So apparently all the state schools could have had interactive lessons

[chopc]

As per GW today all were given access to a Microsoft Teams/ Google classrooms and could have had interactive teaching like the private schools. Not sure if he mentioned anything about the safeguarding concerns of zoom which miraculously have been overcome recently ...........just sayin

Did some teachers say they have been instructed by their SLT not to give interactive lessons or mark homework etc?

Sorry I know you must be bored of these threads but couldn't help myself

Wow....the sense of privilege you get from some parents on these threads. Maybe they should wander onto some inner city schools.

We use teams. I get about 40% of students using this holy grail of teaching. So I still have to set some of the rubbish non live stuff for the other kids. I also go in to teach the year 10s who have now returned and go in other days to support key worker children as well as planning for the different potential outcomes for September.

So I'm now doing lots of things really poorly rather than being able to focus on doing some really well. But hey, we're doing online so we must be great.

I like live lessons and they have a place. But they really aren't the pinnacle of lock down teaching some parents on here seem to think they are.

By all means judge your child's school for the support they've provided but be a bit more involved than purely judge by the metric of 'zoom or no zoom.'

[quote pinksauce]@ohthegoats

Not lucky, just frugal and able to prioritise. A Chromebook is 220-300 pounds.[/quote]
No it’s never luck is it. You’ve got what you’ve got through hard work and determination ... and sod everyone else. Some of the families I teach are using food banks and are reliant on the food parcels we take the every week. People are literally living hand to mouth and you’re saying they should be more frugal and able to prioritise? Have a word with yourself you muppet.

@waltzingparrot

I must be missing something because why couldn't the Y10 children without access to technology go into school and be taught in the classroom and the lesson beamed live to those with technology at home. I know this won't work for every school in the country but I bet it would work for a lot.

How would that work with the staff and students needing to be in bubbles? Or are you expecting the teacher to teach their bubble and (online learners) maths, eng, science, history etc? That's not going going to work, secondary teachers have their specialisms.

The teachers would be doing a full day of teaching, across all subject specialism for the year 10s... Who's then going to set the online work and do the feedback for that teachers other year groups? Because of bubble sizes, there'd be very few other staff members left to set work for the other year's (and then once again, you'd be having teachers having to set work for subjects that's weren't their specialism, not knowing the current ability level of those students in other teachers classes etc)

How would the teacher be able to differentiate? (lower ability, SEN, AMA and so on)

How would you manage the possible bullying of the students identified as not having access to technology at home that have to attend school?

How would you teach the year 10s that are in the established key worker/vulnerable bubbles that aren't supposed to join new bubbles?

HTH

@HotPenguin

I tried joining online lessons, my son just ran off and hid behind the sofa. He hates it. When we watch the school videos, he doesn't look at the screen, he just stares out the window. That's with me constantly reminding him to concentrate. I'm sure I'm not the only parent with these problems? Online teaching just won't work for some primary age kids.

I think remote learning for the younger primary school kids especially is very hard unless there is someone available at home to do the work with them. I've done lots of video lessons for my year 2 class but hardly anyone watches them now. I can totally imagine it being as you describe, with them struggling to connect their teacher on a video in their home.

I have the added problems that I know most of mine don't have access to technology for long periods and they don't have an adult who is able to facilitate their learning, either through lack of time, number of siblings or not being able to explain, all perfectly understandable.

I just can't imagine that many of mine will engage with a live lesson. My own DC have Brownies/dance Zoom classes and only one in ten children join those, despite them being the sort of families that have devices available. Many of my pupils come from large and slightly chaotic families and getting everyone online for a set time would be a nightmare.

I've had most success with a mixture of online learning sites with games that the children can do independently and paper packs revising key skills. It's not ideal but it's manageable at home. I have recorded a chapter book to try to keep connected with them but it feels so hard now they know they won't be back with me again.

The biggest advantage of live lessons, I have found, is my dc maintaining a routine. Or rather, not having to set a routine for themselves. I think they'd have more easily fallen to pieces if they'd not had this daily, all day timetable to distract them whilst the rest of the things in their lives have come to a halt.

TV could have been used more effectively to deliver some kind of routine lessons to primary aged children. Broken up with some fun activities.

pinksauce are you really so self-absorbed that you don't understand that £200 plus per child is an impossible amount of money for many families?

