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

Ok, sorry, yes.

Why use teachers ? They should be teaching!

Well as I posted above, we manage to do both!

Why are teachers delivering food?

Because the govt gave them the role of coordinating the chaotic FSM voucher scheme, no there aren't spare council workers sitting around with nothing to do as councils have been cut to the bone and the mutual aid groups that have set up are great but rely on people actually knowing that they're there.

Schools have also been referring to food banks btw.

Weird that they managed it virtually everywhere in China

Schools in China were not all doing live lessons at all.
Many were not doing live Zoom (or other) lessons, throughout the whole thing.

The teachers I know working in Chinese schools were doing video lessons, but not live lessons - just like my school, state primary in England, did, and are doing, from day 1. We actually had one of our ex teachers give us lots of advise before we locked down so we were ready to go just about, though it did happen quicker than we'd planned.

I suspect many posters on MN (and to be fair it is only on MN I am seeing the obsession with live lessons) have no idea what it is like to be on the receiving end of a live lesson, nor realise that an awful lot of children (and adults) in the Uk have no way to access live lessons - and in many many schools across the country, it isn't just a class bubble size.

I've done live zoom training during this time. It just isn't the same and tbh a well prepared video lesson with some form of q and a capability after would be more beneficial.

Private schools will have it easier in the sense of providing home learning to more pupils simply because of their school catchment. More money to pay for fees usually means more money to provide their children with their own device and decent wifi or data.

My school has a wide mix of families. We have families in the situation of being able to buy each of their children their own device when schools locked down to some who are relying on schools dropping off lunch and/or breakfast to them who don't have wifi at home and only have one phone on PAYG for the whole family to share.

I think pinksauce is Katie Hopkins. Banned from Twitter, so come to vent her bile on Mumsnet.

@pinksauce

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

I’m guessing back then that meant a protractor or a new abacus, not a laptop. You really are a supergoon

Re the food deliveries - who knows? You may very well have a point. I can't think of one teacher though that would stand around and argue the point whilst packages need filling and delivering.

I've been shielding because of my MIL but all my colleagues have been rota'd in and because of the enormity of the task, our cluster primaries have joined the army.

Should be delivering lessons? We do that as well, some of us badly admittedly (here's looking at my ageing colleague who lives in the back of beyond with her frail Mum, no internet access, Nokia brick mobile phone - dotes on the pupils in her charge in school but has been absolutely unable to fulfil any work from home).

This lockdown hasn't been a walk in the park for any of us - some are hit more than others of course - but as a profession, we re frantically trying to keep up with the changing times as well as handing the home issues that lockdown has brought us.

I need training in all this tech but we haven't been able to meet to sort it. So many of my colleagues are in the same boat.

The connectivity issues are very significant for some families but goodness the pandemic has shown up the enormous divide between private and public sector.

One of my children's school has been good, using teams since the second week of lockdown.

The other (primary) has been utterly useless. It's the insanely tedious Oak National Academy only. Worksheets, frequently in uneditable forms. No feedback. Nothing. Rubbish!

I work in public sector and we had migrated to zoom, then teams, within 10 days. All this hand wringing "we cant do the tech" stuff has really pissed me off.

An unpopular opinion on here and I'm expecting those PA daffodils very soon...

I find the idea that any teacher is unable to use tech laughable. That's appalling! Come on! How can you do effective research/ CPD/ lesson planning without internet access??

I too have migrated to zoom and teams but in the main they are for meetings and service provision for adults - not providing differentiated learning for children and young people so I wouldn't seek to compare them.

My DH is a university lecturer and needed time to adapt style to online platforms and that was for students who generally had less difficulty with their own tech hardware needs and had different levels of motivation than y9's.

Plus private schools have taken different approaches so it isn't a straight public private split. I have good knowledge of three private schools - one offers online full live timetable, one moved the term/holiday dates around and essentially took summer holiday early and one has provided work overview but not a live online timetable.

Oh I dont advocate live lessons. That is really hard with 27 kids of different abilities and several with SEND.

But why can they not have something social? A chat with the teacher? Even 15 minutes per day??
Why can teachers not respond when kids have been trying so hard to edit the uneditablrm It's been left to the parents to arrange anything interactive via WhatsApp, which by default excludes all the most vulnerable kids :( who incidentally should bloody well have been strongly encouraged to come into actual physical school (but have not been)....

No surprise to me that the school that has done better is the outstanding one with amazing p8 results; the crap one has hovered between RI and good for several years despite a very advantaged intake with high prior attainment on average.

Whatthewhatnow I provide work-based training. I am, like most classroom teachers, very proficient in powerpoint, researching, CPD online, also Excel. I am only needed to become proficient in Zoom and Teams since March.

It is COMPLETELY different delivering training remotely. And I have nowhere near 'classes' of 30 that need differentiation. I rarely have people in my class who are in the early stage of learning English.

Also, a basic point that tends to get overlooked. Very few primary aged children are efficient touch typers. Definitely not KS1.

It is HARD for children to complete and submit work via type. Many lose motivation quickly and lots of online platforms esp maths you have to submit the work via the website.

It is relatively very easy for adults to switch to working remotely. But you're not trying to provide lessons for young children with vastly different access to tech.

Much of the 'hand wringing' about tech involves the lack of access that many families have and/or safeguarding. I don't understand why you'd call that 'hand wringing' rather than legitimate concerns tbh.

Im not blaming teachers, quite the opposite. It’s a disgrace that you are expected to pick up the pieces of a broken system that lets people get into such poverty that they can’t even afford enough to eat.

