.
As for correcting homework, I have time to sit with my Year 5 and brainstorm. We then write down relevant things on a white board for her to use in her writing. For anything practical, would siblings be willing to help? It’s not about you fixing all mistakes, but just guiding him through it. I’m sure that’s what the teacher meant. You’re able to practise a lot of English skills through reading with your child out loud as well. So if you read a book with onomatopoeia (crash! Bang! Etc), you point out what that’s called. Next chapter you see it, you repeat what it’s called. You spot a simile - you go “Oh I spy a simile on this page! Look for the magic words: as or like! Can you spy it too?”
It sounds like a lot but a chapter a day? Every little thing you do will aid school get him on track.
Good luck and you’re 100% not alone!

Listening to Ma Walton on here who is bleating on about how she managed to teach both her kids at the simultaneously while working from home all while having a sweeping brush up her arse so she could clean the floor at the same time...that shite helps nobody. Don't be drawn into it

Oh Christ. Ma Walton I most certainly am not but a parent who gives more than a passing interest in their child's education, absolutely guilty as charged.

I think the tutoring will make a huge difference, along with the extra involvement from you.

Lockdown was shit and kids reacted incredibly differently. My eldest is the same age as yours, and was massively resistant to work in the first lockdown, and school provision was abysmal so we had to fill the gap ourselves. Second lockdown somehow he was a total dream - we were so so lucky (though he is struggling now as they are still repeating a lot of the foundation subject materials in class as so many kids didn’t do them.)

Kids reacted incredibly differently and will need equally different support now. How is the school supporting him?

I understand op, our school very much said don’t worry, you’re not teachers, we don’t expect you to teach the children. Mid-way through last year they realised children were behind, pared down lessons to English and maths and scrapped Funtime Friday afternoons.

It’s not your fault: it’s not really anyone’s fault. This is one of the saddest parts of how the lockdown affected children: those children whose parents had to prioritise work suffered far more than those where there was a non working parent.

My dd’s school basically was shit during the first lockdown. They just assumed everyone household had a parent at home who was able to clear the decks and become a full time teacher. I was desperately struggling to hold onto a job and couldn’t do it. I don’t blame the school per se: I blame the government and I still carry a lot of anger and guilt over this.

My solution was to hire a tutor as I just wasn’t convinced the school was able to cope with getting the children through the work they missed. I’m very lucky that I was able to afford this and if I hadn’t been able to I would be furious.

It was a fucking shit show and a lot of our children were failed badly.

There are currently, lots of studies running to assess how much our pupils in the UK have ‘fallen behind’ and results are looking very positive.

One such study by the very well respected Daisy Christodoulou (who carries out national assessments of pupils of all ages annually) is showing that pupils are bouncing back and are making rapid progress, so are very nearly back to where they should be already.

blog.nomoremarking.com/writing-on-the-rebound-a-v-shaped-recovery-247d94f182ca

This is for any posters who are worried about catching up or assuming all pupils who weren’t physically in school are doing badly.
Of course, there are always exceptions but there is some good news on the whole.

Kudos to all the young people out there, their parents/carers and school staff.

Home school didn't go very well for us either. Having a younger sibling didn't help my eldest at all.
We both had to work during lockdown. Anyway, my eldest went back to school very much behind, although has caught up well now.

My eldest's teacher has recently said the entire class is behind in maths - no one's fault really. So they're concentrating on that.
We've had to become much stricter about homework.

There's no point in trying to blame anyone, it won't help your son. But yes concentrate on moving forward now.

I try to reconcile myself with the fact that my DC did an enormous amount of creative art work during lockdown, which will hopefully be beneficial long term.

To clarify, The school set work everyday online. If the work wasn’t submitted they wouldn’t chase up or ask if there were any problems. So we dipped in and out of work. I feel like they should have kept an eye on us to see if children were okay, especially for core subjects. As the work built up, ds would naturally get overwhelmed and it was just stressful for us all.

