Covid primary schooling and virtual lessons

[Merryoldgoat]

I’ll try to be brief - I’ve been speaking to a friend from a different area who I’ve not had a proper catch up with in about 2 years.

She said during the school closures her primary aged children (Y3&Y4 at the start) had virtual lessons every school day.

Not for the full school day but about 2-3 hours depending on the lesson.

Normal state school in a mixed area.

Was this normal? We didn’t have a single online lesson.

YABU - my kid’s school had regular virtual lessons

YANBU - no virtual lessons at my kid’s school.

I work in Scotland. The second lockdown, in terms of schools, didn't last till Easter. I was in teaching half classes for a few weeks in March, and seniors with practical classes were in more than that. Was that not Scotland-wide then?

And every live lesson I taught, I did with my own dc at home as they were not counted as kw children since I was working from home.

The only one of my children who still got anything like a normal education was my boy in a non state SEN school. He had proper lesson online every day. The difference between private and state was very stark. He still struggled with it

It doesn’t make much difference what the truth is @Abraxan

What matters is peoples perception of the truth, and of how things are. Fairly or otherwise, if the perception is that teachers had an extra long Christmas holiday 20/21 and an even longer summer one March - September 20, they aren’t sympathetic to strikes.

I think that just implies that people are stupid, and I don't think they are.
Strikes now are over the running down of teachers' wages over years. They're due to shortages of new teachers wanting to come in and other teachers wanting to leave. They're over pay rises not being funded by the government in England so that schools are cutting their budgets in other areas. If parents don't think these things will all have a negative affect on their dc; they need to think again.

Our school never did anything like that in either lockdown. One of my DC is SEN but there was no support in relation to that either.

I wasn't as bothered about the lack of education in the first lockdown because nobody else was getting any either, or nobody in state primary schools that I could see anyway. In 2021, on the other hand, about 40% of their classes were in, and the curriculum wasn't suspended that time. Those DC got the usual education with much better ratios, mine got two minutes of video a day and one phone call a week if they remembered and rang at a time I wasn't working. The legal minimum that was considered sufficient for those unworthy of schooling.

First lockdown March 2020, no not even secondary had online live lessons. Nobody was set up or prepared for that at that point.

They had a timetable set on Google classroom with a full day of tasks that had to be submitted at set times to be marked.

The January 2021 lockdown was mostly live lessons for primary and then a few offline tasks every day. Secondary was full all day online learning even had to wear uniform.

Yet there are hundreds of threads on here stating people actually are stupid because they voted for Brexit / Johnson / couldn’t see beyond the negative press re Corbyn /Megan Markle.

I don’t think it implies people are stupid, anyway. It’s about perception, pure and simple.

I can’t comment on first lockdown as we’d moved area in the February so then year 2 dd hadn’t even got a school place here yet.

She started in the September.

2nd lockdown they were excellent (she was y3 then). Lessons from 9-3. Not constantly on camera - they would do a lesson and then give the children half and hour/45 mins to complete work before coming together to talk about it and the children would read what they had written. We would upload all work to google classrooms and it would be marked and commented on each evening.

Out of a dds class of 30 there were only 7 of them though. It’s a very deprived area and a lot of children are at risk and so were in school. And other parents just refused to join.

For parents who didn’t want to join in, the school printed all the work and had it on school reception for them to pick up each week, or a teacher would drop it to their homes and pick up any work for marking. I know they didn’t have an easy time of that - it’s not something I would have liked to have done in this shitty area. I saw one of them sobbing in the street one afternoon after being screamed at by a family for trying to drop off workbooks.

But for those who did do it, the provision was excellent. And the teachers would always hang around online after for parents who had questions about the work and to help those of us parents who didn’t get how maths is taught these days.

I dropped in big boxes of chocolate and and a couple of bottles of wine each to the two teachers who did dds class learning when they returned to school and wrote to the head about how fantastic they had been.

They made it all so much fun and set really interning work and did show and tell things, set times for the children just to have a break and chat to each other.

work in Scotland. The second lockdown, in terms of schools, didn't last till Easter. I was in teaching half classes for a few weeks in March, and seniors with practical classes were in more than that. Was that not Scotland-wide then?

We are in East Dunbartonshire. My dd who was in S4 went in for 2 hours to do some work on her drama practical. My ds who was in S6 was not in at all, neither was my son who was in S1. They were not all back in school until after Easter.

work in Scotland. The second lockdown, in terms of schools, didn't last till Easter. I was in teaching half classes for a few weeks in March, and seniors with practical classes were in more than that. Was that not Scotland-wide then?

My primary school child got back in Natch but my high school child was halfway through April.

Practical classes didn't return for many months longer.

@HufflepuffRavenclaw I can see then that was your experience, but it's not the case that all Scottish schools were closed until Easter, which is what I thought you were saying.

The only online experience or interactions my kids got was from Cubs and Scouts delivered by volunteers.

Whereas, my son's BB shut during lockdown, didn't contact us once, and never reopened.

