How long do you reckon the schools will be shut for?

[Forfoxsake29]

and if they are shut for a long time, how will they
Cope with things like children starting school September, gcses, alevels, uni etc

Yes I know teachers are not daft. I'm saying the children are 14 weeks behind. They have set plans for every single term. How can a teacher make up for 420 hours plus of missed education on top of the next academic year?

Also teachers have never been in this position before.

They won't be able to make up time. Maybe KS1-4 testing will have to be revised for the cohorts impacted?

Year 11s are finished so there's no reason year 6s can't start year 7. Then years 8-10 can also catch up for a couple of months too.

When do you want this couple of months to happen?

I think you are going to be seriously disappointed if you think schools will be opening before September.

All of the stuff you’ve said is lovely, but this is a pandemic of disastrous proportions-very little will be the same when the children go back.

I don’t think they’re expecting them to be behind

My kids have been sent everything they would have been taught in the next 12 weeks - resources, worksheets, online links inc dates to be sent to teacher. Also the school will be assessing them at end of each half term as normal.

At the moment though schools are actually still open and sending out work

There is no definitive answer though because no one actually knows. China is slowly opening up now and schools will slowly restart - that has been 2 months. Yes another wave may come but they are better prepared for it and will be willing to shutdown again

Why should we be 6 months

If schools don't return until September, then they should return to the classes they were in before. So reception class back into their reception class at least until the following January when the new school year should start. I still hope May or June though.

I think August ( Scotland )

I think September. The peak may be May or June, so I don't think school can be open before that.

September - our school when it was announced they were closed cancelled everything in June and has said we say goodbye to our year 11s and wish them well in 6th form.

September.

@onedaymyluckwillchange

no I dont think they will from a letter from out school it said the following

The Government’s priority is now to ensure affected pupils can move on as planned to secondary school.

1. Representatives have confirmed that they expect schools to be flexible and do all they can to support pupils and ensure

they can progress to the next stage of their education.

I think we also need to remember that school holidays may not be set in stone - if things are looking ok in August they wont wait until September

In all the modelling though the first stage is between 3-5 months before it is relaxed. It just depends on how it goes and how brutal you are.

If schools don't return until September, then they should return to the classes they were in before

In theory this makes sense but what do you do with the rising 5s who are meant to start school? No room for them at nurseries or with childminders. I think they will just have to make allowances next year for GCSE and A levels ie less content but same difficulty. It doesn't quite work for languages but for something like history you could just leave out a block of content and not examine it. And from 2022 it will be fine (hopefully).

I don't think they are expecting kids to be behind, the idea is kids are still learning. Obviously unprecedented so who knows but expect them to start where they should have been. If it goes past September and learning has dropped they might need to rethink.

September is hopeful/wishful

@haplap yes maybe but all the current modelling and sciencific papers give it an inital 3-5 month lockdown with it then going in cycles of on and off.

They will want this first stage to be as short as possible but as effective as possible but they need to get a lot set up at this point in terms of testing and tracing for when they are relaxed

Until at least september, nobody is listening. Parks full of families.

If schools don't return until September, then they should return to the classes they were in before

No-that would create a massive amount of work for the teacher to change year groups unnecessarily. The curriculum/schemes/topics/resources are v different and would be a real waste of time for the tracer to have to change for no sensible reason-especially EYFS to KS1.

Whoever said teachers have set plans is obviously not a teacher! All classes are completely different so planning is different every year. They will have to adapt teaching but this is nothing they don’t do every year to meet the needs of their class .

I don't think anyone knows - I know our Head was totally in the dark an hour before the closure announcement when I spoke to her.

I'm hoping they'll do the relax restrictions, slight peak, re-restrict pattern predicted by the original model so we might get periods of closures rather than a solid block closure so we might get back for a period late-May/early-June even if they then have to close early for the summer again. That's my personal hope but I'm no epidemiologist or statistician.

It would be drastic, but they could move the school year from January to December instead of Sept to July. I know it would bugger up summer holidays though. That way, new intake could start in January and DC who missed the last term could make up the three months.

Schools are distance teaching so they don’t need to change anything

Kids should be getting access to all the work they would have done in class and as such cover the syllabus

From a completely selfish point of view as a primary teacher who will be continuing to work, including over the Easter and probably May holidays, I am hoping I get some kind of break, even if not the full 6 weeks. I am fully prepared to cover childcare for key workers in the holidays but the thought of no break at all is hard. I also think it's highly likely many of us will catch the virus if we are working in schools the whole time.

Do you not have a choice to work Easter as seems unfair

Kids should be getting access to all the work they would have done in class and as such cover the syllabus/

I'm afraid this is wishful thinking. I teach KS1. Online learning is not going to keep this age group up-to-speed with the curriculum, even assuming they all do the work. I'm fairly certain some of my pupils will spend the coming months playing computer games.