The school is shut, will your kid actually do any work set?

[noblegiraffe]

Lots of talk about schools ‘remote teaching’ and ‘setting work for the kids’. Very little discussion about whether the kids will actually engage.

My own primary kids would do some work because I’ll make them, but teenagers left in the house by themselves? Are they really going to be putting in hours each day?

No for our 13 year old

Yes, and they will do it properly too. However do understand that not everyone kids are like mine!

Mine as well Soup. Mine will sew if something needs repairing, setting it up as an activity they'd think I'd completely lost the plot.

Primary school and younger maybe, but those years I wouldn't be concerned about the lack of organised learning with anyway. I'd just carry on as I would if it was the summer holidays(without the travelling bit). There's no saying they will get one this year!!

It's the older ones that are going to be impacted a lot more and even more so those doing GCSE's and no amount of activity boxes is going to help them. Same with anyone who needs extra support

I run my own business, I don't know if people will want to buy anything, let alone how is this going to impact the postal network. I know I will be fine as I have savings, but still made a few cutbacks to help us get through. Whereas I know some people who are going to be extremely fucked, and they're already panicking about how they are going to pay for their usual bills, never mind the rest of it. Never mind the families who are currently using foodbanks, will these even open?

And again, the government are sly bastards. This potentially puts the jobs of those in education on the line. Think about it for a minute.

If somehow a miracle happened and it works out fantastic. There's nothing to say some bright spark in government won't have a lightbulb moment, and think, virtual schooling is the way forward. And before you know it, there's one teacher sitting at home on their computer teaching an entire year group. Solves a huge problem with regards to the education budget.

Or worse a two-tier system. Families who have the funds for the equipment, virtual school. The rest, one building for them and for those who have to do the GCSE coursework, and those who want to attend.

Oh, I hear the laughter coming through the screens. I'm taking the piss out of myself for thinking this. Then I remember Austerity and how it still impacts the most vulnerable. How it's already swept through education to the point schools are struggling already, and people are losing their jobs.

My biggest concern is the NHS because eventually, those staff will test positive. Never mind staff who are forced themselves to take some leave because, oh, the school is closed.

Hi noble . My y10 DD would mainly do the work set, because I'd make sure she did, and help where necessary providing I'm able. However, we would have far more success with learning Maths & Science from home than we would with English or Drama.
I don't think she'd manage 5 hour days though.

That is really quite rude op. I've got teachers in my family and the wouldnot have this attitude. Obviously the poster was suggesting dc may learn cooking skills/gardening/reading anything!

My copy failed, but that was in response to the comment about learning other skills.

Noble,

From what I have read, there is mainly non compliance after a couple of weeks in Italy.

I think motivated year 11 and 13 students will work, the rest not. I also suspect boys will give up pretty quickly on the whole.

I think this whole thing is how human beings like to seem in control when they are not. Ministers issue meaningless instructions to schools, SLTs translate them into meaningless instructions to teachers and most teachers being super compliant by nature, they will attempt to follow them. Pupils and parents, on the other hand, will care far less.

To be honest, does it really matter if one school cohort (maybe years 9-13) either finish school at 19 rather than 18, or catch up missed work at uni?

Personally I would far rather see teachers either volunteering to help hard pressed front line services (young and fit ones) or helping to man health help lines and co-ordinate the response. They are a large cohort of well educated people who could be better used than setting quadratic equations for reluctant year 10s.

Teenagers old enough to be studying for important exams will be going to university or the workplace in a year or two. They need to be able to self motivate.

My autistic son is very self motivated in the area he wants to go into. But he needs a lot of support in his other school subjects in order to get basic passes.

I am a cminder so my Ds (12) will have loads of pre school as well as probably infants so would be challenging to get much done

Yes, teens need to self motivate
No amount of self-motivation is going to hand in the supervised graded exam work.

I would really hate to be in the shoes of anyone with exams looming. They aren't that far away, and once schools get closed, no-one can say for certain when they will reopen. And there's only so much revision you can do.

That's assuming the parents will need childcare Starlight.

Cohle Only about half of youngsters go to university.
The ones not heading that way will be hit hard if they fail to get their English & Maths GCSEs. Saying that a 14yo y10 who struggles with academics should 'self motivate' for weeks at home, is much easier said than done.

Mine wouldn't even if I tried to force him. He has the attitude that he will do literally anything other than the one simple thing I've asked him to. Homework is a nightmare. I do not envy teachers.

Mine will. She had to do it before for two weeks when we went on holiday during term time and she was conscientious about it. Plus I'd make sure she did it, and do some extra work with her as well to pass the time.

Mine would. He's year 4 and loves school work. As it is he asks me to set him work at the weekends 🙄

My DC is Y3. If work is provided, it will be done, reluctantly on their part but it would be done.

Yes, mine are pretty motivated and I will help where I can. I had to give up office work last July as my daughter was severely ill and had little to no mobility. She recovered and returned to school full time in February. I have an interview for an amazing job on Tuesday, just as they are likely to be off again...

Mine does brilliantly if given 1-1 support, which school cannot afford provide regularly. 🙄 I anticipate being able to do a massive amount of catch-up if he's set work at home.

Is anyone else envious of these super-motivated kids ?

Mine are only 6 and 4 so yes, they’d do it with my involvement. I would probably set up a timetable of activities (crafts, phonics, maths, obstacle courses etc) to keep them occupied.
The only hindrance would be that I have a 1 year old at home too who obviously needs my full supervision at the same time.

My eldest is in his third year of uni...he only gets 4 hours contact time so I doubt he would notice the difference

The other two are in years 12 and 13, they absolutely would work and as long as it was short term dd (year 13) would probably benefit

I would obviously much rather they didnt NEED to close

I'll be working from home if they get shut. There's no chance I can supervise my kids (5 + 8) doing schoolwork. I'm going to have to trust them but know it wont take long before they get distracted.

I'm in Australia. Melbourne. A local school closed this week for 3 days so we are all starting to consider what full closure will look like.

Eldest is 13 and g8. He's at a school which already uses Microsoft teams as part of the teaching and all students have school issued computers. I'm not worried about him, he hates being bored and with only a little prompting will go into competitive mode and engage with whatever is sent home, to an extent. Especially with class whatsapp chats to encourage him. He is likely to decide to enrol himself in a uni class though and put minimal effort into subjects he's bored by, and has the potential to decide to finally improve his cello. But him cooped up at home will test everyone's ability to live with him.

The other 3? Mr 11 will engage with the projects he is interested in and ignore anything that doesn't. Miss 10 will reluctantly engage with a lot of work on my part and mr 8 is a teacher pleaser, so will try for a bit and then stop if he doesn't get the positive feedback he craves. Plus there is an only one computer for the 3 to share and the youngest can barely type and has a speech delay so won't likely participate in any online discussions. Both younger kids hate phones.

We are lucky in that we have a large house with private bedrooms and they generally get on ok, but schooling at home might stress that too much.

DD2 will try to make the children in her playmobil school do the work set for her instead. They already get subjected to her spellings and times table tests - I do admire her attempts at outsourcing.

DD1 will sit on Google classroom allegedly "doing work" but in reality doing the tweenage girl squealing at each other as a means of communication thing talking utter drivel to the other girls in her class who all appear to be unable to communicate without squealing at each other at present.

If either school tries to inflict "make a model" style learning tasks on me I'm sending the kids back to school with all their joke books to persecute the teachers with.