There needs to be national guidelines on minimum standards of work and expectations for each year group to mitigate the problems with inconsistency, just as there is for in school learning.
It should be up to schools to determine how they’re met and monitored, but not the level and nature of work that is provided. What’s the point in having a national curriculum that isn’t universally implemented for what could be nearly a year?
Given that Ofsted are not carrying out inspections there are well qualified teams of people available who should be used to go into school and help them with their delivery plans. It would do no harm to include Covid provision in the next ofsted inspection reports as it really does say a lot about the school and the SLT. I think too many schools thought this was just going to be a few weeks and so didn’t really matter, they will be at a huge disadvantage to the ones who put long term measures in from the very beginning. Quite frankly there should also be penalties for teachers and schools that are not delivering minimum standards, whether that’s requiring extra work to be provided to make up for lost time in holidays or other measures, children shouldn’t be subject to this lottery. Of course children can’t be forced to work but materials should be there for people who can and want to, and schools aware of families who can’t / don’t.
I don’t understand why either more work hasn’t been provided through online platforms where possible (why are some schools only now starting to explore who has access) or else through decent workbooks and activity packs sent to homes. It’s not like the whole curriculum has to be rewritten (former teacher here). There are also web resources for pretty much every lesson in every year in every subject that might need supplementing, once again I know this from experience so it’s not like all of it has to be done from scratch. For many parents like myself, trying to look after two children of different ages whilst juggling FT work is impossible and we need the support of school through well structured and meaningful activities to manage the day. Many teachers complain they have children at home too, but they have the option of sending their children in as key workers, most parents don’t have that choice. The point is, it’s no good anyone getting defensive, we all have to work together. Parents don’t have a union protecting them against unmanageable demands, and it’s perfectly reasonable for their lives to be structured around children being both in school during term time, and being educated. We also have to be conscious that the way these weeks and months pan out will shape the relationship between schools, children and parents for possibly years to come.
We all need to put the work into getting it right everywhere and supporting each other, no matter what we expected from either our formal contract as teachers or our informal contract as parents.
So nope, I don’t think schools will be going back in any recognisable form in September. But we have the time to make sure that our kids education is not unrecognisable at the end of it.