We surveyed parents, vast majority don't want it. Unless you're SAH or furloughed with one child, you need to put the money earners in front of the tech in office hours. And parents find it's not convenient to have to sit by your child in sight of the teacher at a prescribed time every day and watch your child muck about while everyone else's is getting on with the work. Which inevitably happens very quickly with children under about y5. In the real world it seems people prefer schools to load daily work which can be done when convenient to parents. Secondaries use platforms very well but there are good reasons why it doesn't work well in KS1 and lower KS2. I think like many things in life people just hear about something else going on somewhere else and have FOMO.

@lousithrtrumpetswan my experience is different to yours. I also train people face to face as part of my job..we moved online... literally not a single issue. Mine are all willing adult participants mind.

What can the objection to video lessons and say 15 minutes of facetime daily, with the whole class - or as many as can join - actually be?

If parents are working from home it is incumbent on their employers to provide tech. Zoom and ms teams works fine on a smartphone or tablet. Why can children not use these? About 90% of households must have one!

Safeguarding is totally overblown when it comes to this sort of thing. Many children are FAR more at risk being essentially invisible at home for weeks on end, rather than participating in 1h 15 of zoom/ teams/ classroom face to face per week.

What can the objection to video lessons and say 15 minutes of facetime daily, with the whole class - or as many as can join - actually be?

From our parent survey, the main things they said were that they didn't want to have to commit to being available online for a fixed time each day, and they were concerned that their children (under y5 or so) would need 1:1 supervision anyway to complete the work so would prefer prerecorded videos to watch.

In terms of keeping contact within a class the children struggled with the dynamics of zoom ( eg muting unmuting waiting for a turn to talk ) and they ran out of things to say to their friends very quickly without physical interaction. I found this to be true myself as a parent, we only had one class call and it was very stilted. That's year 2 / year 4. However, this was better with y6. But, they all had phones to contact their friends anyway.

I work in public sector and we had migrated to zoom, then teams, within 10 days. All this hand wringing "we cant do the tech" stuff has really pissed me off

But this is teaching.

Safeguarding is totally overblown when it comes to this sort of thing. Many children are FAR more at risk being essentially invisible at home for weeks on end, rather than participating in 1h 15 of zoom/ teams/ classroom face to face per week

Safeguarding is about the teachers too.

If parents are working from home it is incumbent on their employers to provide tech. Zoom and ms teams works fine on a smartphone or tablet. Why can children not use these? About 90% of households must have one!

Apparently not:

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/jun/19/its-a-basic-equality-issue-home-learning-gap-between-state-and-private-schools

Glad you said incumbent though as most teachers' IT comes out their pocket, so what effectively giving their wages to your children.

Whatthewhatnow the problem with Zoom in particular is that strangers can access the meeting displaying inappropriate content. My eldest's schools tried to get round this by insisting that everyone had their name on the screen and camera on. The teacher negotiating with kids to do this took half the allocated time. The meeting was 'locked' when it seemed that everyone attending had logged in (about 25% of the class), but had to be unlocked when kids left then wanted to get back in again. Very little teaching occurred.

And, yes, the teachers could just kick the children messing about out of the meeting, but that doesn't provide them with an education and creates extra work for the teacher who will have to provide the same learning in a different format.

Safeguarding for teachers in the days of screenshots and memes doesn't need further explanation, I hope.

"as many as can join" isn't good enough for most teachers. They want to provide teaching that all of their pupils can access.

Zoom on a smartphone is pointless really. You can't see everyone, and you can't see a screen share. Even if 90% have a smart phone and enough data (quite a bit if and a huge if in primary) what about the other 10?

Schools can only furlough workers who are wholly contracted to deliver services that cannot be offered and bring an income - eg after school club workers and play workers, dinner ladies. If they are on admin or teaching contracts covered by the school's government grant, they cannot be furloughed, as the grants are still being paid.

Why can children not use these?

Lots of the children at our school have no Wi-Fi and no devices behind a parents phone and payg data.

Some parents are furloughed and not working, so no company provided tech and Wi-Fi.

Some parents are wfh and have not been provided with extra tech and Wi-Fi. Infact very few people I know working from home have any stuff provided by their work.

Some parents are wfh and need the computers to do their work almost all day, so no spare day time to the children to use the coloured/device.

Some businesses do not allow for others to use a work laptop or device for various safeguarding and privacy issues.

My school has only just got Teams last weekend.....

I don’t think it’s just the schools/teachers to blame though.

DS2 primary school has been using google classroom since the week before lockdown (when it looked likely lockdown was going to happen) work is set on there and they also use Flipgrid for the kids record little 15 second videos based around a question of the day eg what’s your favourite superhero, show us you pet etc then there are some other websites they use like mymaths, purple mash, the hwb etc. Plus a weekly video call in small groups.
The schools catchment area is very affluent and lots of the families are doctors, lawyers, directors, etc. So pretty well off and pretty intelligent themselves yet still I would say only 1/4 of the class interact online (chats and videos) I assume some more are doing the set work Just not getting involved in the social chats but I know some aren’t as thier parents have said they aren’t making them do it.
Likewise the older 2 are year 7 & 8 and theirs school has been using teams since the get go. Often I see the teachers posting with a list of children that haven’t done the assignment and to let them know if they are having any issues, it’s always about a 1/3 of the class and seems to be the same ones over and over.

Now I realise that some of these families may have tech issues, others may have health issues but some of them just won’t be bothered to make thier children do the work. We can’t just lay the whole blame at schools.

Plus our council have been providing laptops to anyone that needs it to access school work. I’m not sure what the application criteria is but they keep advertising it and I’m
Sure teachers will have contacted people not doing the work to see if they need a device.