It’s not ok to blame the school for this. You actively chose to not do the work and this is the consequence. However you are not alone, I worked FT with a y11,y10 and y6 with lockdown. It was hell trying to keep up with homeschooling and work, absolute hell. It nearly drive me around the bend, I can see why people gave up and did playing in the garden or whatever they did instead that really wasn’t ever going to ever be enough, but I’m sure it temporarily stopped the stress of home schooling.
We’re dealing with the impacts of lockdown now, DS1 y11 kind of escaped as he got his predicted grades for GCSE, DS2 y10 is worst affected as he missed so much he has massively underachieved at GCSE this year, getting 2 gardes lower than his predicted grades pré Covid, so low passes. It’s shit for him. He has missed foundations for the sixth form work now, knowledge and time he’ll never get back. Y6 DD is relatively ok.
Help flour child with their homework, it’s hard, it’s shit, it causes stress but ultimately it’s a hangover from lockdown and he’ll benefit if you do.

I feel like homeschooling is like babies' sleeping. If you get a good one you credit yourself with your amazing routine and shush -pat and then you get a bad one and all your illusions are blown. You only have so much energy to do daily battles with a child who will not engage with homeschool / does the bare minimum on top of working FT. I'm actually not sure my relationship with DS will ever get back to what is was after the homeschool armageddon. DSIL came to help me and she is so soft on the kids and even she said "yeah you're right- he's a total nightmare".

But.... all that said, you are where you are and now you just have to try to do your best to help him catch up. One thing I did a lot of in lockdown with DS which didn't result in arguments was reading aloud to him or reading alternate pages - might that be an option if he's behind with English?

@CricketCat what exactly is it that he's behind with? It's it across maths and English? Just reading or writing too? Writing is so much harder for parents to try and help with.

If you have to sit and do his homework with him then it's likely having zero impact. He'd be better with the teacher setting him different homework relevant to him but chances are that's unlikely to happen.

My school uses Doodle Maths and English which is really good and can be bought into as a parent. The idea is you do it little and often. The children start with a baseline and then it responds to that and to questions they get wrong so it's really personal. I'd definitely recommend buying in if you can. 10 min a day on each has a huge impact.

@Cheerbear23

To clarify, The school set work everyday online. If the work wasn’t submitted they wouldn’t chase up or ask if there were any problems. So we dipped in and out of work. I feel like they should have kept an eye on us to see if children were okay, especially for core subjects. As the work built up, ds would naturally get overwhelmed and it was just stressful for us all.

It’s not ok to blame the school for this. You actively chose to not do the work and this is the consequence. However you are not alone, I worked FT with a y11,y10 and y6 with lockdown. It was hell trying to keep up with homeschooling and work, absolute hell. It nearly drive me around the bend, I can see why people gave up and did playing in the garden or whatever they did instead that really wasn’t ever going to ever be enough, but I’m sure it temporarily stopped the stress of home schooling.
We’re dealing with the impacts of lockdown now, DS1 y11 kind of escaped as he got his predicted grades for GCSE, DS2 y10 is worst affected as he missed so much he has massively underachieved at GCSE this year, getting 2 gardes lower than his predicted grades pré Covid, so low passes. It’s shit for him. He has missed foundations for the sixth form work now, knowledge and time he’ll never get back. Y6 DD is relatively ok.
Help flour child with their homework, it’s hard, it’s shit, it causes stress but ultimately it’s a hangover from lockdown and he’ll benefit if you do.

I totally agree that its not fair to blame schools for this. Schools had a horrendous time: mainly unprepared and under-resourced and teachers were working in dangerous and highly stressful conditions. For the most part they did what they could.

But I do think its reasonable to note that a lot of the communication coming from schools to parents about work was unhelpful. I can only speak from my own experience but in my case (DD at state primary), we got a slew of work and various directives about how much time to spend on it at what times of day etc but almost nothing back in return, nothing marked and no feedback or guidance at all.

The underlying assumption seemed to be that almost all families had at least one parent who was able to devote most of their time to this: it seemed to be assumed that every household had either a SAHP or someone on furlough. It didn't seem to cross their minds that in a large amount of cases people simply had to prioritise paid work.

