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.

I love the ‘take a little bit of reading’ part 😂

Op, I teach woods, metals and plastics...also known as technology. I have not done maths, English or Science for 25 years...and things have changed a lot since then. Trust me, I would likely do more harm than good if I was asked to teach core.

Also, there is little point asking teaching ‘why they can’t do x, y and z. We take instructions and are not the decision makers in any of this.

I teach in FE, so slightly different (adult students) but there is genuinely no way I could teach someone’s maths class - it took me four attempts to pass my Standard Grade. I have never done maths since - 25 years.

When we have to cover classes due to illness, the sick lecturer provides work on our virtual learning environment, which the students do with supervision. The students would be as well to do this at home, it’s just about not leaving a gap in their timetable at short notice.

My colleagues are highly skilled in their subjects, but I can’t imagine my friend who’s a sciences lecturer teaching my marketing students.

As I said in my DCs school there are 67 teachers and at least 3 specialists in each subject. Therefore, years 7 & 8 could use up 12 of those teachers, leaving plenty of specialists in each subject to teach older kids.

@Trudycat89 I’m honestly not trying to upset anyone and am not trying to tell teachers how to do their jobs. I simply wanted to discuss whether this way of organising schools temporarily would be an option.
I am a teacher, I know primaries work totally differently. I just wonder what would work for secondaries.

@Flagsfiend a classroom with no window! That sounds awful I agree! It has a sky light window in the roof and that’s it. It was an extension in to the internal courtyard bit. The school has two of them. I think they are hideous and feel so sorry for the dc who are taught in there. I remember spending hours day dreaming out of the window at school and Looking at the trees. It must be really bleak to have to Look at the walls All day

Why is this idea so laughable! Parents are not teachers! But expected now to teach at home! Come on teachers stop making this difficult for us poor parents at home! It's time we all worked together to attack the government with our plans to get EVERY child back in school. It is the government's responsibility but we all need to work together & agree the children need to go back to school.

I get that you’re trying to come up with a solution for all this, and like other teachers have said, I would love to go back to normal. But it just isn’t possible in the current climate. I’m asthmatic, and shouldn’t really be in school, but I asked to go in and will be teaching tomorrow. But planning a 1 hour lesson has taken me 4 hours to do, because I’m having to factor in not being able to move around the room, hand out resources or generally teach how I would normally teach. I’m already risking myself to help my students, on top of delivering home learning, but there is no way that what you are proposing is possible. Plus, it’s all out of our hands anyway, as leaders who haven’t stepped into a classroom in years (especially a state school with 34 kids in classrooms!!) are making the decisions!

I'll chuck something else into the mix and be prepared to take the flack...I don't want to teach your kid georapghy or music or history or religious studies...I have no interest in them. I have a real enthusiasm joy and passion for my subject but not others.

And I wont bother to do the 'little bit of reading' around to understand it. And why would I divert my attention there when I could be putting it into year 10s of my own subject.

My subject is also very short staffed so I've managed my fair share of non-spciallist staff over the years. Even the good ones require a ton of support and help taking several years to get truly competent.

Im not that fussed about SD and I'll go back with greater classroom numbers teaching my own subject but I'm not going to teach something else.

But ... teachers are working on it.

Do you want teachers to break laws, health and safety legislation and guidelines?

Would you really feel OK if each era all became guerillas and just ripped up all the legal stuff?

No. You'd be on FB, ranting.

For good reason.

And you'd complain, rightly, about sub-standard secondary teaching.

Personally, I think your children deserve better.

I'm sad you don't.

Demand this government gets a crack on with this.

MOREWINE that's a really unhelpful comment & not helping our children at all.

[quote Flagsfiend]@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.[/quote]
That is probably the best explanation of what goes on in a secondary school that I have ever read. Well phrased.

If parents still don't understand why the logistics are so difficult now then I'm not sure what else can be said.

Btw..I teach History up to A level. I am so old I took Biology O level, but dropped Physics and Chemistry at the end of the third year (Y9) because it was about 1979 and I was allowed to. I've got O level Latin - useful - but my school didn't teach Spanish so I'd be no use at that. I'd be able to teach about half the curriculum to Y7/8 but I don't fancy handing my exam classes over to a non specialist whilst I do so.

I don't think @MoreW1ne has any reason to feel bad! I'm buggered if I want to teach Physics or Spanish or Maths either.

