Why can’t schools...?

[Howsaboutwejust]

Why can’t Primary schools just take 30 per bubble? They could eat packed lunches in classrooms and not mix with other bubbles. Where toilets are an issue one year group use the boys and one year group the girls (this would work in my school because two classes share one set of toilets). If they need more toilets then surely some kind of portaloo wouldn’t be too hard to organise?
And why can’t secondary schools (for years 7 & 8 at least) teach children in their register groups. Work as in year 6 where one teacher teaches the whole curriculum. I realise that would take some planning and reading up on different subjects, but surely at the level of year 7 & 8 it would be do-able?
If only Boris would say full classes can be together then all this would be fixed. I know that it would mean mixing more households but with siblings in different bubbles as it is now lots more than 15 households are mixing.

@Annebronte I’m not a maths type either. I can though, with a little help from google remind myself of the things I’ve forgotten in the millions of years since my GCSE and can help my DD with her year 7 work.
As for your A level English class, that is a tricky one, and something i’d not thought of. Surely there’s some way. Maybe year 7 and 8s going in part time? Mornings only for maths and English daily plus one more subject. Afternoons could be for year 9 upwards and teachers who haven’t taught a Y7 or 8 class could teach them? Would that work?

@belle exactly. For a secondary school you have to imagine an office with 2000 workers who all change rooms every hour at the same time but into different groups.

Because they can't keep 2m apart if they take 30.

I am not sure how my soon to be year 10 son could be educated towards his GCSEs in one room if the teachers moved around. His options are music- needs access to a music room, DT - needs access to specialist equipment, science- needs access to specialist equipment, Computer Science- needs access to computers. Maths and English would be OK! I am also not convinced there is a class of children doing the same options as him. I would rather he had a week on week off timetable so he can do the practical work in school and the theory at home.

I think it will be part time on Sept with video lesson support at home.

My cousin’s children in Australia are only in two days a week as part of their bubble.

I was in close contact with a positive case before lockdown when they were still doing contact tracing, so I have a little experience in the effects of how just one positive case affects a school (whole) community. From the one case I was in contact with, 28 families, over 40 children and 7 members of staff had to self-isolate for 14 days. The time leading up to school closures was so unpredictable, with staff shielding, going into self-isolation because of symptoms or contact. If the govt hadn't ordered closure, the school would have had to close anyway due to insufficient staff to ensure safety of the children.

Any plan for wider school re-opening will need to take into account the rules for self-isolation to make sure there's a contingency when staff are inevitably ordered to self isolate, or become ill.

It’s like Brexit all over again! Suddenly everyone was a politician except now they’re pandemic experts and qualified to put their two penneth in as to how schools should safely return 🙄.

I realise that children being out of school for so long is worrying for parents (and teachers-I speak as both) but seriously, some of these ridiculous ideas are just wearing thin now.

Timetabling is very complex. If KS4 were not being taught in the morning, they won't be able to cover all of their subjects. Teachers are currently working, so would not have time to 'read up' on many subjects. When would you expect them to do this?
And if I had to teach a Year 8 maths, there would be many parental complaints I am sure. I would not have a clue. I scraped through my GCSE 30 years ago, and I certainly can't help my Year 7 child with her maths at home.

@viques It’s very tricky when working full time in school to make sure my dcs are not falling behind working by themselves at home.

This would not work. At all. I think people massively underestimate the amount of planning that goes into putting lessons together for subjects we’re trained to teach and have degrees in. I was a very able student at school in all my subjects, but I couldn’t teach a range of different subjects. Not even factoring in the amount of time it would take to plan. I wouldn’t know where to start with teaching, for example, physics. What’s on their curriculum? What level would I pitch it up after I’ve miraculously learnt all the stuff myself (obviously sleep wouldn’t be happening at this point). And then all the other subjects? How would teachers communicate with one another? By the time I’ve told someone what to do for English (and given them time to read and annotate the texts as well as helping them understand the basics of what we do, when would I have time for teachers of other subjects to tell me what to do?! Oh, and add in learning Spanish because I didn’t do that in school. And the health and safely training for DT and PE.