I think that the effect of that on families where all the adults were working FT, or on single parent families, was fairly inflammatory and didn't create an environment conducive to parents wanting to help their children. I had no choice but work in my bedroom for 10 hours a day to keep the lights on. I tried to help my DD where I could and I insisted she did the work set but the reality was I simply couldn't spend time going through exercises with her, explaining things etc. I would have lost my job if I'd done that. Add to that that a lot of children found lockdown very emotionally challenging and you have a recipe for really suboptimal work with very little support.

Anecdotally, I think a lot of parents in similar situations to mine felt that it was so futile trying to keep up that it wasn't worth bothering and just threw in the towel. And I think my case the attitude of the school: (go away and do our job for us) actually contributed to that sense of futility. It may not have been ideal but I think its understandable that people felt like this.

I think schools were trying really hard to make the best of a bad job and I have a huge amount of sympathy for teachers. I don't think this was deliberate, it was a response by people under a great deal of stress who were struggling to do what was asked of them. But I would like to think that if this happened again the schools would do a slightly better job of empathising with the reality for families who simply didn't have the bandwidth to become amateur teachers overnight and would put systems in place to support them.

@thepeopleversuswork Bang on!

Great post from thepeopleversuswork

"Your sons in year 5 so his last full undisrupted year year at school was in year 2 - the school need to think about that!"

You think it hasn't crossed their minds?

Cricket at - it does sound as though you are trying really hard to sort out the difference between working with him and supporting him, and doing it for him. I get that - I’m a TA and very used to this but still don’t always get it right with my own DD who has dyslexia, and who is about 2 years behind.

If has writing to do, my first step is to get her to tell me what she wants to say, without any writing. I then have an idea of what she is trying to get at. Then we work through it one sentence at a time. I get her to tell me the sentence first. I then write down any words she doesn’t know how to spell. She does the rest with me reminding her what her sentence was if she forgets, and only copying the tricky words. I then add a note on the bottom (post it note or a note online) just explaining what I’ve done and where she has needed help, and where it is her own independent work. If she has consistently misspelled eg ‘said’ I will correct it, but I put that in a note to the teacher. She is then getting one to one support and immediate feedback but the teacher is aware how much support was offered.

Maths - can you access any props? Eg a clock with hands if it’s telling the. Time and he’s struggling. Something he can manually move which helps him see it, or there are cubes which break into fractions which means you can visually see that 1/2 is the same as 2/4. Let him use things like that and then drop a note on the work that this is what you have done.

Can you do it in stages? We had three questions to answer this weekend so we did one Friday night, one Saturday and one today. It feels easier than being faced with a big block in one go.

The teacher will know what he is capable of because they will see it in class. Homework isn’t a chance to see what they can do unaided, it’s a chance to practice something so if he can practice it with you helping then great.

I had encouraged my two from Y4 to be responsible for their own homework so wasn't used to helping much at all when they were in Y10/11 and Y6/7.

DD1 was at a superselective grammar, always organised and high achieving and really struggled to keep up with her work, became depressed and was self-harming during the winter lockdown. I tried to help her organise herself but all the info was all over the place on Teams and elsewhere, and I found it hard to navigate, never mind a 15 year old. I can't really help much with any content beyond Y7, especially Maths. Plus we both worked full time during lockdowns, we weren't furloughed with loads of time to spare!

DD2 started Y7 in 2020 and missed a lot of school with Covid restrictions and then was really anxious about attending school at all and we could hardly get her in, so Y7 was a bit of a write off. In Y8 she has changed schools and it is still a lot of effort to get her in at times. Having joined late it has taken ages to get set up on the IT systems, I couldn't even see what homework she has for weeks. She still doesn't access to the platform for the homework for four subjects. My main focus is getting her to school, which is still a struggle and needs a lot more hand holding with homework than DD1 did. I honestly don't know how some people manage with all the tech required now just to complete their homework at secondary school now, it has changed so much in a short time. I am really IT literate and we have all the devices at home but still struggle to get everything to work. I sometimes wish they could just do their homework in their exercise books and have diaries that the homework is written in which I sign each week.

So really I haven't cared whether they are behind but more about supporting their mental and physical health, and my own, and that the school stuff will fall into place eventually. We're still in a global pandemic by the way and cases are really high locally.

