Will secondary schools go back over everything when school restarts as some kids won't have done much during lockdown?

[SlinkyDogg]

My son & daughter are in secondary school, years 9 & 7.
My daughter does everything she's asked to do but my son does very little despite our encouragement pleading.
He's perfectly bright but lacks motivation/self discipline.
Will the school go back over everything when they return or will they assume kids have kept up?

We won't have time to go over everything. It's going to be painful

That's not what I wanted to hear.

That's why my dd high school are sending work out via emails for her to do.

If he's in year 9 he really needs to keep up or he'll be at a disadvantage. If he's the year 7 child then it's not quite so important.

My school is only setting revision work for KS3 so that they’ll all be in the same place when they get back.

Schools that have set new learning (and Y10s and Y12s at my place) will have to assess when they get back and decide what to do. But there certainly isn’t time to teach the summer term’s work again and teach the next year’s stuff. If new work has been set, then the kids who haven’t done it properly will be at a disadvantage.

I am surprised your ds is getting away with doing nothing. Don't the teachers check the work? Follow up with the students?

Not in the UK but imagined it would be the same.

My dd (14) has to scan (or photograph) and submit by email quite a bit of her work for evaluation so there is absolutely no way she could get away with not working even if she wanted to. Also she gets regular emails from her teachers responding to questions and when she hasn't been in touch for a while about school work a couple of her teachers have just emailed just to check in with her and to ask how she is and how she is managing with lockdown.

My ds in only 9 and in primary, so doesn't have to complete and submit work but they are encouraged to send work or photos which gets put on the school blog with lots of praise and the teacher has been very supportive and encouraging and offered phone call support for parents and children.

Not what you want to hear but looking at how much work has been covered already and how much more time this will go on I can't believe they will have time to go back over it. It would be a mockery of all the time and effort the teachers are putting in to create distance learning lessons not to mention boring for the kids that have already done it.

You should have some support from the school to manage this though. Maybe you could contact your sons teacher and get them to point out how important this work is.

My year 9 has had work to do, and asked to submit some, but has had zero work marked, feedback, or individual contact. Much of the work has been to watch videos, or do extended projects. I've made him do all the work, plus extra online or in revision books (I stocked up on ebay before lockdown), but there is no way hes had two weeks plus homework of actual work.

Look I understand why you are asking OP. As a teacher,albeit primary not secondary, I can tell you that this has come completely out of the blue for us as it has for the rest of the country. It was completely unforseen so we are taking a day at a time like everybody else. When it gets nearer the time when we can reopen, we will use our expertise to work out what to do with the kids when we get back bur we're certainly not at the stage where that is what we are thinking about at the moment.

Schools won't have time to go through work for GCSE in detail again. So students in Y10 would probably be really disadvantaged if they don't do any work. I am sure the Government will have to make some changes for next year's GCSEs, but while we are waiting for that information we are encouraging DS to do all work set (has been given some work to do in the holiday).

I'm assuming where feasible some topics will be missed out in KS3 and below.

So OP if lockdowns continue in to September (and I think there is a possibility there will be another lockdown later in the year ) your son will have to be more motivated as he will then be in Y10

I am sure the Government will have to make some changes for next year's GCSEs

Do not hold your breath.

They’ll use the usual mechanism of grade boundaries to ensure that the right proportion of kids gets each grade. I’m betting that’s it.

There's going to have to be some kind of solution. We cannot expect this year's year 10 to sit their GCSEs next year and use the same mark schemes if they miss over a term of work. I teach maths, and the proportion of children who can teach themselves how to solve circle theorems, or prove congruency in triangles without support is minimal. This coming term is where we teach a huge proportion of the level 7-9 material. A few of the lvl 9 students may well be able to teach themselves, but the majority will not be able to access the work at the level they should be stretching to at this point.

I think we will have to choose between either accepting lower grade boundaries or ... possibly delaying next year's exams until 6 weeks later to give them a bit more time? I don't know how that would work with getting the results back in time, though. But making them resit a year seems extremely harsh.

This is all just pure conjecture, though. Your guess is as good as mine.

That's going to be tough @noblegiraffe when there will be questions on the exam paper where pupils won't have actually studied the topic.

if they miss over a term of work.

They’re not supposed to be on holiday though, they are supposed to be studying.

I know it won’t be as good as actually being taught.

Teacher friends of mine say they simply don't know and tbh I don't see how anyone can know.

No one even knows when schools will go back so any kind of detailed planning for the future is next to impossible imo.

You should have some support from the school to manage this though. Maybe you could contact your sons teacher and get them to point out how important this work is. I'm not sure what a teacher can do in a phone call that parents can't do when they are in the same house.

Realistically, there's no way they possibly can. How could they? Unless they do more hours when then go back (not fair on teachers) or reduce curriculum. If they've been told to do it, and some don't, it would also be really unfair on those who've done it to have to redo it. Not what you want to hear op - but, he's going to have to do it, like it or not.

