The Tories STILL don't give a shit about your kids or their education

[noblegiraffe]

One in a long running series of threads of failures on the part of the government to put any money into schools.

Earlier this year, the government-appointed covid-catch-up tsar resigned in disgust when they refused to take his recommendations on board for a £15 billion programme of recovery for children, including extra sport and extra-curricular activities. They instead pledged about a tenth of that, with the main focus to be on catch-up tutoring.

The DfE then made the inexplicable decision to award the tutoring contract to Randstad, a Dutch HR firm because they were the cheapest by far, and about £40 million below what the DfE had budgeted. (Where did the rest of that money go?)

Randstad's woefully inadequate systems led to catastrophic failure: “They’re doing it on the cheap and the quality of what they’re doing is very poor — completely under-resourced, and shambolic,” the leader said. “I’m absolutely in favour of the profit motive, but this is the worst sort of bargain basement capitalism.” twitter.com/samfr/status/1465239826534440964?s=21

Leading to only 8 percent of the targeted children receiving tutoring since September. www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/covid-catch-tuition-92-adrift-year-end-target

Remember, this is the government's BIG PLAN to help children recover from the educational damage caused by the pandemic. So basically, most kids are getting fuck-all extra support.

The Head of Ofsted said that that majority of catch-up would happen in classrooms in normal lessons with the class teacher. Presumably instead of teaching them new content? Won't that just create gaps that need to be caught up?

And the people in government who should be kicking off about this are instead trying to get a bill to force schools to stay open even if all the staff and most of the kids are off with covid.

How? By asking retired teachers to come back and work for free. Seriously. "Mr Halfon also urged the Government to mobilise an army of volunteers to keep children in the classroom if teachers are off sick. “The Government should set up an army of education volunteers of retired Ofsted inspectors and former teachers who are tasked with going round the country and fill in where teachers are off sick,” he said. “The vision has been there for the NHS with volunteer-run vaccine centres so why can’t it be done for education?” (From the Telegraph)

There were so many outraged threads about school closures and poor education provision. The government is doing nothing to fix those issues.

YABU: The government cares about children and education

YANBU: This is a scandal

In our school, some of the late funding we got for catch up, when to a week’s summer school for the Year 6s to get settled in to the school. Although it was staffed by some teachers, so many of us were out of good will and also desperate to finally be with our own families that lots of Sixth Formers supported a lot of the sessions too.

Now, we have the two Heads of Year of 11 and 13 liaising with each of the subjects in which students would benefit from catch up support and we are taking it in rota to mentor these kids at lunch.

External ‘professional tutors’ being brought in, my arse!!! Another failure of this government.

@motherrunner

I also echo what another poster said upthread. My school employed tutors to work in the core subjects. They’re just being used as cover supervisors. At the moment cover is so stretched that the data manager is covering lessons.

What is going on in schools NOW will need catching up from. It chaos when covid runs through (and it happens in peaks and troughs rather than a continuous low-level which would be easier to manage).

And yet the catch-up funding is tapering down. Schools currently have to pay 25% of costs (which they can't afford) and this is going to go up next year. So catch-up will go down at the point where schools may be stable enough to actually make use of it.

Agree @noblegiraffe. I’m finding this academic year more disruptive than last and I’m sure I’m not unique in saying that. Unfortunately, parents won’t be privy to this disruption as they’ll only see ‘my child only missed 10 days rather than extended isolation periods’. However, as teachers, we know the impact of rolling isolations/staff absence etc

I've had every one of my y11 off at various times this year, and about 3/4 of year 10. Sending work home has been consistent; the completion of said work patchy at best.
I can't catch up kids on random bits of work.

What is going on in schools NOW will need catching up from

I agree. They were all in a similar place coming back from lockdowns but the ones who have had the misfortune to catch it and be at home are falling behind their peers while others are in school either fine or asymptomatic and are making good progress.

@noblegiraffe

Or your health
Or your environment
Or your community
Or your parents
Or doing the right thing with Covid
Or ethical standards
Or the economy doing a crappy Brexit
Or the truth
Or anything

They do care about feathering their own nest!

Well that's true. The government of poo rivers, illegal parties and giving lucrative contracts to all their mates. 👍

The Tories have NEVER cared about regular people. Why do ppl think they do?

Govt must urgently invest in filtration systems. As they were urged to do 18 months ago.

And consider in worst case scenario maybe a hybrid schooling.

Yanbu. The Tory party do not care about anyone not in their circle of corruption. That certainly means anyone who attends or had ever attended a state school.

Public systems/services in dire straits after austerity cuts and chronic underfunding:

• Education
• Heath (NHS, CAMHS)
• Social Care (from children to pensioners).

Doing well:
Anyone insulated from any of the above by personal wealth or lack of dependency on.

Change is needed.

Public outcry seems to have made some changes re poo rivers. What's needed is public outcry about the state of provision for children.