If blended learning was the thing for all of next academic year?

[porktangle]

www.thenational.scot/news/18454764.blended-learning-become-new-normal-schools-return/

This is obviously just an article and anything could actually change in the next year but I read this and suddenly the possible next academic year just hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know why it's taken until now tbh. I think I've just been thinking about June 1st mostly!

I could still work (I'm full time main earner) but husband couldn't so we'd have significant money problems after a few months. My son is autistic and wouldn't have his EHCP fulfilled. He's done reduced timetables before and they were a disaster, he ended up out of education for over a year.

If blended learning (half in school with social distancing, half at home remote learning) is for the next academic year.....how would you manage?

Your kid is smart, highmark

Oh, and yet another tourist business gone! Specialist Leisure Group went into administration today, loss of 2 hotels in the Loch Lomond area and some 70 jobs. But there will be lots of cash to pay for all this 'blended learning' malarkey with people having to lose their jobs because they're unable to cover childcare and several years of secondary pupils bomb their exams and/or can't continue their vocational training because 'oh, safety' and especially with Brexit and a huge gap between rich and poor due to fucked state education but hey, Covid-19.

Hard to be safe when your house is repossessed or you have to live in a house share with randoms for time indefinite because your earning potential was compromised by your education having been sacrificed for Covid-19. Or they decide to just fuck off somewhere else that might actually value its young people more.

Oh, that's 2,400 jobs in total just from the bust of Specialist Leisure Group. And it's happening every day. But we're all 'safe'. It's starting to sound like fucking District 12, 'where you can starve to death in safety'.

For the record I'm in secondary actively involved in the planning to get our year 10s back shortly and I'll be happily in there with them. So not against returning at all, quite the opposite!

However, the argument about teachers being worse off and shooting ourselves in the foot/not being needed etc. just isn't a credible one to take.

We are so understaffed as a professional group and class sizes have grown ridiculously in recent years. Funding has been significantly cut to the point where teacher buy a lot of things themselves to improve their classrooms and teaching. I would happily have some parents take their kids out of school to offer a 'better' education, will improve the education of the rest. But I wont be concerned in the slightest about my job.

The general public have bashed teachers for years to the point where, with respect, most of us care little about the opinions you have off us. We care deeply for your children but I get too many hostile emails and phone calls each day to care about how were perceived.

I'm positive about increasing student numbers over this term so that we are in a better place in September, so continue arguing for it by all means but find an argument that might resonate more with teachers rather than just how we better get back to teach or well be replaced.

If anything I think these past weeks have shown the opposite.

Two days on and I'm still furious about this nonsense.

I know our local council ARE working on plans for some sort of transition for P7 and the new P1 late in June, with perhaps one day back in primary and one day at the new secondary. Better than nothing.

But so far, the online provision from both primary and secondary has been abysmal. The local council have a blanket ban on ALL online content. No Zoom, Google classroom, MS teams videos. All the primary kids are getting is a .pdf uploaded on a Monday with a "do it if you can". Links to online sites like SumDog and reading comprehension sites. Nothing is getting marked. Secondary slightly better in that assignments are being looked at and feedback given. But zero real-time contact with a teacher.

If they are determined to persist with this ridiculous blended learning nonsense, they are going to have to seriously up their game. Parents round here aren't going to put up with their kids being short changed and are going to be very vocal about it.

@SockYarn I'm really worried about my child's academic future now. Start of secondary is pretty crucial and I'm no teacher. I want to be his mother, especially as it's just us. He's being so badly failed by this stuff and there's no need for it.

@iVampire You're right about the online education for vulnerable / shielding / shielding by proxy children. It has to be there. What I'm not sure is if it is better to provide it centrally (i.e. each borough) or individual schools.

I feel that if there was central provision, there might well be more continuity and quality control. Plus, there would presumably then be larger numbers of kids in each Year Group and they could have some online communication, pair work, group projects...

I’m concerned about transition too, esp as my son is autistic. His needs haven’t gone away just because of CV. CV will be a walk in the park compared to the wrath the council will feel off me if they let him down. I’m sharpening my pencil for (yet another) letter to the head of children’s services. With a special needs child you get used to having to have sharp elbows to get yourself heard.

My other child starts s3 this week and we haven’t even had any communication about whether he’s getting all the subjects he chose.

Locally the schools here are being made to make provision for year 6 to go in but there is no point as its year 4 & year 8 who transition to high school. No account for middle school areas.

@MoreW1ne

I don’t think it’s parents you need to be worried about. If online education becomes the norm longer term - the basic level that it is understood the state provides to all and this is accepted by teachers and the majority of parents as good enough. Do you really think the state will continue to fund teachers wages and pay for physical school buildings?

This has become the norm in my sector - I’m a junior doctor - funding for education of juniors has been cut over the last few years to non existent and it has slowly moved to online provision - national e learning programmes rather than small group teaching, it’s cheaper in time and resources and because we can do it aT home also means we can get on with work in the work day and then do our training in the evening. It’s also shit. It started off with the online content being offered as an extra for those that couldn’t make the face to face stuff and slowly has replaced it. Covid has killed off what little was still face to face - termly mentoring meeting and exams and their now online (as I I get an email from my supervisor and do a multiple choice exam and self assume the)with some noise about the fact it might stay that way forever as “it’s working so well”

Self assessment duh

We both work full time, it's been impossible to homeschool and wfh. Our jobs are very very busy all the time.

I suppose if it was proper, online, zoom type lessons with actual online teacher interaction whereby I pop a child in front of a laptop and then get on with my work whilst they do theirs it "could" work on a short term basis. But currently all my school does is upload suggestions of what our kids could research, and art project ideas and that is it. And frankly my kids hate that and they need an adult sat with them and we cant do that. They need proper teacher interaction.

It’s an expectations problem - even one dd who does have tasks set that she can access independently wants validation she’s doing the right things, her work checked, input at various points.

My Y6 daughter needs constant supervision to avoid going off track.

We have done some of the oak academy stuff, which I think is quite good, but she needs me there otherwise she wouldn’t pay proper attention.

I have actually enjoyed ‘teaching’ her, but I’ve had to almost completely ditch my NHS patients to do so. I tried ‘WFH’ but I found my DD was spending the whole day on her iPad and becoming low on mood. I decided she had to be my priority.

Kids are all different though aren’t they? My rider child at the same age would have Given it her full attention.

but the only possible way blended learning can work is if teachers are teaching from home! So still working and still being paid...

Not really. You could use some kind of resource like Oak National and just have everything centralized and standardized sent out to every household on a mass basis. Wouldn't take more than a single office-jul of people to sort out the provision for the whole country.

It would be shit but it would also not be any worse than what a lot of kids are getting at the moment. My nieces are at an excellent state school which has good provision and they are actually getting work looked at and feedback sent, at least. But I know some other families whose kids are just getting Twinkl worksheets and a bunch of links sent to them once a week.

(actually, though, you would need to print out stuff in paper form and physically pack it up and send it to those people who are not able to access online stuff. Which would require quite a lot of people. But you would not need to hire teachers to do that--just administrational workers.

This dystopian vision is emphatically NOT what I would want to see. But the point I am making is that the provision which some kids are getting isn't actually any better than this level of provision would be. Not blaming the teachers---I think SLT at some schools bear some responsibility though).