Or that there are thousands of families living in one room B&Bs or hopelessly overcrowded houses or flats and there aren't enough surfaces, let alone, laptops for them all to work on?

I'm a graduate level professional and, despite being very competent with word/excel/powerpoint/Skype for meetings, I'd never used Zoom before March. Why would someone whose role is classroom based like a teacher automatically know how to use remote platforms?

My internet connection is great, but I reguarly Zoom with people who are constantly being thrown out, can't have their screen and sound on or it crashes and can't download large documents.

All children who needed one were loaned a laptop.

What size school are you? We're a small primary and we were struggling to even make sure we had enough laptops for staff (jobshares usually share a laptop).

We surveyed our kids. Lots had very limited access to computers/internet. We have out as many as we could but that wasn't enough

I've also had to pay to upgrade my internet during lockdown, that took a while to happen. Would imagine a lot of families couldn't go that!

Fortyfifty yes a routine really helped my primary aged child.

They did a brief Zoom class meeting (somewhere between one quarter and one half of the class logged on) which went through the work for the day, which was all on Purple Mash.

My secondary school aged child has just had work set via Show My Homework - and a weekly zoom assembly - and although she's getting on with it, she's found the lack of structure and routine quite difficult.

@ Quote louisthetrumpetswan

I really do not accept as a society we should tolerate people having children and then they don't meet their needs.

I come from a very poor family, but my parents always ensured we had what we needed for school.

My children's state primary school has been using SeeSaw, and the teachers seem to have worked incredibly hard setting up lessons and activities.

@ poster JimmyGrimble

Luck is just life - we all get ups and downs. The rest is down to you - and strangely those who make sensible choices often seem to have more "luck".

What is the point of school and children trying hard if it's just down to luck - may as well just wait for your fate? Where has the ambition gone?

Even if we agree in these extreme circumstances, then yes, lets do something different - are you claiming that for 80%+ people cannot somehow find 200 to be paid back over 4 years? I hope there are no phones, TVs, consoles, more than a couple of changes of clothes or appliances taking priority.

Luck is just life - we all get ups and downs. The rest is down to you - and strangely those who make sensible choices often seem to have more "luck"

So you claim agency for life outcomes? So the the poor made bad choices?

What is the point of school and children trying hard if it's just down to luck - may as well just wait for your fate? Where has the ambition gone

The single most influential aspect of educational attainment is still the socio-economic background of the child. The luck of birth.
Please don't bore on about individuals who buck the trend - I'm one myself.

Strange how the OP has not provided any evidence for their assertion about what Gav apparently said.

We've been using Teams since the first week of lockdown. Largely self-taught with assistance given from staff and friends from school over our WhatsApp group. We've made errors, rectified things, created classrooms, uploaded a years work of revision material and this was before we'd even realised the depth of the lockdown. I now upload bespoke lessons for all my classes across all year groups on a weekly basis, mark them, feedback and praise on Twitter. I message students to try and coax them to engage. I also have pastoral duties to my form class and without going into any detail, the burden has been hefty and at times, traumatic.

I have shit engagement of my subject (a core) from 90% of my students. We monitor every minute of online engagement on Teams - there's software built into one of their Apps. I am producing work for a sporadic 5-10% and it's demoralising.

SLT regularly critique the quality of my work assignments - change this, add that (I have 15 yrs of teaching experience btw). "Make them short, easy to access and achieveable tasks" - still no engagement. I've tried everything apart from filming myself - voice overs, quizzes - lots of approaches, still less than 10% engagement. Still I have SLT telling me how to tweak my work, when really I feel like asking them what they are doing to contact parents to offer support.

I'm awake at 5:45 every morning to achieve my goals - not only teaching my classes but I'm under pressure to produce resources for next year. I am self-taught on software like PP, Teams, Forms etc so I work slowly but doggedly at producing tasks that are eye catching and appealing as well as fulfilling literacy strands. I'm trying to be author, designer and a marketing expert on everything I create.

I get up early because we have 1 PC and 1 laptop between 4 of us and my DD's are busy with their own work. Money is tight and I'm unable to buy more tech. We did have a 3rd device but it died on us about 8 weeks ago. My elderly MIL is living with us at the moment and I care for her needs as well as helping my own shielding parents with shopping and other tasks. I don't sit down for 10 minutes at a time before being called away to help someone.

