Can’t see how children will be able to go back to school in 2021

[Ouchy]

Let’s face it. The R0 may not be controlled for months. Vaccine unlikely until 2021. Teaching unions up in arms. People unwilling to accept the risk of the virus (low for many). I’m getting more and more concerned and the government haven’t published any forward plans for how school can be restarted in the various scenarios we may be facing come September (have they?). What on earth are the DfE and the Education Secretary doing during the working week if they’re not planning this stuff? Is there something I’ve missed - am I mistaken? I’m getting more and more concerned. The children are low risk - there needs to be a plan and fast as their educations and social development are being kind of ignored for something they’re super low risk for as individuals themselves. Looking for reassurance really - am I mistaken or being silly?

Yeah but yeah but yeah but ...

@JimmyGrimble two of my children have mental health issues and I didn't find it insulting. On the contrary the lack of contact from school (zero contact) and the lack of education from school has exacerbated those issues and therefore seeing teachers dismiss the impact is infuriating.

Blackbear

I Hope your right.

My kids school which and Y1 and y6 back is “teaching” y6 by sitting them all at individual desks with laptops In the hall where they then do the home learning on the internet. Questions via IM.

In a way it’s good as it’s innovative way to get them all back and distanced and deal with the fact the teachers shielding. But it’s a touch dystopian and then - well why not send that work to another schools y6 as well and then another.....and then get someone with a DBS on minimum wage to be in the hall and make sure there all alive.

My uni degree started of normal - lectures and tutorials. Then there were too many of our to fit into the lecture theatre so they put the lectures online For those that didn’t fit, apparently it was popular as you could watch at your convenience so they realised they could save money by having them all online and not hire a venue. Tutorials were in person until a massive building project did for the electricity for 3 weeks and tutorials were replaced with online q and a, apparently they were popular as well and so the tutorials never came back f2f either. Exams were written essays but apparently this was “inconsistent” as multiple examiners were needed and people complained so they were replaced by computer marked Multiple choice tests. So by the end I had a course that could be delivered remotely. It was also pretty shit but delivered the basics.

If I was a cash strapped government and I thought I could educate kids to a basic standard cheaply I would. One big room and some minimum wage goons keeps them off the street and the parents in work and only one qualified teacher per year group needed nationally - fantastic! Of course the rich(er) can pay for whatever fancy face 2 face stuff they like.

I'm spending my days preparing and narrating PowerPoints for a range of classes plus other things. Also helping my own child with her work as a single parent. And I am grieving the death of a relative who we were unable to visit in hospital and whose funeral I was unable to attend last week. So yes, I would like a bit of slack for not answering student/ parent emails within a day , thankfully I have reasonable parents who understand I'm not just their child's teacher but am juggling other things. Still doing my best but recent events have nearly tipped me over the edge. The cold hearted responses on here are shocking.

Sorry for your troubles twerk but if you look at some of these threads feeling bored and missing friends equals a mental health crisis. And you and me know that’s not true don’t we?

(Flumposie)

I work in a psychiatric hospital, so I’m pretty well up on mental heath issues. I’ve been there for 9 years, prior to which, I worked in CAMHS.

I am astonished at the extent to which mental health has been thrown under the bus.

Mental health was thrown under the bus way before this.

@flumposie but... some of us have children that haven't heard from their teacher once since lockdown. Not once.

So if you have been struggling with all of that and still communicating with your pupild then surely you can see why we are perplexed and annoyed by the absolute radio silence for so many of our children.

*It's all well and good saying outbreaks in schools but is that proof children are passing it to teachers? Or are teachers passing it amongst themselves?

Presumably we will never know?

And in one week there's been 15 outbreaks (what consists of an outbreak? 2 cases? 20? 100?) In the whole of the UK..... *

My son goes to a special school. We had a letter from them informing us one one suspected case, one case is considered an outbreak.

@NeverTwerkNaked that is a fair comment.I just wanted to highlight how we never really know what people are dealing with behind the scenes.

Nonotthatdr I kind of see what your thinking but can't see it to that extent.

What I can see is some form of 21st century text books, ebooks courses presented online. But within a classroom environment.

Paper text books went out of fashion because of cost, curriculum changing too quickly, teachers then turned to twinkl and printing tons of worksheets. I can imagine online books which could be updated annually

as long as the kids get taught maths ,reading ,writing they can catch up on everything else

The economy has to restart. The furlough scheme is being phased out over the next couple of months. Employers will need employees who can’t successfully work from home, back into the workplace. Schools will have to reopen properly for this to happen.

It’s interesting reflecting on the views on parents. There are some who say it’s too soon; we don’t know enough yet and then there are some who say life has to continue her the kids back in school. The problem is that everyone latches onto the info that suits their position. There isn’t any real scientific evidence regarding what extent children transmit the disease, although we know they most likely get it mildly. Although children haven’t really been exposed to it massively and they haven’t been together in groups since the middle of march. We don’t know then their ability to pass that on to others and adults and those in the community who might catch it and die. And that’s not just the elderly or seriously ill, it’s people who are leading normal loves but have a health condition. Lots of people agreed to protect those people when we went in to lockdown but now they’ve had enough their view has changed and suddenly those people don’t matter any more. People are concerned about the impact this has on children’s mental health, which in some cases is an exaggeration, in others it is not, but it is not the sole responsibility of schools to support these pupils. Unfortunately many people see schools as responsible for everything and are happy to bash them down at any opportunity. Schools are not just closed because the teachers don’t want to work or are being ott about risk but some just do not have space for the children to use. The half in on a rota has been advised against strongly by the government and now schools are stuck with no spare spaces for any other children to return. It’s a mess but that’s a pandemic for you!

