Why aren't teachers providing lessons by Skype?

[Folicky]

If schools are to close, which they will eventually, why don't they teach the lessons via a video link / Skype? At the moment, as I understand it, if schools close, parents - many of whom will be working from home - will he expected to home school their children. How is that going to work?

Solomummy, don’t assume we all feel the same!

Flipping heck, everyone is just doing their best. As a manager I expect everyone to do what they can, someone who works for me has three primary aged children - she is doing what she can which is ⅓ of her normal hours. But she is doing her best in these very strange circumstances.

Why do you expect teachers to be any different to the rest of us when WFH??

Yeah I understand the points raised by teachers. And having volunteered at the school on a couple of occasions I have nothing but utmost respect for teachers. DD has 30 in her class and yet her teacher genuinely seemed to care for his pupils and draw out the very best in each one. Whereas I was silently swearing under my breath after five minutes and wishing the next six hours away. It is early days, and it will take time for everyone to settle and adjust. It's new for all of us, and we'll look back and no doubt have lots of brilliant ideas about how it could have been better organised and "why didn't they just...". But we're all experiencing a different day with changing rules at a rate never experienced before. Our school has been slow off the mark and let's hope that over time they'll get sorted. It's just been odd to have near silence from her teacher since they closed a week ago.

@SoloMummy

I am currently teaching LIVE lessons to Yr 9, 10 and 12. Yr 11 and 13 have been placed on early study leave. I set remote learning for Yr 7 and 8. I meet with my form twice a week and we are having weekly staff and department meetings.

I have also 2 children under 9 at home, one of whom have CV symptoms.

But go ahead and judge.

I think with younger primary parents would vastly prefer being able to access things when it suits them, as most of them are also trying to work themselves. I think that for older primary and secondary having a group on teams which people access using text is much less of a safeguarding risk than video.

Our school has been slow off the mark and let's hope that over time they'll get sorted

Have you had some work provided?

It's just been odd to have near silence from her teacher since they closed a week ago
Maybe the teacher is ill. I think there’s a bug going round....

If the unions are unwilling to co-operate with online teaching, I'd put in place the following plan:

1. All teachers to be furloughed until September on 80% pay. Taxpayers' money should not be used to fund people who are choosing not to work to sit on their arses.

1. A national immersive online educational environment to be created- this would be a mix of recorded and live lessons taught by private tutors and teachers from overseas, as well as games, e-textbooks and other materials.

1. Teaching unions being put on notice that if this scheme works, there will be far less need for teachers in future and concomitant reductions in staff will follow. I suspect this is the real reason why the unions are so reluctant to facilitate online teaching!

A national immersive online educational environment to be created- this would be a mix of recorded and live lessons taught by private tutors and teachers from overseas, as well as games, e-textbooks and other materials

How would that be collated and properly differentiated? And who would do it, given that in point (1) you just furloughed all the teachers?

And you’ll need to organise it immediately for all year groups all across all subjects.

Taxpayers' money should not be used to fund people who are choosing not to work to sit on their arses.

Have you read any of the thread?

I apologise for the caps but can I just say ...

I AM TEACHING YR 9, 10 and 12 CLASSES LIVE.

I AM SETTING WORK AND MARKING FOR ALL MY CLASSES.

I AM NOT SITTING ON MY ARSE.

I AM DOING THIS WHILST MY YOUNG CHILDREN AT HOME (but should not as that is a safeguarding issue in itself).

I AM LOSING MY FUCKING MIND.

A lot of private schools are doing this so they still get paid. I guess it could be ok but eventually there will be too many teachers off. Plus how many kids will actually sit there for that long anyway, not the smaller ones for sure.

I don’t teach in a private school.

motherrunner

It’s ok. Stormy is going to furlough us all and create a magical curriculum.

We can kick back. Tea?