I think that what is odd about the OP’s posting us that she feels that the period from 23rd March (start of first lockdown) to 1st June 2020 (if I read her DC’s ages correctly, they were of the age included in the partial ‘return to school’ from that date) is critical in deciding her judgement of her child’s school and in affecting their attitude to school long term.

She has already said that her child was in school for the second lockdown, so only the first, when the curriculum was suspended and there was no guidance fur schools, is relevant.

I really can’t see why this relatively short period is so critical. It is entirely possible that attitude to school is much more shaped by other things - the move from a play-based curriculum in Reception to more formal learning in Year 1; social development of others making it increasingly hard for a child with difficulties in that area; increasing needs within the class; departure of key teachers as part of the overall exodus from the profession; reducing staffing ratios with increasing age and reducing budget.

Equally, it is entirely possible that the school isn’t great - a move from Good to RI could indicate either a change in quality or a weakness in an area Ofsted us now looking deeply into or reflect the difficulties inherent in increasing need, decreasing budget and departing staff.

IME, type of lockdown learning delivered (live online; recorded; worksheet / online tools) is not necessarily tightly correlated to ‘general school quality’. A complex mixture of factors influenced it - number of kw parents; socio-economic mix; age and life stage of teachers; previous decisions on tech investment and tech confidence of heads; local broadband speed; even local Covid prevalence (those in ‘early peak’ areas were battling with the challenges and emotional aftermath of critically ill staff and parents as much as education.

Overall, it seems very ofd to focus on this short and highly abnormal single period - a matter of weeks for the OP, though much longer for others - in their child’s life rather than the much longer period when they have actually been in school.

@Dragonsandcats

The contempt is visible on this thread. It was visible during covid on sm where some teachers were posting about their lovely long summer holiday and teaching unions campaigning to keep schools closed. Where some teachers were saying things like I hope you can explain to your kids why they've killed their teacher because you can't be arsed to look after them (genuine comment I saw on Facebook)

It's a shame relationships have broken down to such a combatative nature for some

Im not sure what the solution is.

Parents feel let down and are justifiably furious at how badly children were let down.

Teachers feel attacked and defensive.

Ultimately the govt are to blame. Just like they are to blame for the destruction of the NHS.

But if a nurse kills someone they can't stand up in court and say it was the govt fault. They are held responsible

I agree with @Futurethoughts

The damage to perception for lots of parents is done.

I still support the strikes though

It was a difficult and emotive time, because there were essentially two irreconcilable factors:

• The right of all children to receive an education
• The right of school employees to have a safe workplace, based on the knowledge of Covid at the time (a constantly moving goalpost)

In the first lockdown, the Government formally suspended the first factor. They suspended the curriculum, and directed schools to supply other services - principally childcare for kw parents, but also social care, food distribution etc.

In the event, most schools decided to continue their educational role in some format, insofar as that was possible within the contradictory guidance at the time (the June guidance, directing schools to take back in a number of children that it was impossible to accommodate under the struct rules laid out in the same document, was a particular highlight).

It us interesting that ‘online live teaching’ became the perceived ‘gold standard’ in the MN eye. Yes, it was better for some - like questions about homework in Ofsted parent surveys, it absolutely split parents down the middle in real life.

We delivered a mix of live, recorded, work on online platforms, and offline work uploaded (plus kw provision, in school teaching of those year groups returned to school in June, and continued social work). In our experience, impact and engagement was not a function of ‘delivery route’, but of rapid feedback, and availability to solve problems immediately. So same day, preferably same hour, response to any uploaded work; instant e-mail response to parental queries at any time of day or night; afternoon pick-ip sessions on anything causing difficulties in the day’s curriculum; personal phone or video calls - those grew engagement. Whizzy live lessons - much less so, especially in families who were device poor.

We had 5 virtual lessons a day for reception class. Plus some scheduled time for playing out/YouTube workouts in lieu of PE.

it was horrendous as it was knowing that a few weeks would be a term pretty much and seeing dc go past to school while more online and isolation from peers.

But this way of doing it was so bad. I really felt for anyone faced with this.

Marmote, how did that work fir families with eg 3 children, sharing a device, or families where parents were working all day and caught up schooling outside those hours?

We staggered ‘live’ sessions for different years, and recorded everything to be played at different times, to accommodate this - would that have been possible for you? I did a lot of weekend support for families who had to ‘catch up’ the week’s learning at weekends when adults in the family were free, as for the younger children it was very hard to complete work without any adult support.

I don’t know, at the time we only had one primary age child and our other child was still able to attend nursery, so it wasn’t something we had to deal with.

(In second lockdown, teachers delivered the same content to everyone from home, while support staff took on the role of ‘parents’ for the children in school,
viewing the same teacher content and completing the sane tasks, which teachers marked alongside the work from children doing it at home. Was as fair as we could make it)

online lessons were neither desirable not possible in many schools

It was indeed! I was grateful not to live within earshot of a school at that time.

The rules functionally excluding primary aged children from socialising outside school were another highlight. We took fuck all notice and were 100% ethically justified in that, but many children had virtually no interaction at all during that period.