They need to be treating secondary and primary schools the same. Those of us working in primary with kids in secondary just aren’t going to be able to leave them unsupervised indefinitely , we’re just not. Secondary aged kids seemed to have been very much forgotten and I suspect it’s because of childcare/ work issues with primary.

@Sittingontheveranda

If I'm in as a teacher full time and planning/marking for the kids who are at home I'll be doing two jobs.

Surely you usually plan and mark for the whole class. Why are you talking about doing two jobs?

Teaching remotely is entirely different from teaching in person. Otherwise right now I'd be in the garden sunning myself like everyone thinks I am. What I've planned for in person last year has too be adapted for remote this year. And if in Sep I'm teaching remotely and in person that's two sets of planning. (Current planning and marking for remote is taking about 40 hours, so less than I normally do but still enough to justify my salary - add on my normal hours and I won't have time to sleep)

@twinnywinny you are absolutely right. Schools are desperate to go back and will do their best but here are some of the issues under the current guidelines.
Not enough classroom space to socially distance according to guidelines.
Not enough teachers. Most state schools have classes of about 30. If 12 is the max as is the case in Europe, each class must be divided by 3, so 2 extra teachers per class. The only way to do this is to have the pupils in once or twice per week. The teachers would be face to face teaching all the time, which then leaves no time for live or videoed lessons.
IT in schools is usually very, very poor. In my school, teachers’ laptops are 6 years old. At any time, around 25% of teachers have a malfunctioning laptop : issues can be minor, such as a non-functioning camera, or major, such as no programmes loading. All of this means that the equipment for making and delivering video or live lessons is simply not there in many schools. I imagine private schools have the funds to avoid these issues.
To deliver video or live lessons a teacher must have a quiet room, free from distractions. For all those calling for full days of live online lessons, consider these points: many teachers live in relatively small houses without this quiet space ( we have been forbidden to make recordings in bedrooms as this is seen as inappropriate and tbh I’m not keen on my teenage pupils seeing my bedroom); many teachers are women with young children who will not have the luxury of 5 uninterrupted hours during the day, even if they have the space.
Furthermore, in most school catchments families do not have up to 3 laptops per household. Many do not have any. How will pupils join in live sessions if their brother has the family laptop? Many, many pupils in my school have phones not laptops; very often these have cracked screens so are not ideal for working on.

If your child has had no contact from the school I would complain, as I know that staff at my own secondary school of 1600 pupils have spoken to every single child, the majority have had regular welfare checks from tutors and all have had responses to work submitted. The online provision is very high quality( it’s my job to check it all) and some pupils are really thriving. Some, however, have not engaged at all despite tutor encouragement.
On top of that, teachers are on a rota in 2 hubs: the primary to Year 7 hub is staffed mainly by our secondary teachers and the vulnerable pupil hub at our secondary school is staffed by up to 6 teachers a day.
I am SLT so spend more time in video calls and organisational tasks than marking and teaching but I have been really impressed by the staff in our school. I am not working anywhere near the hours I usually work, but that is because I usually work 50 hours a week. What this time has really shown me is how much of my working day is spent on dealing with and resolving disciplinary issues rather than educational ones. The lack of confrontation in my job has removed half my workload 😀

But if it's so difficult for teachers to teach online why are they not demanding schools reopen fully? There are plenty of supply teachers who could full the gaps if permanent staff are off. Teachers are thinking of themselves (which is fair enough) but their refusal to return to work is affecting parents because they can't rely on grandparents to help and can't take their children to school.
How,many children are going to end up on the breadline before action is,taken? How many children will leave school with no qualifications due to school not opening? Exams won't change because some children will have been allowed to go to school.
Teachers unions have had since March to talk to the government, head teachers have had since March to put a working plan in place. Why has it all been left until now to suddenly decide they can't do it?
Our children have been so let down. I'm not a teacher so why with no qualifications am I suddenly expected to be able to teach 2 secondary age children? Its,like giving a teacher a text book and telling them to perform an operation. We wouldn't do that, so.why is every parent expected to suddenly be able to teach every subject from reception to Y13.

One thing that worries me about all of this is that where I am the year groups that aren't back are roaming around the streets in under supervised gangs.

If they're not in school there's a lot of kids who aren't home learning. And what sort of trouble are they going to start getting into.

That's before you start with the inequality gap that's just going to get wider and wider.

It's shit all round.

Teachers aren’t refusing to go back. Where did you get that from?

They can’t go back because guidelines have been set by the government. There has been years of underfunding and squashing kids into tiny classrooms. This means schools can’t accommodate the instructions.

The only way schools will get back to normal is if most of the guidelines are scrapped ie an end to 2 metre rule, own desks, staggered day....

They need to be treating secondary and primary schools the same

This is the last thing they should do. The issues faced by a primary with c. 200-400 pupils are very different from a secondary with 1800 pupils. Nothing is the same except that both involve under 19s.

@Rosebel
If teachers can go back to full schools with no social distancing, surely grandparents can look after young children.
Believe me, plans are in place but we have to keep changing them according to government directives. I am currently working on 2 versions of a part time timetable: one for class sizes of 15 ( relatively manageable) and one for class sizes of 10 to 12 ( nightmare). I have no idea what the guidelines will be for September so I have to guess. I could spend days constructing a timetable ensuring a maximum of 12 per class only to find a third don’t attend and I could have planned for more in a class.
Clearly secondary aged pupils who are currently free- range in the community are not going to observe social distancing rules in corridors or outside so we are planning hard to try to keep them apart through timing and rooming but it’s a logistical nightmare that probably won’t work. Well give it a go though.

For those jumping up and down about vulnerable pupils, do you really think they are going to attend? They have been entitled to attend right through but less than 2% have done. That isn’t going to change

Teachers unions have had since March to talk to the government

The government has had since March to talk to the unions.

Fixed that for you.