We teach our own subject because we are passionate and interested in it.

No flinstones it's not unhelpful. It's actually useful to the OP when considering why their plan may or may not work. They raised a possible idea, some people supported it saying it might work in their schools and some suggested reasons against.

My comment is a reason against. I never said it was a nice comment (in fact I started my post with that). But that doesnt make it unhelpful when considering possibilities.

Unfortunately, we can't all do what we are passionate about at the moment!!! Some of us have lost jobs & have school children at home!

Exactly, I'm passionate about science and passing that joy onto the next generation. If I'd wanted to teach all subjects I'd have become a primary school teacher.

If I was told to teach a y7/8 bubble I would do it and try and do it well, but I'd not be able to pass on that enthusiasm for subjects I don't have the background in as I'd be just teaching what I was told with none of the experience or breadth of knowledge. I'd also worry about teaching them things that are wrong, particularly with essay writing. I dropped subjects that involved essays as soon as I could.

MOREWINE I'm not getting into a debate over it, have you got any helpful ideas how to get them back to school?

You’re more clueless than the government OP, leave it to schools to organise themselves please.

... and ‘do a bit of reading?’ - for every subject and topic? You do realise that secondary school teachers have specialties that they have studied in depth, don’t you? They don’t just do a bit of Wikipediaring and then head for the Bunsen burners.

Because, this:

OP, I think the problem here is that schools are doing what they are told. Boris Johnson and his pals, or Nicola Sturgeon and hers, are making it up as they go along, and changing their minds every five minutes. Schools, and teachers, don’t really have any say in it. This sort of thread is interesting, but ultimately if every teacher here or in the UK said “yup, I am a maths teacher but hello, I would be very happy and confident to teach French, history and physics, yes, please” it would make naff all difference.

How about the useful idea of trying to get the numbers low enough that track and trace becomes really viable, then letting schools go back as normal. There would be localised closures fairly regularly I would assume, with one child catching it and then that school closes for a week to allow testing of everyone that child was in contact with.

I'm very hopeful that the numbers could be that low by September, but we'll have to see what effect the loosening of restrictions has before we can be confident about that.

@Howsaboutwejust narrowing down curriculum would suggest some subjects are more important than others, a very wrong message to send to staff and kids and parents. So what would you like mfl or DT or music or art teachers do when the others teach the narrowed down curriculum? You also underestimate the level of y7 and 8 students and complexity of the curriculum. I did cover lessons of various subjects during my career, but there is a reason why in secondary we specialise in subjects and in primary you don't.

I genuinely can't get my head around the idea that some people are so keen to get secondary aged kids stuffed back into a classroom that they would have a non specialist teach them maths rather than a specialist teach them part time and/or online.

Or that anyone thinks any child would enjoy or gain anything from a a 'pared back' curriculum that only includes the basic core.

Is that what we have been reduced to to 'get some normality back'?

I think you would find secondary teachers resigning even more so than they already have been.

Flinstone I also struggle when teachers have had such little support and backing from parents over the last decade whilst we have been arguing for better funding and support for your children. Had we been supported there might be more funding and several of the ideas raised on MN might be possible.

We also might not currently have a massive recruitment crisis which is preventing the other half of the ideas raised on here.

So whilst it saddens me that vulnerable children are really struggling (even more than ususal), maybe a little bit of discomfort from some parents might make them think a little more next time the "disgusting" unions try to argue for better conditions for staff and children.

My most important idea for you would be to start a thread positively praising and thanking teachers. Get them on side rather than bashing and you might find they suddenly feel like they're valued and want to do a little extra. Heck, I might even teach a lesson of English!

In your plan, OP, are the year 7 and 8 lessons being planned by the one teacher who's teaching their class all week or are subject specialists, like they would do for a cover lesson (absence etc).

Because if it's the first, that means the children will be getting a far WORSE education than they're getting at home at the moment with subject specialists setting home learning work.

If it's the second, there would literally not be enough time in the day for the specialists to teach GCSE and A level and also set enough cover work for year 7 and 8 too. Unless teachers never go to sleep for the next year?

This si what no one thinks about whan advocating classes of 30 and no SD :

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

It clearly goes without saying that it sends a terrible message to say that the only important subjects are core and a bit of humanities - and utterly miserable for students who are weak at written subjects but adore drama or PE or tech.