National education recovery plan

[hayfeverhellish]

Just seen what the NEU have proposed to government - blended learning for the next academic year which just horrifies me actually. I get why it's needed but my autistic son will not cope with this as we need to work while he's at school. There's much more in this plan that just seems very unachievable in the next 5 weeks before the schools close for summer.

neu.org.uk/press-releases/coronavirus-national-education-recovery-plan

OP is spot on that part time learning will also impact heavily on teacher numbers as many teachers have their own children.

Interesting that people are proposing empty community buildings should be used to enable schools to re-open. A few problems:

1. There are 24,000 schools in England and 8.77m children in them. In groups of no more than 15, we need at least 585,000 spaces to teach them, which is at least 250,000 more than we have. To give a sense of scale - there are 10,000 village halls in England.

2. To run school properly, these spaces need to include early years facilities, science labs, DT suites, art rooms etc. There may be some such spaces vacant outside schools, but there won't be many.

3. In secondary schools at least, moving between specialist spaces is key to teaching the curriculum. Movement of large groups of young people between different locations in a town is presumably a huge problem for Covid transmission

4. Most importantly, staffing is as much of a constraint as space. With at least 585,000 groups of no more than 15 and at least 10% non-contact time, we need at least 650,000 teachers. There are 450,000 people teaching in England. Some of them are clinically vulnerable, so we need about 250,000 extra teachers if children are to be taught in groups of no more than 15. There is no realistic way of getting that number of additional qualified people into schools.

The reality is: we will not be able to open schools fully to all pupils until the public health advice is that it is safe to teach in groups of up to 30. That is what schools have the space and staffing to do.

I hope we do get that advice clearly and unambiguously for September. We'll need it early enough to plan. It will need to be explained to parents and to staff working in schools. We will need a united message about safety from experts and across the political spectrum.

That's from Jon Coles on Twitter.

The key issue is messaging and untrustworthy government.

We're not following the science, the government are making shit up on the fly. We all know it. They are lying about it, and are STILL lying about mistakes they made back in March.

By September they will have decided that it's fine to be in groups of 30 or more. Schools in Wales and Scotland will be doing something different, so already we've got two nations with stronger leadership making different decisions. Why would English parents or teachers or teaching unions then believe Johnson?

Expect further massive issues with this.

agree the whole issue of part time schooling and working parents/key workers is a minefield. I am a doctor, DH is a teacher. We will need full time places for our dc in Sept. However we have been told if they go into a key worker group (if there even is one!) then they would not be allowed to also join their own years on the days they may be in. Year groups will be having teaching, key worker groups wont. So our children would be massively disadvantaged and would be basically being penalised for our jobs. Which is fairly shit to be honest since both of our jobs have become even more horrendoues than they already were and we have both been working full time throughout this whole thing. If there was any way we could manage financially (we can't!) I would leave my job immediately.

They really have no fucking clue, do they? I’d like to say this was unbelievable but it’s right on brand.

I’d be happy with alternate week in school / week of home learning at this stage. It would be better then nothing and I’d just like the certainty of some sort of plan.

The other thing not being considered is that if staff are teaching full time in aug/ sept then who is going to organise/ set and mark the online blended work? Teachers can't work in classrooms full time and also provide what they're doing full time at the moment. There are no answers to that from SMT or the unions at the moment. Most informal discussions are suggesting that any blended learning is not to be assessed/ supervised or marked. Parents are going to love that, and teachers, who already get accused of being weak, work-shy, lazy whingers will just get more public abuse. The government and public health guidelines make this situation impossible. But I'm 100% that it will be the teachers that get the blame.

Exactly - last minute announcements help nobody. Better to plan for a range of eventualities. Why does these plans look like they have "no fucking clue"? I think these plans look realistic - might not be what we want to hear in an ideal world but if we start looking for alternative buildings and so on now we will be in a better position come September. It's also good to see disadvantaged children front and centre in their own right, rather than just because it suits an unrealistic back to normal now narrative.