Just because parents have found it ok to help deliver a watered down, simplified curriculum to maybe 1 or 2 children at a time, with the whole day to plan their time and the internet at their disposal, doesn’t mean teachers can do the same to 30 kids all with different needs!! I despair...

On top of this - who is then delivering the GCSE and A Level lessons? And marking?

I'm a Primary Headteacher- we have up to 130 children starting back on a phased return over the next two weeks, we're running 13 bubbles of up to 10 children each. We have 10 in a bubble not 15 because with 15 children in our KS2 rooms, they are 75cm apart. Here's my answers to your thoughts

Why can’t Primary schools just take 30 per bubble? They could eat packed lunches in classrooms and not mix with other bubbles. Where toilets are an issue one year group use the boys and one year group the girls (this would work in my school because two classes share one set of toilets). If they need more toilets then surely some kind of portaloo wouldn’t be too hard to organise?

We have one set of girls toilets (6 cubicles) and one set of boys toilets (5 cubicles) between ALL of the KS2 classes- that's 8 classes of 30.

The Hierarchy of controls we have in place put handwashing as the second most important thing we must do to prevent the virus from spreading. Children wash their hands on entry to school, after morning playtime, before eating, after eating, after lunch playtime, after afternoon playtime and before going home. That's each class making 7 trips per day to the toilets just to wash their hands. There's no way we could do that with 240 KS2 children and the toilets we have. We are not unusual in this situation, there are many schools who just have the minimum standard of toilets. We did use to have a sink in each room, but when the school was refurbished 15 years ago, they were taken out because, on the recommended guidance, each room is only big enough for 27 children and we have classes of 30.

If we had the money and the means to put portacabins on the playgrounds they'd be vandalised. This would mean we'd be regularly closing at short notice as our handwashing facilites were out of use. Plus we have only one door for the KS2 children to access the only playground big enough to accommodate them. We did once have porta cabins when the school was having significant building works, with security to guard them. Did you know it cost £10,000 just to put them on site and then remove them when they were done. That didn't cover the cost of hiring them.

If only Boris would say full classes can be together then all this would be fixed. I know that it would mean mixing more households but with siblings in different bubbles as it is now lots more than 15 households are mixing.

I actually think this is at the heart of why we don't have full classes back. Once all children are back, any measure of social distancing is effectively over- they'd be playing out on the parks/in the street, going to one another's houses, calling at the shops together on their way to school and their parents would be socially mixing too.

I'm as keen as anyone else to get my children back to school. I do my job because of the moral purpose I feel I'm charged with to enable each generation of children to do better than the generation before. But, the only way to have more in my school is to abandon the hierarchy of controls- which interestingly put social distancing at the bottom of the list.

I read an article today about schools in Holland who now opening to full classes. But their new infection rate today is 143 new cases. The UK's new infection rate today is 1541 new cases. So, I'd suggest we are some way off being able to move to Bubbles of 30

I think a secondary school teacher, teaching all the core subjects is way better than us parents who have been given the job with no training in any subject what so ever! This can't go on our children have to go back to school.

And it's not just lessons that need to be considered - to bring in the whole cohort at once, you'd need to forget all about social distancing rules. You'd have to forget the guidelines on cleaning the school - classrooms, toilets, canteen, reception. Otherwise lessons would be impossible, staggered start and finish times would last all day, and staggered lunches, well it wouldn't fit into lunchtime. Hand washing would have to be pretty infrequent too, not enough sinks for that many students to wash their hands every hour.

Most of the kids might be safe enough if we dropped all guidelines for schools. But we also need to protect all of the adults that work in a school. Teachers, admin, pastoral, cleaners, caretakers, technicians. Hundreds of staff. They'd have to wear full PPE.

