For those who want schools to go back..

[pfrench]

.. tell us how you think it should work. Primary or secondary.

In your ideal world.

How would social distancing be adhered to?
How about drop off and pick up?
How would classrooms operate?
How about lunchtimes and breaktimes?
What about after school childcare provision?
What about staff who are sheidling?
What about children who are sheilding?
What about staff who have family members who are sheilding?
Should only some children go back? Who should they be and why?

So many education and school experts on here, it will be interesting to read your safe solutions.

Yes i mean it either is safe doing online lessons or not. So shouldnt diverge between schools.
But anyway i would have recorded so no interaction and theres a record of whst the adult said etc

Re equipment a kindle is about £50. An amazon fire stick £30. Not sure if zoom etc on there but there is internet.
Tbh really need to be working towards all kids haing internet access anyway as online maths homework etc is very useful and really improved out school sats results

For a dare, not a date

The Corona coughing each other in that last week drove me nuts. And how am I supposed to be able to tell whether a cough is fake, a one off, or persistent in a class of them doing it?

My dcs school have simply recorded lessons and posted them on a google drive. You can watch them whenever and work through the lesson at your leisure. Literacy is reading a book to the children and then demonstrating writing on a lined piece of paper or for older pupils a PowerPoint on the screen to work through. On the last day of school they all went home with books so we use them to write in. You take a photo of work, download onto google drive in the folder- each child has their own, and get feedback.

Maths is a video of the teacher doing something practically, using objects for division or demonstrating a method of a worksheet for them to try.

What is the security and safeguarding issue with this?

I love the "simply" you use in your post in relation to a vast amount of work.

I understand why so many parents need schools to reopen to start working again.

But I wonder how will parents cope if schools are only open half days or one or two days a week? Surely reopening schools and not having a standardised practice among schools will result in employers suddenly having much higher expectations of it's workers being able to go in full time? All it takes is for the boss to have a child in a school which is open 5 days a week to therefore not tolerate staff who's children are only in half days etc. In some ways isnt it better to have a bigger plan in place, as other wise parents are still going to get the short straw. And that's without considering the impact that a lack of breakfast clubs/afterschool provision will have, are parents sure employers will be willing to allow them to work erratic hours, specially those who are currently able to work from home on full hours/pay. Would you take a pay cut willingly if you are only able to work 9-12 monday to friday? Or 2 days a week? Or would you rather provision to work at home be continued?

Secondly I really despise this attitude that, well only a few under 45 die. It dosent matter if 1000 people or 100 people are dying a day, If your loved one is one of those people, then its 1 too many. Even more so if your loved one is under 45 and has significant health risks, but once schools and employers start up again as the '12 weeks of sheilding' is technically over I imagine many people will be given very little leeway about returning to work/sending children to school. Some of these at risk families have had key workers move out the family home to protect the vulnerable members. I really hate this idea that someone's life is worth risking because it's not someone who you know personally or because they were unfortunate to be vulnerable in the first place. Its absolutely vile way of thinking. All human life has equal value, we shouldn't be expected to risk the lives of people for the convenience of others. There lives shouldn't be treated as secondary.

Yep either the government says it’s safe to do online lessons and therefore all schools are obliged to do them or it’s not safe and none should be doing them.

Tiger- making a 10 minute video talking to the camera, then reading a book or explaining an activity. Sometimes demonstrating it with random household objects. I don't see how it's overly complicated to be honest, no.

Delatron is bitesize or oakacademy no good for your kids age group.

I think schooling varies too mch generally. In yr r we had to work through all books. But only 2 a week. We could have read them all in 2w. Other schools provided 5+ books a week and some now have the same books online.

Anyway any kids fake coughing shouting corona should be expelled at secondsry level they know..
Calculator on phone

In secondary the only ones who need to go back are years 10 and 12 so let them go back - it will then be easy to socially distance etc

I really try to come up with solutions. I start thinking about practical solutions, like having three classes on one floor, one maths, one science, one English, and the teachers rotating, and then I think... how did the kids get there? How did we keep them distanced on the way up? Where did we line up the different classes outside?

And it is just completely impossible to get them to maintain 2m or even 1m whilst they are doing this. At least, not with anywhere near the volume of students people want us to do it with. It takes us about 20 minutes to get students from a single year group to line up and come into an exam, and they crowd up. It's really hard to make them stand in a straight line and keep the classes apart. Same goes when we have fire drills. They're just not going to do it, not at all. And I keep coming back to this:

If students can pass on the virus at anywhere near the rate adults do, and if the infection mortality rate of this virus is anywhere near 1%, schools cannot open. They really can't. We need to sort out those ifs. Or we need to get cases right, right down and be ready to close entire schools down if they get a positive case, tracking and tracing like there's no tomorrow.