My dc (now on Easter holidays) were doing a full school day or more every day last week. Their teachers were putting thorough and detailed work on Teams for every lesson, were available online responding to queries and marking work. Tell me why they shouldn't be paid! The school is quite rightly not doing video lessons for all the reasons stated above.

I teach a couple of days a week at a private school doing 1 to 1 lessons. I've been doing those by video link and they work fine. Because they are 6th formers, one at a time. Classes of 30 would be well nigh impossible.

@StormyClouds hilarious! You gave me a good laugh there - for a moment I thought you were serious.

We have been explicity forbidden (child protection) to do live lessons where students can see us and we them, and talking to 30 kids at the same time may be be a bit chaotic. But you do give it a go OP and let us know how it works.

Out of curiosity stormyclouds, what is it you do for a living? Are you Michael Gove?

I'm a solicitor @AWafferthinmint, so I've had to substantially adapt my way of working over the last few weeks. Our clients would simply go to one of our competitors otherwise- just like private schools, we have to meet their needs.

Because state schools have no need to do so, they can provide very little education at all for six months and their staff can sit on their arses watching telly and there is very little parents can do about it.

I'm astonished how little has come out of school so far. A few links to websites and a quick video from the head teacher.
Meanwhile I am trying to home educate my children and deal with my own professional job which has just got 10x more complex. I don't understand why they aren't producing anything.

Plus it was obvious for at least a month before lockdown began that it was only a matter of time, so why was no one planning for this?

Plus it was obvious for at least a month before lockdown began that it was only a matter of time, so why was no one planning for this?

School staff are already working at full capacity. Where would you suggest anyone would have had time to plan for a “possible” scenario?

It wasn’t actually that obvious until the week before - at which point school became an absolute nightmare because staff started having to self isolate and children started freaking out.

We found out about the closure at the same time everyone else did - at that point my school was running on the absolute bare minimum of staff.

I have no idea how hard it might have been changing your working practices- I wouldn’t dream of commenting on it.

Are you confident you know enough about operating a school to comment?

I'm not suggesting individual school staff needed to plan, but for no one in management or the department of education to have been planning for this - yes it was astonishingly short sighted.

Some schools in my country were doing live video lessons and a teacher complained on twitter about some dads being in the background without trousers on!

DD's teacher is doing a video call with each student tomorrow, the children have to read a story from their school book to her and I guess she will ask them questions and they have to answer, not really sure, it's the first time she's doing this.

I'm not suggesting individual school staff needed to plan, but for no one in management or the department of education to have been planning for this - yes it was astonishingly short sighted

How? What would that planning have looked like, given the speed at which this situation escalated?

It’s difficult to understand how complex schools are if you don’t work in one - I actually think that most schools have done a pretty good job responding to a totally unprecedented crisis.,

Our schools starting preparing seriously early in March, and were shut down on March 14th. They reopened with online learning on March 17th.

But they had already been using Google Classroom heavily already, and most teachers had got used to it. A few really didn’t use it until the shutdown forced them.

Almost all have been running classes on Google Hangouts - I know it’s been scary and challenging for them but it’s made the students’ experience much better.

Two weeks on they’re still working some stuff out.

Senior leadership has made a massive difference,

My kids are in primary school. They each have a learning pack that was sent home with daily activities, plus reading, daily challenges, numeracy and literacy booklets etc. They also have access to google classroom and purple mash where the teacher sets daily tasks to be completed online, they can leave messages for her and each other.

I don't think online lessons would work, certainly not for primary age kids with the mix of abilities/attention spans. Bit different for older kids I guess.

I'm quite glad to not have the pressure of them needing to be online at certain times- for one thing, they have to take it in turns with the laptop so couldn't both be online for a lesson at the same time.

They have been doing music lessons and speech & drama via skype and zoom - music works very well as 1:1, speech & drama works ok but it is max 6 kids - a class of 30 would be quite different!

Teachers are doing a brilliant job in tough circumstances, this is new for all of us and we are all learning as we go.