There's nothing we can do to change what happened or how teachers coped with teaching. He's still in primary school, he'll catch up.

OP. Don’t beat yourself up.

People had varying experiences during lockdown. Based on how quickly schools adapted and what work they set/ formats. How much parents were working vs being available to support teaching.
And also the child themselves, whether they could work independently etc.

Schools also clearly give differing advice as my DC’s schools actively ask that parents do not check/ correct homework regularly. So that they can see themselves what level of understanding the child has. It’s further complicated by the fact that how children are taught can be different to how we work - so we can confuse the child further.

Personally you’re spot on with the tutoring. Also look for weekend classes (2-3 hours on a Saturday) where a smaller group of children are taught together. It keeps costs down but also, some children learn better in a bit of a larger group.

My youngest did it throughout lockdown (remotely Obvs) and it helped to keep them on top of things. Then we continued it for a while to ensure they had learned all of year 6 topics by the time they left year 6.

Don’t focus on what passed, focus on what you can do now.

I wonder whether the thing to focus on here is where he was at the end of Y3, so where were the issues when he was in school full-time. You say he was behind then, and school had identified that, so it's disappointing there wasn't support from the SENCO during the lockdowns.

However, we can only start from where we are. In your shoes, I think I would ask the tutor to look out for any possible additional needs, as they will be working 1:1 with your son and have time to get to know him. I'd also ask for a meeting with the SENCO, and think about a meeting with your GP. Just because if you do end up thinking an additional needs assessment would be useful, it's a very long pathway and it makes sense to start that as soon as you can.

In terms of what you can do as a family, I would sit alongside him during homework when you can. If there's something he absolutely can't do / doesn't understand when you try and explain, don't let it get to an argument or a stand-off. Just stop, and write a note to the teacher saying that DS doesn't seem to understand this topic and please can they go over it again with him.

You've obviously all had an incredibly difficult time, and the effect of that takes time to heal. Wishing you all the best.

@boomwhacker

Listening to Ma Walton on here who is bleating on about how she managed to teach both her kids at the simultaneously while working from home all while having a sweeping brush up her arse so she could clean the floor at the same time...that shite helps nobody. Don't be drawn into it

Oh Christ. Ma Walton I most certainly am not but a parent who gives more than a passing interest in their child's education, absolutely guilty as charged.

You would be amazed at how rare that passing interest is. Year 11 parents’ evening last week for a core subject. 16 out of 26 parents did not book an online appointment. Not a particularly deprived area or anything. Just not bothered.

1 2 1 support and supervision at home with homework is part of being a good parent.

No sense bearing yourself up about it now, but you (and DP, if there is one) do need to sit with DS every night for an hour doing reading, spelling and maths or whatever is set.

I don’t think it’s so much correcting DS’s work as going through it with him, getting him to talk to you about his working’s out and why he’s written each answer- so it sticks in more. It’s crucial if the teacher is telling you you really need to do this.

People that had hours to sit and make sure school work was done and zooms were accessed and and extra workbooks etc completed during the pandemic (and pay for tutoring)! Are incredibly priveleged and need to realize that! Trying to hold down a wfh demanding job 9+ hours and day whilst helping kids access zooms and do work and all the other stuff that comes with it along with supporting family or neighbours with needs - shopping, medical etc - and try not the get covid and become ill yourself - was nigh on impossible for a lot of people. And now schools want to blame parents for not having the time to basically educate kids themselves for two years. Not to mention losses in confidence, social skills, language etc that happened in kids.

And I work in education! Hate teacher bashing but have noticed a lot expect kids to be right on the money because parents had all this time to work with them at home. Not true at all!

Year 11 parents’ evening last week for a core subject. 16 out of 26 parents did not book an online appointment. Not a particularly deprived area or anything. Just not bothered

At DD1's Y11 parents evening our wifi wasn't working properly and we didn't get to speak to any of her teachers. It didn't make a blind bit of difference to anything. I've never seen quite why spending 5 minutes talking about how they are doing in any subject at secondary school with their teacher is important. If there are real concerns you will already be liaising with the school and if they are doing well you'll know from their reports.