Not because the children are at risk, not because the teachers are at risk, but because the whole shebang will go tits up, economy, country, death rate, the lot, if those ifs aren't sorted. It would suck to have kids at home until we controlled transmission within schools, but it would suck a lot more to have exponential growth, overloaded hospitals, and an inability to keep the death rate even to 1% due to lack of available treatment.

I think it's quite possible that children do pass the virus on less then adults. I think it's quite possible that the IFR is more in the 0.4% range than the 1% range. The thing is, I am willing to spend another month or two making sure that is actually the case, rather than just ploughing ahead and finding out I am wrong because everything gets completed fucked up.

Cases in this country are declining. When cases get low enough, we get a whole new set of options open to us, New Zealand style. If we bottle it before we get low enough, and the cases skyrocket again, it will be much, much more costly to the economy to have to do it all again than it would be to continue lockdown a little longer the first time around. Cases rise exponentially, but the fall is far slower. You don't want to have to do it twice.

There was a poster a while back who kept saying "More haste, less speed" until people got really sick of it. I think it's absolutely the right saying for the moment, though.

My daughters school is split so there’s only y10/11 in the whole site.

Y11 have left, so Y10 effectively have the site to themselves. Crazy not to have them in.

To address the moving around challenge, would it work if timetables were consolidated in some way so maybe Y11 does maths all day on Monday while Y10 do English all day and Y9 do science all day etc? It would need extra breaks I'm sure to break up the content. Maybe the day could be shorter too if there's less time lost moving around the building.

Might mean a core curriculum only for a while and options might be difficult to accommodate I guess.

It's not ideal but it solves a problem and there's no easy solution anyway.

(First I mean. Not now!)

Planning it. Preparing the lesson, preparing the "script" (or, if you don't prepare, redoing the video when it goes wrong), selecting the right place for the recording, getting the IT ready, stopping again when your own dc wander in demanding a snack, previewing the whole thing and uploading it. Basically it the time to prepare a lesson plus 30 mins or so to do the video part. How many of these a day/week should be made?

Oh god, if students wear masks, coughing is going to become the new humming, isn't it?

Yup

And humming and everything else will get worse as well...

I'm also trying to imagine a fairly low ability year 9 class being stuck in one room, sat down, doing maths all day, and not allowed to run around with their mates to let off steam.
Not allowed to borrow equipment.
Nope, nothing will go wrong with that.....

But I expect it's less work or about the same then physically preparing the lesson if they were at school as normal anyway. The videos started off being a bit ropey but by week 4 they are getting better and probably taking the teacher less time.

Friends who are working from home and home schooling are working all hours. Home schooling in the day and working in evenings or where can during the day. I don't think it's a stretch to ask teachers to work a few hours a day best they can around their own responsibilities as the majority of people are having to do so. But bare in mind I am taking about teachers who aren't in school working with key workers children. Obviously those are different.

Rather than teaching several lessons a day by one teacher my dcs teachers are teaching two lessons each on a daily basis plus a few weekly videos of them reading a book. So if there are two classes per year group, one does literacy and science on one day, the other numeracy and P.E another day etc as they do a different 'topic' lesson a day.

1981m, we ARE working fulltime. I have 200 students that I have responsibility for. I monitor their work, I spend half my day preparing material for people who have no PC access, solving problems, putting work online, monitoring uptake, marking work, and the other half calling round my students. I may only be working 45-50 hours per week, as opposed to the 60-70 I usually work, but you know what? I shouldn't have been working those hours in the first place.

AND I have two primary aged kids myself.

I imagine that's primary? Secondary students would have many, many videos to watch. You are missing out that lots and lots of hours are spent feeding back to the children (at my school anyway) we give feedback to each pupil every week. I don't think it would be like preparing a regular lesson at all, and fortunately am in an area where we aren't allowed to do video lessons so I won't find out.
I do see hearing a story read by your primary teacher would be nice for little ones.

I don't think it's a stretch to ask teachers to work a few hours a day best they can around their own responsibilities as the majority of people are having to do so

WTF is it you think we’re doing? I am teaching from 8:30 - 3:30 online as per my normal timetable. I am marking at least 2 hours a day. And then planning which is sadly massive because many of my existing resources simply do not lend themselves to online learning. And I am a single parent with 3 kids at home who need supervising and educating. What the fuck more do you people want from us?

1981m

You are aware that we are also working 'all hours' and around our own children, aren't you?

I spend around 2 - 2.5 hours a day on the phone just talking to parents and children. I was on the phone to a parent last week for nearly an hour. And that's before I get onto planning/preparing school work; responding to children's emails; marking work and providing feedback and writing reports etc. Oh and doing my day in school with key worker children.

I really don't know where this idea comes from that teachers don't do any work!

Other countries are already opening schools. Maybe check out how they're doing it.