Year 9 I suppose could be an interesting one based on if the school has started the GCSE program? I know some schools don’t start any GCSE work until Year 10 and some start in Year 9.

Maths, English and Science are the subjects which will take biggest hit IMO because essentially they role on.....I remember leaning trigonometry for example in Year 9 and it come up again in different formats in the GCSE course - if it hadn’t been learnt in Year 9, it would need additional lessons in Year 10 to learn how to use trigonometry before it could be applied. Likewise something like algebraic equations get harder and harder as you go up the system, so jumping a load will make life very hard.
Likewise science, and English. Miss the modules in Year 9 and there will be gaps as time goes on. Suddenly there’s GCSE questions on how to dissect poetry and yet that whole concept got missed due to a term out of school.

Some subjects will be dropped by a lot of children. Or the subject changes.
Take History for example. I loved history. But the topics were not the same. Summer of Year 9 I remember being about Nazi Germany. Then the GCSE course began and the first topic was all about the history of Medicine. So the skill set of examining resources and such was there but the topic was completely different, so missing some of the previous year wasn’t going to have such a big impact.

Languages will take a huge hit. A lot of vocabulary will be missed in a term.

I’m not dissing any subject btw, they are all important. But different subjects will take different hits in the next results wave.

I’m in an infant school. Our children in reception who could barely blend will likely return to Year 1 still unable to blend simple words. Because many of these go hand in hand with parents who don’t worry about doing much reading at home.
We’ve been told to set all the work, Mark what comes back with feedback, so for example “we’ll done Tom, that was great. Tomorrow I would like you to remember to use your finger spaces / use your capital letters / keep you’re writing on the line etc. But we aren’t to chase because parents are all in such different circumstances and, like homework, reading etc you can’t force parents to help.

Don’t worry. I’m a secondary teacher and I’ll be picking up where we left off, and going at a slightly quicker pace to make up time.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the curriculum is slightly curtailed to include core skills and possibly drop some additional assessed coursework for year 10. It’s tight as it is to fit it all in, bottom line though they need to work as hard as they can at home.

There's going to have to be some kind of solution.

Yes, as they always do, they'll "fiddle" (standardise) the results so that the "right" number get each grade. So if the cohort as a whole do a lot worse, the grade boundaries will be reduced so that the same, say 5% (or whatever) get the grade 9, the next 10% get grade 8 and so on.

If you look at past grade boundaries, they can vary enormously from year to year, which is usually explained by the exam being harder/easier, but in reality also covers up a particularly bright or poor cohort and smooths out the consequences of events like Covid.

Pupils who actually put the effort in to keep up and do work on their own are highly likely to achieve a better mark/ranking and hence maybe go over a grade boundary to get a grade higher than normal, simply because others won't have put the effort in so will get a lower or expected grade.

Are there many GSCEs that still have assessed coursework?

Yes, Art, History, Geography, Health & Social (50% coursework), Technology, Welsh Baccalaureate (completely coursework), standardised experiments in science (10% of the total grade), English (speaking and listening).

There are probably more but can’t remember off the top of my head.

Just to clarify, the required practicals in science don't require any coursework to be done at GCSE level, and they are assessed via exams. This is one thing we will definitely have to go back over when students are back in school- even though in theory it is allowed to show them a video or an online simulation (the requirement of the course is that they are "exposed" to the practical).

For schools that do a 2 year GCSE in science, and schools that do triple in the normal number of lessons, the timetable for getting through content is very tight, so we won't be able to go over things again for Y10 especially. For KS3 it's obviously different, and all important concepts will be repeated at GCSE level.

FWIW, my department have switched the order of teaching so that in the summer term we do the GCSE topics most suited to home learning. The aim is to not have to go over everything again in the autumn term, as there simply isn't time, but we do build in time for revision for Y11- so we could aim to reteach some content then, but this would come at the expense of other revision lessons.

It depends on the school. If they’re just setting revision, then your ds will be fine. However, if they’re covering new topics, then they won’t be going over them. It will be assumed they know it and they will be given help with specific aspects of the work they found difficult to understand. It will be very obvious to the teacher which child tried but didn’t grasp a specific concept. The lazy ones who don’t bother will be expected to catch up in their own time, either via homework or independent study. If they don’t and then fail tests, then it’s their own problem. If there has been an issue with health, inability to access computers, teachers will of course help as much as they possibly can. They will know which camp your child falls into based on the normal attitude to learning, whether they approach the teacher to explain the situation and whether they complete all class work and catch up homework set upon the schools reopening. There just won’t be time to go over everything.

I wonder if some schools will start giving some GCSE work to Y9s next term to give them a little bit of a head start just in case there is further disruption from September