One teacher delivering all subjects is a really silly idea and couldn’t work because we all teach up to A Level and older ones do need specialist teachers, and, for several subjects, specialist equipment. I would just abandon social distancing in schools; get them all in, with masks on, desks facing the front. Packed lunches, probably no contact sport or ‘contact drama’. Assembly via smart boards etc. School kids are low risk. Teachers would have to be kept apart from each other, but that is possible.

I can see totally that I hadn’t thought this through with regard to who would be teaching the older year groups (although with 67 teachers at my dcs secondary and only 12 needed for year 7 & 8 I’m sure the other 55 could somehow be used).
I don’t see why anyone with an education to degree level and the ability to take objectives from a scheme of work and manage a class can’t manage to teach a narrowed curriculum (which only includes maths, English, science, history, geography and RE) to year 7 & 8.

Money would need to be thrown at cleaning.

The problem is that parents are going to organise whatever childcare they can so they can work. Which means the bubbles will be well and truly burst.

Why can't people actually make demands of our government, and it's actual Leader - Boris Johnson?

Endless posts about, 'Why can't schools/teachers ... ...?'

But ... it's Boris Johnson's actual job to come up with a real, actionable plan - and action it.

Look, I know he's incompetent but ... have we all just forgotten this is his job? Have we just given up hoping he'll do it?

Are we really so beaten down in our expectations that we're looking for anyone else to do the job for him?

It's an actual scandal that

• children are not yet safely back in education
• there isn't enough wider structure in place for all parents to confidently send their children back.

A scandal. A scandal. A scandal.

We should be incredibly angry.

And this is not on schools, teachers or parents.

We are being failed by a catastrophic failure - absence, in fact - of planning by our government.

I genuinely do not understand why we are being so meek and nice about this.

It's a disgrace.

One teacher delivering all subjects has got to be better than one poor parent trying to teacher several different age children while working & doing everything in the house.

I think a secondary school teacher, teaching all the core subjects is way better than us parents who have been given the job with no training in any subject what so ever!

I agree. I'm a secondary teacher. It's obviously not quite as easy as reading up the night before, but any qualified teacher has studied pedagogy and will have relevant experience and transferable skills. I might teach some aspect the wrong way at some point, and no way would I be as good as a specialist, but I could have a good stab at it, and often have for short term cover in the past. Definitely not a long term solution, and I doubt it's even part of the best solution the the problem of missed education, but a qualified and experienced teacher, even without the specialist knowledge, would be much more equipped than someone untrained.

@ChittyChittyBoomBoom

It’s like Brexit all over again! Suddenly everyone was a politician except now they’re pandemic experts and qualified to put their two penneth in as to how schools should safely return 🙄.

I realise that children being out of school for so long is worrying for parents (and teachers-I speak as both) but seriously, some of these ridiculous ideas are just wearing thin now.

Exactly.

Because most of us only have an education to degree level in our own subjects, and haven’t learned the others in 10+ years (if at all!) People really don’t understand teaching. It is really insulting that people who aren’t teachers think they can solve all these problems, and when professionals say it isn’t possible, tell us we’re wrong! 🙈 It’s genuinely upsetting to read at times and shows how we’re not appreciated, despite what some people say to the contrary. I wouldn’t dream of telling someone else how to do their job!! And then vilify them if they said I was wrong!

@Flinstones

I think a secondary school teacher, teaching all the core subjects is way better than us parents who have been given the job with no training in any subject what so ever! This can't go on our children have to go back to school.

I don't think it is. At the moment I plan structured activities for children to do at home on my specialist subject. Parents main role would be encouraging completion and offering support to their own children.

I don't think me planning and delivering lessons that I don't necessarily have a GCSE in to a class of 30 students is better from an education point of view. As I then wouldn't be able to support the students in other bubbles with my specialist subject.

I have a year 7 form. I reckon I could have a go at teaching some subjects to my form, but not to a great quality. But, more importantly, I'm teaching my form (very badly) all the time who's teaching my GCSE and A Level maths classes?