And may I add, as a teacher, that I'd rather be at work any day of the week that have to continue to do online learning, as would nearly all of my colleagues. But 'normailty' is not possible any time soon, even if Boris caves to public pressure and reduces the guidelines to 1m distance.

Most informal discussions are suggesting that any blended learning is not to be assessed/ supervised or marked.

Which makes calling it ‘learning’ obfuscation at best.

My kids are both back full time. One (small) bonus of the whole shit show is how grateful they are to go to school now. I don’t think they’ll take it for granted again.
I’ll be gutted for them if we have to take a backwards step but can’t see any alternative for a few months if they want to get more children in

Sigh. Very dissapointed they didnt specifically mention SEN and children with EHCPs.

Immotcalledlola - you say that your children are back at school full time - is that at a state school? If so, how is the school managing it? Have they split them into groups of 15?

@JassyRadlett I couldn't agree more. But teachers can only work within the guidelines we've been given. And we can't do two jobs. There is no understanding of that out with the teaching world.

a very large part of this is children ion schools

People do keep trotting this out. What % of families do you think are reliant absolutely on schools for childcare?

I couldn't agree more. But teachers can only work within the guidelines we've been given. And we can't do two jobs. There is no understanding of that out with the teaching world.

I think you underestimate many of us. I’m not angry with my child’s teachers. I’m furious with the government for their lack of leadership, support and direction. I’m angry with my son’s head teacher for the particular choices she has made within the poor framework she has been given, which has had entirely foreseeable impacts about which she appears totally untroubled.

I think it's very sensible to plan for this for the next 6m in case of spikes.

I fully expect the English Govt to ditch SD by Sept whether the R number is low enough or not. Whether we will have an autumn / winter spike or not, I dont know. Nor does the Govt. Or the teaching unions. But at least they are preparing a worst case scenario, whereas the Govt is still playing catch up and lying about it all.

It's highly unlikely that SD will be ditched, and it would be foolish to do so. Reduced to 1m would double the chance of infection. I hope Johnson doesn't cave in and put wealth before safety.

Most informal discussions are suggesting that any blended learning is not to be assessed/ supervised or marked.

That's bonkers. If a child is in school, work can be marked and feedback given. If not, then what happens? Child comes in, does work, chucks it in the bin on the way out of the classroom? Teacher wears a visor and mask combo to sit near the child - better than nothing in terms of PPE.

It could work from an education perspective, just not for childcare.

Children do normal lessons in school, work is set on Friday for the following week - 5 follow up tasks for English and maths and another subject as a paper pack. But that can't be recorded lessons and the like, because teachers won't have time to do that. Then on Mondays it is reviewed, marked, edited, whatever. While they are at home, the kids in school are getting the same lessons - teacher does it over again, with same work being set. It would stagger a term start for children, but that's better than nothing. And knowing they need to hand it in on Monday would make it more likely to happen I expect. Especially if there is no online aspect - no excuse about technology not being available.

What are Scotland thinking? Until Christmas just to see what happens with infection rates?

I should add that preparing online lessons takes AGES. Between 2 and 3 hours each for most of mine - I think primary school is harder than secondary because of lack of independence, much shorter attention spans, and no real chance for feedback to the actual child - feeding back to parents is pointless.

Also, only 30% of our school are accessing any of the lessons at all.

@Notcontent yes state school. 1 child in yr 6- in bubble of 12 (the only 12 who wanted to return)
The other is in a key worker bubble currently of 8-i only needed 2 days but they said he could come in every day as his space was there whether or not he was.

It's almost like those who work public sector and have become discussed because of pay freezes etc and who people have campaigned to make this happen for - are having to be made into the bad guys again.

Teachers are lazy.

Care and nhs staff can't get pupils educated.

Put them firmly back in their box.

Better to have plans than nothing. We've no idea what numbers will look like in a few months time. Also, if the date for those shielding gets extended, then a lot of staff still won't be back in September.

Yep, some planning at last. The proposals seem to make sense to me though I agree with an above poster about SEN not being mentioned, perhaps they are including that in plans for disadvantaged pupils?