I'm fucking exhausted to be honest. Being in school is more straightforward, I can guarantee it. The worst thing of all though is being constantly told by SLT, some parents, the media - that we could be doing 'more' or doing 'better'. Walk a day in my fucking shoes. Please.

pinksauce so what form should this intolerance for people who have children then can't meet their needs take?

What we should all be intolerant of is a government that made lots of promises about providing tech and then didn't, that scoffed at Labour's idea of free, national Broadband and now seem to be mooting it themselves, and that has hammered the education system over the past 10 years.

WelshMoth that sounds utterly exhausting and you're stretched so thin.

Not everyone is critical of teachers or schools. It's notable that the same posters come up over and over again on these goady and critical threads.

If they just read and thought about what people posted in answer to their queries and questions, they wouldn't need to as they'd have their answers.

Most of us with school aged children are extremely grateful to you.

At Our secondary every child has an iPad. Yet they still don’t do online lessons

If teachers cant teach remotely due their own children being there then they should be furlowed for childcare reasons.
Lots of nurses, doctors.ambulance staff etc have had to work around a family.
My husband and i have worked flat out during covid and have had to take bits of leave to cover each other and my kids are sometimes sat in front of screens while i do a zoom meeting or speak to clients.
Of course some teachers may have young kids and no partners or partners away or sick but thats why the furlough scheme exists.
Dds job share teacher's both have yoing kids and have barely done a thing for their class and yet other class teachers have done loads and kept in good contact, so yes i am one of disgruntled ones.
I have emailed several times but was fobbed off.

At Our secondary every child has an iPad. Yet they still don’t do online lessons

Have you asked why?

My child's primary school are about to start Zoom lessons but there are lots of conditions that mean he can't take part - first problem being it has to be done in a kitchen or living room not a bedroom, and we only have a suitable desktop computer in a bedroom. Secondly an adult has to be there to supervise, but both parents work full time and we have two younger children.
Full time online lessons would be impossible for many families.

The obsession with live online lessons for primary school children is ridiculous and bizarre. Are people really imagining 30 eager 7 year olds sitting down at the same time in their homes to watch their teacher teach a live lesson and for that concept to work? The reality is, different children can be accessed in different ways, and what with having to provide hard copies of work to post to some families who adamantly claim an inability to work in any other way; videos for others who like that; and interactive work with the ability to comment and mark work on MS Teams or Google Classroom, doing a live lesson (whilst simultaneously being expected to be back in school teaching “bubbles” of children) has to be right down at the bottom of any priority list. Just what sort of quality of question are people expecting young children to ask their teacher across a dodgy connection where the majority of children haven’t even turned up for the specific time slot, anyway, and those that are there can’t see each other and are borrowing a parent’s phone for the experience?? And all this pretend worrying about the most disadvantaged missing out, when the reality is they are the least likely to be able to access the live lessons and so the least likely to benefit from the teacher’s time being spent in this way?

I'm fucking exhausted to be honest. Being in school is more straightforward, I can guarantee it. The worst thing of all though is being constantly told by SLT, some parents, the media - that we could be doing 'more' or doing 'better'. Walk a day in my fucking shoes. Please.

Jesus, your SLT sound like nightmares.

When on lockdown, SLT from my school rang each teacher every two weeks to see how we were getting on. The first question was, I hope you're not overloading on the live lessons, and this was about protecting my energies. They totally got that the preparation, and in my subject the marking, was an enormous workload. There have been very high levels of trust, the only must-do to put up the lesson plan centrally.

Hmmm I’ve been in touch with our kids’ teachers a lot and I think GW is lying here. It’s not as simple as just having access to an app. It’s the cost and sorting out all the issues around data protection of the kids that will use it. Then there’s the considerations of digital exclusion for those without tech.

Ultimately the government are at fault for having no plan other than numberwanging imagined dates about when kids could be back in school.

If they’d been honest at the start that homeschooling would be needed till summer.., if they’d shown leadership at the start and come up with a plan and clear guidance on homeschooling, it could have been delivered.

And if teachers haven’t been forced to worked round the clock dealing with dozens and dozens of government guidance changes and trying to to get kids back in, they could have focussed that time on making homeschooling better for all.

Blame the government. They’re an omnishambles.